We are looking for a friendly, enthusiastic, and reliable Playworker to join our team and help provide a safe, fun, and engaging environment for children during our after-school club. You will play an important role in children’s development, helping them to build social skills, confidence and creativity. This rewarding role can fit well around your existing commitments and provides the opportunity to gain experience of working with children in a school environment, behaviour management and safeguarding.
Hours: Part-time, 15 hours per week, Monday – Friday, term-time only.
Benefits of working with us:
* Opportunity to join the Local Government Pension Scheme
* Free on-site parking
* Access to the Blue Light Card offering discounts across various UK retailers
* Benenden Healthcare membership at a reduced rate
* Generous annual leave entitlement for staff working 52 weeks per year
* Free optician’s eyesight test for DSE users
Hailsham Academy is a split-site, all-through school serving 1,500 students in the secondary phase and approximately 300 students in the primary phase. We are situated close to Eastbourne and the south coast, just minutes from a National Park and Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty. Our staff travel to Hailsham from a variety of locations within the southeast, including Brighton, Uckfield, Seaford, Eastbourne, Bexhill and Tunbridge Wells.
In the early part of 2018, we were approached by the Local Authority to provide a new primary and pre-school provision within the town. In September 2019, we opened a brand-new school approximately a mile from the Secondary site, thus extending the designation of the Trust to a 2–19 all-through school. Since our last Ofsted inspection in March 2023, there have been some important changes that have taken place across the secondary phase of the college, including changes to our leadership structure, a revised pastoral structure to ensure we are providing effective support to our students, and a renewed focus on the quality of education and curriculum implementation.
We joined MARK Education Trust in September 2025 as both Beacon Academy and Uplands Academy are based in East Sussex, and, like us, the Trust believes in the importance of schools retaining their unique identity whilst working in partnership. There are many benefits that this will bring to Hailsham Academy, as these links will support us in building on excellent teaching and learning throughout the Academy and will enable us to provide further support for our students as we build capacity and make efficiencies.
Our vision is to provide the best possible education for all of our students and to be an exceptional and high-performing school, locally and nationally. We do this by relentlessly sustaining our culture that is highly aspirational and ambitious for excellence in all we do.
Our strategy for the future is rightly ambitious. We are uncompromising in our ambition and in pursuing excellence at every level. We have a rigorous focus on consistent improvement and work meticulously to secure our culture of unapologetically high standards. Underpinning this is our shared belief in and ambition for the students of Hailsham Academy, and the experienced, loyal, highly skilled and highly effective team of staff who teach them.
To apply, please visit hailsham-academy.org
Closing date: 10.00am on 7th January 2026.
Interview date: w/c 19th or 26th January 2026.
NB: we advise applying promptly for this post as we reserve the right to close and interview early if sufficient suitable applications have been received.
All schools within MARK Education Trust are committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and young people and expect all staff and volunteers to share this commitment. We will ensure that all our recruitment and selection practices reflect this commitment. All successful candidates will be subject to disclosure and barring service checks, along with other relevant employee checks.