Start Date: 1st September 2026
Location: Mobile working
Reporting to: CEO
Relocation expenses: Up to £8,000 can be claimed for qualifying costs
This role carries ‘Mobile Worker’ status and works on a hybrid basis, combining home working with essential visits by car to schools or other Trust sites as required by the role. There will be a requirement for travel throughout the Catholic Diocese of Plymouth, which covers the counties of Cornwall, Devon, and Dorset.
Purpose of Role
Put simply, to help us to achieve our ongoing vision of providing an excellent education for every pupil, every day. In addition, to help us achieve our ambitious five-year goals and be renowned for excellence in faith formation, service, talent development, and academic progress.
We are looking for an exceptional candidate to help us to achieve something very special. We aim to be the Catholic Academy Trust of choice for students, staff, and families. We are dedicated to becoming a bastion of excellence within education.
The Director of Education will provide strategic leadership in education across our thirty-four schools and one nursery. This will involve working with executive leaders, School Improvement Officers, school leaders, students, families, Diocesan Officers, and wider stakeholders.
We believe in the concept of autonomy with coherence. This means we have a duty to share and implement best practice across our schools, but also encourage the development of next practice to drive continual improvement. As Director of Education, you will lead on what autonomy with coherence looks like across education: helping to coordinate excellence across our schools, helping our schools learn from each other and from schools outside our Trust, and incorporating learnings from other industries/sectors that are transferable to education.
This Trust-wide executive role exists to:
1. Strengthen system leadership across nursery, primary, secondary, and sixth form phases.
2. Ensure coherence in curriculum intent, implementation, and impact.
3. Secure consistently strong academic outcomes and personal development.
4. Embed Catholic ethos authentically within educational practice.
5. Provide executive oversight, professional challenge, and strategic support to School Improvement Officers and school leaders.
6. Provide strategic oversight of safeguarding within the Trust, ensuring that safeguarding training, knowledge, and compliance are of the highest possible standard.
The role does not replace the statutory responsibilities of Headteachers but provides Trust-level direction, accountability, and quality assurance to secure excellence for all pupils.
The postholder will be accountable for the Trust's collective educational performance.
Key Responsibilities
Executive Leadership, Strategic Oversight & Operational Capacity
As a senior executive leader of the Trust, the Director of Education will strengthen the leadership culture, build system capacity, and ensure that educational standards remain central to the Trust's decision-making.
The postholder will:
7. Model high professional standards and ethical conduct.
8. Line-manage School Improvement Officers who, in turn, line-manage Executive Headteachers and Headteachers.
9. Oversee the process for performance management arrangements in schools.
10. Set clear, measurable, and ambitious objectives aligned to Trust strategy and the Board’s strategic 5-year goals, holding leaders accountable for standards, culture, and pupil outcomes.
11. Provide high-quality professional challenge and support to school leaders.
12. Coach and mentor senior leaders to strengthen strategic thinking, resilience, instructional leadership, and organisational effectiveness.
13. Ensure that leadership development activities strengthen curriculum implementation, teaching quality, and pupil outcomes across all schools.
14. Establish structured opportunities for collaboration across Trust schools to reduce variability and build collective capacity.
15. Ensure effective identification, evaluation, and dissemination of best practice across all phases from EYFS to post-16.
16. Promote purposeful school-to-school support where it strengthens quality and coherence.
17. Develop and maintain strong, constructive relationships with the Diocesan Education Service and other relevant professional bodies.
18. Represent the Trust in regional and national forums, ensuring Plymouth CAST contributes positively to education more broadly.
19. Contribute actively to Trust-wide strategic planning, policy development, and long-term educational vision.
20. Advise the CEO and Board on the educational implications of strategic decisions, risks, and priorities.
21. Ensure that educational standards, curriculum quality, and pupil outcomes remain central to all Trust-level decision-making.
22. Maintain up-to-date knowledge of national policy, curriculum reform, and inspection developments to ensure the Trust remains forward-looking and responsive.
23. Uphold and promote the Catholic ethos and mission of the Trust in all aspects of leadership.
24. Undertake any other duties commensurate with the seniority, scope, and strategic nature of the role, as directed by the CEO.
Curriculum Strategy & Phase Coherence (All Phases): Provide strategic direction and leadership for curriculum design and implementation across Early Years, Primary, Secondary, and Post-16
This includes:
25. Establishing a coherent curriculum architecture that secures strong progression between key stages.
26. Ensuring subject curricula are knowledge-rich, well-sequenced, and inclusive.
27. Embedding Catholic Social Teaching and spiritual formation meaningfully within curriculum frameworks.
28. Ensuring curriculum intent is ambitious and clearly understood across the Trust.
29. Supporting leaders to respond effectively to curriculum reform, qualification changes, and updates to accountability frameworks.
30. Overseeing cross-phase alignment to ensure a strong transition between nursery, primary, and secondary education.
The Director of Education will ensure curriculum quality is consistently strong and demonstrably impactful.
Teaching, Learning & Assessment: Be accountable for the quality of teaching and learning across the Trust.
This includes:
31. Establishing clear, evidence-informed pedagogical principles.
32. Ensuring professional development strengthens classroom practice at all levels.
33. Supporting strong early reading foundations in primary and subject depth and rigour in secondary.
34. Ensuring assessment systems are robust, proportionate, and effectively used to improve outcomes.
35. Monitoring the quality of teaching through structured review processes.
36. Ensuring high expectations for behaviour and engagement are embedded across all schools.
The Director of Education will ensure teaching excellence drives both academic progress and personal development.
School Improvement, Quality Assurance & Accountability: Lead and refine a rigorous Trust-wide quality assurance framework.
This includes:
37. Establishing clear target-setting processes across phases.
38. Analysing and reporting attainment, progress, and performance data at both Trust and school level.
39. Identifying trends, risks, and areas for improvement.
40. Overseeing school reviews, curriculum reviews, and leadership evaluations.
41. Supporting schools in preparation for inspection and external review.
42. Leading or contributing to targeted intervention strategies where improvement is required.
43. Leading an ambitious curriculum strategy and ensuring that all CAST schools have a clear and consistent approach to intent, implementation, and impact.
The Director of Education will provide clear, analytical, and evaluative reporting to the CEO and Trust Board on standards and performance.
Faith Formation, Service & Personal Development: Strengthen and develop the Trust’s distinctive Catholic educational mission.
This includes:
44. Ensuring faith formation is intentionally embedded within the curriculum and school life.
45. Promoting meaningful service opportunities.
46. Establishing clear expectations for character development and pupil leadership.
47. Supporting enrichment and talent development across schools.
48. Ensuring that personal development outcomes are measurable and evaluated.
While the postholder is not required to be Catholic, they must demonstrate a clear commitment to promoting and strengthening the Trust's Catholic mission and ethos.
Inclusion, SEND & Safeguarding: Ensure consistently high standards of inclusion and safeguarding across all phases, providing strategic oversight and assurance at Trust level.
This includes:
49. Promoting and embedding a strong safeguarding culture in every school, ensuring vigilance, professional curiosity, and clear lines of accountability.
50. Providing strategic oversight of safeguarding across the Trust, ensuring robust compliance with statutory guidance, Trust policies, and best practice.
51. Monitoring safeguarding assurance processes and advising the CEO and Board on safeguarding standards, risks, and emerging concerns.
52. Ensuring that safeguarding remains visible and central to school improvement.
53. Ensuring leaders understand and fulfil their safeguarding responsibilities, intervening where practice falls below national and Trust expectations.
54. Securing high-quality SEND provision that is fully integrated within curriculum delivery and teaching practice.
55. Promoting equitable outcomes for disadvantaged and vulnerable pupils through rigorous monitoring and targeted improvement strategies.
56. Analysing inclusion and safeguarding data across schools to identify trends, address gaps, and ensure vulnerable pupils receive timely and effective support.
57. Working with the School Improvement Officers to hold school leaders accountable for inclusive practice and pupil outcomes.
Inclusion, safeguarding, and excellence must be mutually reinforcing priorities across the Trust. Attendance: Secure excellent attendance for all pupils in all schools.
This includes:
58. Leading and implementing the Trust’s attendance strategy, ensuring clear expectations and consistent practice across all schools.
59. Analysing Trust-wide attendance data, identifying trends, patterns, and vulnerable groups to secure excellent attendance outcomes and reporting on these to the CEO, Board, and external stakeholders, as appropriate.
60. Supporting, challenging, and quality-assuring the safeguarding and attendance practices of school leaders.
Why Join Us?
We value our leaders and are committed to creating an environment in which you can thrive both professionally and personally.
As Director of Education, you will benefit from:
61. Relocation expenses of up to £8,000 which can be claimed for qualifying costs.
62. Essential car user allowance.
63. Membership of the Local Government Pension Scheme with employer contributions.
64. A generous holiday entitlement – 35 days across the year (plus bank holidays), which can be taken flexibly across the academic year.
65. Access to a high-quality employee assistance programme with a strong focus on wellbeing.
66. A generous benefits package including retail and lifestyle discounts and salary sacrifice schemes, including cycle to work and home tech.
67. Access to a generous professional development offer, with dedicated time and investment to support continued executive growth.
68. The opportunity to shape educational strategy across a growing family of Catholic schools.
69. Working as part of a collaborative, supportive, and creative Senior Executive Leadership Team.
70. Executive-level influence within a Trust with clear ambition and strong moral purpose.
71. A collaborative and driven community focused on excellence, integrity, and shared mission.
72. The opportunity to grow professionally within a nurturing Trust rooted in values-led leadership.
Our people are central to our success. We are committed to developing leadership capacity, encouraging innovation, and supporting our senior leaders in thinking strategically and acting decisively.
Please see attached the full recruitment pack.
Our application form for this post is available .