Learner Success Coordinator
Heartfield Education, East Grinstead
Salary: £23,000–£24,000 actual annual salary (approximately £34,000–£36,000 FTE equivalent), depending on experience
Hours: Tuesday–Friday, 08:30–16:00, with a 30-minute unpaid break (28 hours per week)
Working year: 38 weeks – Heartfield's 36 learner weeks plus 2 additional non-learner weeks
Contract: Permanent
Start date: 1st Sept 2026
Help young people turn freedom into independence
Heartfield is looking for an exceptional person who genuinely enjoys working with teenagers and understands the balance between freedom and responsibility.
Heartfield, connected to Better EdSpace, provides an innovative educational environment for young people aged between 12–15. Our approach combines academic learning with creativity, practical experiences, personal development and community. Small groups allow young people to be genuinely known, while our approach encourages them to become increasingly independent, confident and responsible for their own learning.
We believe adolescents need both freedom and structure; both high expectations and adults who are firmly on their side.
The Learner Success Coordinator will help provide the structure that makes that independence possible.
This is a highly visible, relational role at the heart of the Heartfield day. You will know our learners well, understand what they are working towards and help them navigate their individual programme. You will notice when someone is struggling, drifting or avoiding something; help them work out what needs to happen next; and maintain expectations without losing the relationship.
You will also help hold the practical organisation of each day, allowing educators to concentrate on teaching and learners to make the most of the opportunities available to them.
This is not primarily a teaching role. It combines mentoring, coordination, organisation and pastoral support.
What you will do
You will:
- Build warm, respectful and consistent relationships with young people.
- Help learners develop the organisation, independence and self-management needed to take increasing responsibility for their education.
- Support learners to engage with activities, manage independent work and follow through on agreed commitments.
- Work with learners, educators and the leadership team to develop and maintain individual learner pathways, goals and schedules.
- Notice when a learner needs additional encouragement, structure or support and respond appropriately.
- Help young people reflect on difficulties, setbacks and choices and identify constructive next steps.
- Maintain clear and consistent boundaries while respecting learners' growing autonomy.
- Maintain an overview of the day's programme and help activities and transitions run smoothly.
- Coordinate schedules, registers, learner records and routine communications.
- Communicate with parents and carers and work closely with educators and the leadership team.
- Organise educational visits, enrichment activities and special events where required.
- Notice practical or organisational issues and take the initiative to resolve them.
- Contribute to a community in which every young person feels known, valued and able to participate.
The working day deliberately includes time outside the learner-facing programme. Time before learners arrive provides an opportunity to prepare for the day ahead, while the end of the day provides protected time for administration, communication with parents and carers, discussion with educators and liaison with the leadership team.
About you
Above all, we are looking for someone who genuinely likes teenagers: someone who is interested in who they are becoming, enjoys talking with them and can combine warmth with appropriate adult authority.
You will:
- Be calm, confident and approachable.
- Build relationships naturally while maintaining clear professional boundaries.
- Be highly organised, reliable and good at following things through.
- Take initiative rather than waiting to be told what needs doing.
- Be able to maintain an overview when several different things are happening at once.
- Encourage and challenge young people without becoming controlling.
- Understand that independence develops through practice, guidance and appropriate responsibility.
- Communicate clearly and sensitively with learners, families and colleagues.
- Have good administrative and IT skills.
- Be flexible, practical and comfortable working within a small, developing organisation.
- Share our belief that young people flourish when they are trusted, respected, supported and appropriately challenged.
- Understand the importance of safeguarding and know when concerns need to be recorded and escalated.
Experience of working with secondary-aged young people would be highly valuable. This might come from education, alternative provision, youth work, mentoring, pastoral care, SEND or another setting in which you have developed strong professional relationships with adolescents.
Specific educational qualifications are less important to us than the right combination of experience, judgment, organisation, warmth and initiative.
Working at Heartfield
Heartfield operates differently from a conventional school. Our academic year consists of six six-week learning blocks, giving 36 learner weeks across the year with longer breaks between some blocks.
The Learner Success Coordinator will work those 36 weeks plus two additional non-learner weeks. These quieter weeks provide protected time for planning, reviewing learner pathways, meetings, administration and preparation for the blocks ahead.
You will be joining a small, values-led organisation where you will have the opportunity to know young people as individuals, contribute ideas and make a genuine difference to how they experience education.
How to apply
Please send your CV together with a covering letter responding to the following two questions:
1. Tell us about a young person with whom you developed a strong relationship but also needed to maintain an expectation or boundary they didn't particularly like. What happened, what did you do and what did you learn from it?
2. It is 11:00 at Heartfield. A learner has decided they don't want to join the activity they are scheduled to attend. They are perfectly happy, sitting in the communal area talking to another learner, and tell you: “It's supposed to be self-directed learning. I don't want to do it.” How would you respond?
Please use specific examples where possible. We are more interested in a genuine account of your experience and thinking than in highly polished application language.
Closing date: 17th August 2026
Interviews: 18th August 2026
Heartfield is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and young people. Appointment will be subject to an enhanced DBS check, satisfactory references and all relevant safer-recruitment checks.
www.heartfield.org.uk
www.betteredspace.co.uk
Pay: £34,000.00-£36,000.00 per year
Work Location: In person
