Policy researcher jobs in leeds, lancashire

The Grants Officer will support the Senior Manager to develop and implement monitoring and reporting
processes across the Foundation’s grant-giving activities. To be successful in the role, you must have
excellent knowledge of results-based monitoring and reporting, demonstrate strong organisational and
administrative skills, and ideally have experience working with colleagues from different cultural
backgrounds.

The initial focus of the role will be monitoring and reporting in relation to the implementation of a Big 6
EU funded programme, the Youth Empowerment Fund (YEF). This programme focuses on supporting
youth-led initiatives, giving young people the means to be effective agents of change. The YEF is global
in its reach but will focus on supporting local solutions and grassroots initiatives that young people
develop on the ground. The Officer will play a key role in supporting the Senior Manager to maintain and
grow Big 6 advocacy and partnerships for the short and long-term. This role will also work closely with
colleagues from the Operations and Finance team to ensure accurate information is delivered to key
stakeholders.

Key Responsibilities 

Youth Empowerment Fund (60%):

• Support the monitoring and reporting of the EU funded YEF programme. Including coordinationwithin the IAF and with the Big 6 designated leads.
• Communicating with and activating networks of national organizations to participate in the YEF,including sharing opportunities to take part in Big 6 advocacy activities and applying for youthled solutions open-call Local Solutions grants.
• Issuing of grants to successful national organizations and monitoring and evaluation, including regular reporting on outcomes and impact of national projects to the YEF project team.
• Sharing success stories from the YEF to support the Big 6 communication, storytelling and creative reporting efforts.

Other Grant based support (40%):

• Oversee grant-giving financial processes, creating and issuing of grant payments.
• Support the Senior Operations Manager with the reporting of grant activities for Senior Management and various stakeholders.
• Support the ongoing development of other Foundation grant reporting efforts as required.
• Undertake any other duties as may reasonably be required for the successful delivery of the Foundation’s business objectives.

Unifrog’s mission 

We’re on a mission to level the playing field when it comes to young people finding and applying for their next step after school. We're achieving this by bringing all the available information into one single, impartial, user-friendly platform that helps students to make the best choices, and submit the strongest applications. We also empower teachers and counselors to manage the progression process effectively.

Our outlook is global - we work with schools and universities all over the world, from the US to New Zealand, and from Italy to Hong Kong. We want to make it so that young people can compare every opportunity taught in English, wherever it is in the world, and have all the support they need to make successful applications.

We have a clear social purpose, and we’re hugely ambitious. We already work with over half of UK secondary schools, and hundreds of international schools. We are growing rapidly in terms of the number of our customers, in terms of how much they use our platform, and in terms of the breadth of products we offer (check out this video to hear more about the Unifrog platform).

Our team is at the heart of our business and is integral to our success. We work hard to foster a culture of openness, happiness and innovation, and we commit to helping every individual learn and grow so that they can reach their full potential. We want to hire talented people, whatever their background. If you are excited by our mission and are ready to work hard, please don’t hesitate to apply. We look forward to hearing from you!

We believe in the power of diversity. If you are from an ethnic minority background, we would like to strongly encourage you to apply.

Teaching Resources at Unifrog

One of the most important parts of Unifrog is a searchable library of hundreds of teaching resources, covering careers guidance, progression, SEL, and PSHE. 

Each week the lessons are used by tens of thousands of teachers in the UK and around the world. 

We aim for our lessons to be plug-and-play, to be truly educational, to make it easy for schools to make the most of the Unifrog platform, and to be fun even when they deal with difficult subjects. We always try to make the learning as active as possible.

In December 2023, we launched our Courses tool. Students can browse and take short online courses in a range of engaging and challenging topic areas, many of which are created in partnership with universities and employers.

We create courses that fit into five main strands:

• ‘Careers in…’ courses introduce students to a career sector and spotlight a few specific roles within the sector, e.g. ‘Careers in art’. 

• University subject tasters give students an idea of what studying a particular university subject is like, e.g. ‘The complicated reality of criminology’.

• Life skills courses help students prepare for life after school/college, e.g. ‘Preparing for the workplace’.

• Virtual work experience courses combine a series of work-based tasks and live webinars with an employer, e.g. ‘Virtual work experience with the BBC’.

• Teacher/counselor courses help staff members in various roles get the most out of the Unifrog platform.

The role and responsibilities

As Teaching Resources Creator, your main focus will be creating and editing teaching resources and courses. Topics will include:

• Careers guidance

• University, college and apprenticeship applications

• PSHE and SEL

• Skills

• Revision 

• Work experience

You will be expected to create lessons and courses to a high standard, which will involve: 

• Researching the topic

• Producing content in line with our teaching and learning standards and Resource Library handbook 

• Responding to feedback from your line manager, from others on the Unifrog team, from employer/HE partners, and from teachers in our partner schools.

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What we’re looking for

• Essential: QTS and relevant secondary school teaching experience

You must have Qualified Teacher Status (QTS) and a minimum of 3 years teaching experience across at least two key stages from KS3-5.

• Adept at creating exceptional teaching resources 

Above all else, you need to be brilliant at creating teaching resources, and to love doing it. You will have had significant professional experience creating teaching resources, and delivering them to students.

• Creativity

We want you to come up with great ideas for how to teach topics to students in fun ways.

• Quest for feedback

We want to be as close to our users as possible. You’ll be able to seek out feedback from colleagues, teachers, and students.

• Attention to detail

You will have excellent writing and proofreading skills.

• Ability to work in a team

You’ll regularly ask team members for their input; to do this, you need to be an excellent communicator and team player.

• Ability to work independently

Creating hundreds of brilliant teaching materials is a long-term project that requires organisation, discipline, and resilience.

• Ability to work to tight deadlines

We’re really excited about our upcoming projects. We have a long list of them to get done, and many have strict deadlines. You need to be able to deliver things on time.
 

Working together

You’ll work in our existing Teaching Resources team, which consists of experienced teachers and resource creators. You’ll also be in regular contact with the Written Content team, plus people on our marketing, sales, account management, and strategy teams.

In the Teaching Resources team, we commonly brainstorm new ideas as a group, share insights from our own teaching experiences, provide feedback on other team members’ work, and get feedback from teachers and students at our partner schools.

You’ll be managed by the Head of Teaching Resources.
 

Benefits

Go to our jobs page for a full list of the excellent benefits we offer our team.

• Join one of ‘the best organisations to escape to’ and help transform careers and destinations in schools. We’re also a certified Great Place to Work.

• Become part of a committed, dynamic, and growing company. We want to build our team for the long term: if you do well, we will do our best to make sure you want to stay at the company for a long time.

• Professional development is important at Unifrog. You will define your own 6-month objectives and will be supported by your line manager and the rest of the team to achieve them. You will have an annual training allowance to spend on what you need to grow and progress.

• Influence the company’s direction: we love to promote great ideas, wherever they come from.

• Play a role in democratising access to learning: Unifrog makes a difference in young people’s lives. Every week you’ll have your work in front of hundreds of thousands of students, and tens of thousands of teachers.
   

Key details

• £36,000-£38,000 per annum pro rata (Grade B) and a share in a company-wide performance bonus. 

• 28 days paid holiday per year (plus bank holidays) (pro rata).

• 12 month FTC.

• Full time (please note we are unable to consider part-time applicants).

• Working hours are 9:00am to 5:00pm, Monday to Thursday, and 9:00am to 4:30pm on Friday. 

• Work remotely, or flexibly in our London office.

• Start date: We're looking for someone to start as soon as possible but you must be available from 1st of October at the latest.

• To discuss any details about the role before applying, please contact Mhairi (details on our website).

• We can only consider candidates who have the right to work in the UK.

Application process

• Deadline: 10:00AM (BST) on Tuesday 24th June 2025.

• Stage 1: Application form (~1 hour) ✍️

• Visit our website to upload your CV and complete the questions and tasks below. Please note that we do not review CVs at this stage of the application process so please be as specific as possible about your experience.

• i. With reference to examples of your recent experience, what would make you an excellent candidate for this role? (250 words)

• ii. Upload one complete, standalone lesson PowerPoint on a careers/PSHE/SEL topic of your choice, which fulfils these criteria:

  • 30 minute lesson;

  • Includes notes for teachers delivering the lesson;

  • States the intended secondary year group audience on the first slide;

  • Is well-structured, clear, and written to a high standard; and

  • Supports the teacher in being plug-and-play and informative about the topic you’ve chosen.

  • You can send us an existing lesson PowerPoint, there is no need to create anything new or align your presentation to Unifrog's visual identity. There is also no need to provide accompanying worksheets, handouts, etc.

  • Your presentation can be in either PowerPoint or Google slides format. Please provide a dropbox or google drive link to your presentation, ensuring you have set access permissions to “anyone with the link can view”. 

• iii. We’re creating a course for 14-16 year old students who want to learn more about what it means to be self-employed in the UK. Section 1 of the course, which explains what self-employment is, has already been written.

  • Your task is to write part of Section 2 of the course, which will explain the advantages and disadvantages of being self-employed.

  • Write 250 words to be included in Section 2, either on:

  • the main advantages of being self-employed

  • OR

  • the main disadvantages of being self-employed

  • Feel free to use headings and bullet points to structure your writing. Do not add activities.

• Stage 2: Task (~ 2 hours)

• Stage 3: Video call interview (1 hour) ��

• Standard Q&A from a panel of three, including questions about your experiences and how these relate to the role, and scenario questions based on common situations you might face (plus time for your questions)

• Stage 2 tasks will be scheduled after the application deadline. Video call interviews will be held on 7th July 2025.

• Your answers are an opportunity to let us know more about your motivations and experience. While we understand that candidates might want to use AI to improve parts of their application, we strongly encourage you to write your answers independently. 

• Please note, we compare all answers to an AI generated answer. Where we suspect AI has been used to write the majority of the answer, this will be taken into consideration when scoring

Inclusion and diversity at Unifrog

• Within the company we try to foster a culture of innovation, and a happy working environment, both because this is the right thing to do, and because we think this results in the most effective team. To this end we believe in open communication, celebrating successes, supporting each other, not being afraid to be wrong or to fail, and promoting good ideas wherever they come from.

• As a platform that supports teachers and students from a huge variety of backgrounds it’s important that our team and leadership reflects this diversity. This is something we are actively working towards and prioritising. We want to embed diversity, equity and inclusion across everything we do, continually evaluating policies and practices to make sure they are inclusive and equitable.

• To make sure everyone’s voice is heard and people have the opportunities to learn to be better allies in the workplace, we encourage the team to share what they’re celebrating, facilitate training and group discussions, and seek regular feedback about what more the company could do to help people feel included.

• To ensure that our recruitment process is consistent and fair, we anonymise your application and therefore do not see your name, personal, educational or professional background. We also randomise the order of responses so that it’s less likely that a candidate is advantaged or disadvantaged by where their answers appear compared to other candidates.