Outdoor learning officer (schools) jobs

Want to help us to inspire the next generation of wildlife lovers? Keen to see more children outside, connecting with nature and the natural world? Got lots of ideas for taking learning outside and keen to teach others how to feel confident in an outdoor classroom? Agree that a day learning about wildlife and the environment is great for everyone’s health and wellbeing? Then come and join the Worcestershire Wildlife Trust learning team welcoming the children of the county to our fantastic facilities here at Lower Smite Farm or taking nature to their classroom.

We are the county’s leading local charity working towards a county rich in wildlife managing over 3,000 acres of land for wildlife and people across Worcestershire. We work with organisations and landowners to protect and connect wildlife sites across the county.

School engagement is an essential part of the Trust’s work.  We recognise that to give nature the best chance of recovering and flourishing in Worcestershire, we need to nurture the next generation to love their local wildlife and wild spaces and feel confident to take action for it. This is a fantastic opportunity for an experienced educator and manager to expand and progress our school strategy work even further, supported by a brilliant team of school officers, tutors and volunteers. We are looking for someone who is a persuasive communicator, passionate about the benefits of nature for pupils and staff as well as being highly organised. You are comfortable building relationships across schools including with senior leaders as well as being able getting stuck into the day-to-day delivery to children and young people where needed. This role will enable you to make a real difference to nature’s recovery and to be part of our vision to get 1 in 4 schools taking action for wildlife by 2030.

We have been running a school service for over 30 years engaging young people with the outdoors. We meet with between 2,000 – 3,000 young people, predominantly from primary schools, every year at Lower Smite through our popular outdoor school trips covering key elements of the science curriculum. Everything we do is fun, interactive and hands-on. We embed nature connection pathways into our programmes with a focus on creative and artistic practice. This includes our creative science sessions where we explore classification and evolution through collage and printing.

The role will be focusing on progressing our work around the natural learning journey, develop a model to move schools through the journey and track their progress. At the heart of this is overseeing and helping to deliver core elements of our school offer and working with the Wilder Schools Team and our school partners to develop new programmes and workshops.

We’re Wild About Inclusion.  To us, this means inspiring, empowering and engaging people from all backgrounds, cultures, identities and abilities, to change the natural world for the better.  It also means cultivating inclusive workspaces that are free from discrimination, where differences are valued, everyone can be themselves and flourish, just like nature!

A full driving licence is essential. This role will be subject to reference checks and an enhanced DBS check with child barred list.

Benefits

· Hybrid working – office at Worcestershire Wildlife Trust, Lower Smite Farm, Hindlip, Worcester WR3 8SZ with regular travel within Worcestershire and occasionally further afield

· Salary Sacrifice Pension Scheme with Royal London. Employees sacrifice a minimum of 4% and the Trust then contributes an additional 8.6%.

· Annual leave entitlement of 6.6 weeks increasing by one day per three years of service to a maximum of 7.6 weeks.

· Group Life Assurance policy worth three times annual salary.

· Health Cash Plan and Wellbeing Services provided via HealthShield.