School Liaison Officer (SLO) - West

Role Responsibility

In West Kent, the Education Inclusion and Attendance Team have achieved a significant improvement in increasing Primary and Secondary Schools’ attendance and reducing the persistent absence rate. The rate of permanent exclusion has also been reduced significantly.

The team are ambitious with many creative ideas to sustain this aim. Furthermore, the integrated service structure enables an joined up approach in reducing the persistent absence rate in West Kent.

It has never been a better time to join this innovative, enthusiastic and strong team as a School Liaison Officer, helping schools and families to improve attendance and to reduce persistent absences, which will be one of our priorities. Through more preventative and integrated approaches, we want to reduce the need for legal actions against parents in achieving our aim of reducing persistent absences.

The successful candidate will have a group of allocated schools, working in partnership with school staff, families and other stakeholders. As the service is moving towards an advisory and consultative approach, the successful applicant  will also be expected to provide advice to schools and colleagues from other parts of Integrated Children’s Service on attendance improvement, while carrying out investigative activities when legal action is required as a last resort.

The job entails working with other professionals of ICS and in partnership with schools as well as relevant agencies to ensure children’s maximum attendance at schools. The quality of this work directly links to schools’ attendance outcomes with a set of statistical benchmarks and targets. Therefore, the successful candidate must be outcome-driven and be confident in interpreting statistical meanings and working toward specific targets in reducing persistent absence in South Kent. It is necessary that you know how schools work and have the skills to establish good working relationships with relevant school staff including Headteachers. The appointed candidate will also be a good team player, being diplomatic and having creative problem-solving abilities, above all, energy, motivation and humour.

This post is considered by KCC to be a customer-facing position. The Council therefore has a statutory duty under Part 7 of the Immigration Act (2016) to ensure that post holders have a command of spoken English/Welsh sufficient for the effective performance of the job requirements. The appropriate standards are set out in the Job Description/Person Specification.

This post is subject to an Enhanced Disclosure Application to the Disclosure and Barring Service.

Contact Details

David Boyd

Education Inclusion Manager

03000 418532

About the Company

Please note – if you are interested, please apply as soon as possible as the closing date for this advert may be earlier than stated should a number of suitably qualified candidates apply.