Early Years Practitioner (qualified)
Location: Sandwich
Salary: up to £13.08 per hour (depending on qualification and experience)
Contract/Hours: Permanent/Part Time – 15 hours per week (Lunch Cover)
Closing date:
Benefits:
- Time off to recharge – 25 days per year plus bank holidays
- Gain professional qualifications and excellent training/development opportunities.
- Treat yourself: Staff discounts portal and blue light card with 15,000 + retailers.
- Enhanced Well-being: 8 sessions In-Person, Phone, or Online Counselling or CBT
- Salary Finance – access to financial advice and the ability to manage savings or loans directly from your salary.
- Childcare Discount – A whopping 60% off childcare within our nurseries and out of school clubs
- Up to 3 Days Dependency Leave – to care for dependents in an emergency.
- Paid maternity, adoption, and paternity leave.
- Secure your future: Pension with up to 7% employer contribution with included life assurance cover.
- 24/7 Confidential Helpline speak to trained counsellors any time, 365 days a year, for emotional, wellbeing or mental health support.
About the role
As an Early Years Practitioner (lunch cover), you’ll play an important role within our nursery team, working closely with the team to help create a safe, happy and engaging environment where every child can thrive. This is an active and rewarding role, supporting children throughout the lunch period.
As a lunch cover practitioner you will work across the nursery, supporting different rooms to ensure staffs are able to take their breaks whilst maintaining ratio requirements and providing high quality care for the children.
There may be opportunity to pick up additional shifts to support with holiday cover, staff absence and operation requirements across the nursery.
How you’ll help create brighter futures
- Provide high quality care and education for children in line with the EYFS
- supervised children during lunch periods, ensuring a safe and positive mealtime experience.
- Support children with developing independence and good eating habits.
- Assist different rooms is required to provide staff breaks and operational support.
- Help with setting up and clearing away lunch areas where required.
- Work as part of a team to create a safe, stimulating and nurturing environment for our children
- Support and contribute to planning exciting, play‑based activities that spark creativity and curiosity.
What we need from you
In the role of Early Years Practitioner (Level 3), we're ideally looking for someone who has:
- A Level 3 Early Years and Childcare qualification (NNEB, CACHE, NVQ Level 2 or 3 or equivalent)
- Experience in planning and delivering educational programmes for children aged 0 to 5, tailored to their individual needs and developmental stages.
- The ability to observe, guide and support less experienced colleagues, helping them to develop their skills.
- Experience of applying effective communication techniques with children and their families.
- Knowledge of children's emotional, physical, psychological, and educational development from 0-5 years
- Awareness and understanding of special educational needs (SEN) and how these are supported in an early year setting.
About the Nursery:
Spring Saint Barts is an established nursery running for over 20 years, providing high quality care and education for children up to the age of eleven across both our nursery and out of school setting. Set within a beautiful grade 2 listed manor house, surrounded by an acre of gardens, our nursery offers a warm, homely atmosphere where children can learn and exploring the safe, stimulating environment. Each room is filled with natural light and designed to feel welcoming and nurturing. With dedicated physical activity and nutritional coordinators, plus engaging sessions such as baby ballet and multisport. St Barts is a vibrant and supportive setting where every child can thrive.
Why Spring Nurseries
Imagine a place where laughter echoes, imaginations run wild, and every day is a new adventure. That's Spring Nursery! We're not just a nursery; we are a family dedicated to creating a joyful and nurturing environment where children thrive. As part of Action for Children, we're on a mission to provide outstanding early education that's accessible to all.
At Spring, we are committed to supporting your career growth! Check out our Spring Career Progression Map attached to this advert, which highlights the options for progression into a specialist role.
Ready to make a difference in the lives of children? Whether you're looking for a career change or the next step in your journey, we'd love to hear from you!
Apply now and help us give children a healthy start in life!
Contact: If you need support with your application, please contact our Recruitment Team at RecruitmentService@actionforchildren.org.uk quoting reference 13431.
We'll be happy to give you any support you require.
Diversity, Equality and Inclusion
At Spring we're dedicated to building a diverse, inclusive, and authentic workplace. We actively encourage applications from Black, Asian & Minority Ethnic and disabled candidates as they are under-represented within the organisation. We want to take deliberate and purposeful action to ensure equal opportunity to all groups.
Male staff are often under-represented within this sector, and we would like to encourage more male applicants for our roles.
We are committed to safer recruitment practices to protect our service users; therefore, all applicants are expected to have an understanding of and commitment to safeguarding best-practice.
Application Process
Please note we are unable to offer visa sponsorship for this role.
There are 5 sections for you to complete - Personal Details, CV, Supporting Statement & Information, Equality & Diversity, Submission & Declaration – please refer to the Job Description when applying.
We also want to know what unique qualities you can bring to help us reach our vision for children and families.
Talent Pool: We're sure you've got what it takes to join our ambitious team. If you're unsuccessful this time around, we'd like to hold your details in case similar jobs come up that you might be better suited for. But feel free to let us know if you'd rather, we didn't do that.
Want to know more about Spring and Oscars?
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See below for further information about working with us:
Spring Early Years Career Pathway