Service Manager for Education Quality, Performance and Change

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Job Description

Organisation: Leicestershire County Council

Work Location: County Hall, Glenfield, LE3 8RA/ Working From Home

Worker Category: Hybrid Worker

Salary: £61,071 - £67,191 per annum

Working Hours: 37 Hours

Contract Type: Permanent

Closing Date: 12th June 2025

Interview Date(s): 23rd & 27th June 2025

We are seeking an inspiring, strategic leader to take on the role of Service Manager for the Education Quality and Performance Service. This is a pivotal post at the heart of the continuous journey of improving quality and performance across the Education, Inclusion and Additional Needs Services within Leicestershire County Council and playing a key role in helping to delivery our ambitious vision for Education across Leicestershire.

About the Role

Key Responsibilities

• Ensuring the effective management of educational service transformation activities, including ensuring that opportunities are successfully discovered, designed and delivered and remain aligned to the strategic change requirements and priorities of the council.
• Ensuring effective business relationship management with key partners and stakeholders to see the delivery of projects.
• Identifying and managing risks through established relationships with operational managers, business partners, stakeholders and to ensure the sustainability of benefits of projects.
• To provide management and leadership for several workstreams and oversee the work of the Practice Excellence team in their role to support managers and teams to improve the quality of their practice with children and families.
• Ensuring practice across education services is underpinned by a range of clear practice methodologies, theoretical frameworks and research.
• Take the lead on education practices ensuring a strong partnership between learning and development on all issues pertaining to education, looking for the most efficient and effective way of working.

For information on our approach to the recruitment of ex-offenders, please see our policy statement.

About You

You will be a visionary and credible leader with a strong track record in improving quality and/or performance of various service areas or teams. You will have relevant professional qualifications and/or experience of performance/service change and improvement at an appropriate level. You will also have experience and/or knowledge of:

• Successful management of significant and complex change programmes, projects and change/performance initiatives where there has been a requirement to coordinate and manage resources and workstreams, often in partnership settings and in co-production
• Working in an organisational environment which requires extensive engagement and consultation with senior managers where the skills of influence and persuasion are necessary tools to achieve successful outcomes.
• Managing and understanding general financial and budget information in the context of an organisation's financial strategy, efficiency and savings Plan.
• Preparation of comprehensive business cases including the identification of costs, benefits and risks.
• Connecting with communities and localities through listening, dialogue and understanding community needs
• Leading and delivering sustainable, collective high performance through inspirational leadership, the setting of clear priorities and a strong approach to performance management.

You must also have an understanding of, and commitment to, equality, diversity and inclusion.

In addition, we also expect you to share our commitment to our values and will ask you to evidence when you have demonstrated them as part of the selection process.

Reasonable adjustments will be considered for applicants with a disability.

Interested in Flexible Working?

We are keen to support employees to balance their working life with other commitments. Therefore, wherever possible, we will consider working arrangements that suit an individual's personal circumstances whilst still meeting the needs of the Council. If you would like to discuss the possible flexible working options that might be applicable to this role, please contact the person named below. This may include requests for term-time working, part-time hours, compressed hours, flexible start and finish times, home/remote working, etc.

Every role within the Council has a defined working style which determines where they can work. The worker category applicable to this post is detailed in the above advert. You can find out more about our worker categories in the Our Working Styles page on our career site.

For more information or an informal discussion, please contact:

Olivia Dale - Head of Service - Education Strategy & Transformation

Telephone: 01163050287

Email: Olivia.Dale@leics.gov.uk

How to Apply

Leicestershire County Council is an inclusive organisation which is on a journey to embed and celebrate equality, diversity and inclusion at every level. We warmly welcome and encourage applications from people of all backgrounds, as having a diverse workforce with different perspectives and ideas is fundamental to our values and enriches the services we offer our communities. We particularly welcome applicants from Ethnically Diverse and LGBTQ+ communities and people with disabilities to create a balanced workforce and one that reflects the communities we serve. Applicants with a disability who meet the criteria listed in the 'About You' section above will be offered an interview under the Disability Confident Employer Scheme.

To apply for this job, please click on the apply button. You will need to upload a supporting statement as part of your application which explains how you meet the criteria listed in the 'About You' section above. For more information, see the How to Apply section on our career site.

We reserve the right to close this vacancy early if we receive sufficient applications for the role. Therefore, if you are interested, please submit your application as early as possible.

If you have any technical issues when trying to apply for this post or you want to request an application pack in an alternative format, please contact our Employee Service Centre by telephoning 0300 3030222 (select option 2) or raising a ticket via our online portal: https://emss.org.uk/support.

By applying for this post, you agree to our Terms and Conditions.

About Us

About Leicestershire County Council

Leicestershire County Council is a Disability Confident, Menopause Friendly, Mindful Employer, Fostering Friendly, Forces Friendly, and Cycle Friendly organisation. In August 2021, we also signed up to the Race at Work Charter. We are strongly committed to promoting equality and opportunity, championing employee wellbeing and investing in staff training and development.

Our aim is to work with communities and partners to deliver public services that make Leicestershire the best possible place to live and work for everyone. Our employees play a key role in supporting this goal and helping us deliver the vital services we provide to the people of Leicestershire.

For further information on what it's like to work for us and the benefits we offer, please refer to the following:

Our Recruitment Process
Our Organisational Values
Our Employee Benefits
Working for Us