Office for Students
Deputy Director, Financial Sustainability
Salary: c.£130,000 (and £3,566 London weighting where relevant) plus Civil Service pension
Location: Bristol or London
Closing Date: 5pm on Monday 17th November
The OfS is the statutory regulator for higher education in England. We are currently consulting on a new strategy to ensure that students from all backgrounds benefit from high quality higher education, delivered by a diverse, sustainable sector that continues to improve. We regulate a complex and diverse sector operating in a challenging environment. Our work is wide-ranging: we set regulatory standards and are increasingly using our regulatory tools, including where providers are responding to significant financial pressures and facing insolvency. To continue to protect the interests of students in this difficult context our approach to regulation needs to be confident and agile.
An exciting opportunity now arises to join us in the newly created role of Deputy Director of Financial Sustainability. The higher education sector is facing increased financial challenges, and in the midst of significant growth of our work in this area, your role will be to lead our oversight of the financial performance of the sector. Reporting to the Director of Regulation, you will lead a team of c.20 to ensure that our monitoring, analysis and engagement that sit at the heart of our financial sustainability regime ultimately serves to see students’ interests protected and that expectations and understanding across the sector is clear and understood. As part of this, you will engage extensively with our executive team, board and with key stakeholders at the most senior levels of government and higher education institutions.
You will have an extensive track record – most likely as a qualified accountant – in supporting the development of robust financial and risk analysis within a complex and regulated environment. You are likely to have led and/or had experience of turnaround / transformation where business models have had to change to become sustainable. Ideally you will have experience/knowledge of restructuring procedures that might apply to the higher education sector.
A capable leader, you will demonstrate success of developing high performing and efficient teams with experience of stakeholder engagement at the most senior levels. You will be comfortable making complex risk-based decisions, often in untested and ambiguous circumstances, and will be able to quickly grasp the regulatory and legal frameworks under which the OfS carries out its duties. How we do things is as important to us as what we do and your approach will be underpinned by our values of Ambition, Openness, Learning and Diversity.
This role provides something few others can: the opportunity to make a tangible difference at a crucially important moment for the long-term future of the higher education sector across England. For a confidential discussion about this role and your suitability, and to apply, please contact our recruitment partner, GatenbySanderson, via the link below