Receptionist jobs in birmingham, west midlands

Do your best work, for the right reasons.

Oak is a fully remote, mission-driven organisation offering high levels of flexibility, autonomy, and purpose. We’re a national not-for-profit working in partnership with teachers to create the highest-quality, sequenced curriculum and lesson resources for pupils across all subjects and age groups.

Our culture has been independently recognised through:

• Flexa verified (93% overall score, including 95% for working hours and 97% for role modelling)

• Escape the City's Top 1% Employers – based on anonymous colleague reviews of culture, development, and impact

• Investors in People Gold - through external accreditation and colleague feedback

�� About the Role

We are recruiting an EYFS curriculum lead to join Oak’s Education Team. Many schools using Oak’s new KS1-4 curricula have asked if we have plans to further develop our Reception offer, and as part of the DfE’s Best Start in Life strategy they have commissioned us to refresh our Reception curriculum and lessons ready to use for the 2027-28 school year.

This is a unique opportunity to join Oak in ensuring that our existing Reception lessons developed in the pandemic can be updated to be in-class exemplar curricula and lesson resources to support teachers fully aligned to latest evidence, best practice and the EYFS framework; we expect that to achieve this they will be different to the lessons we made with partners to support remote education in the pandemic. The successful candidate will work closely with partners within and outside of Oak to oversee the iteration of our Reception curriculum and lesson design and then produce resources across learning areas (excluding phonics). They will also be a visible ambassador and spokesperson for EYFS and for Oak National Academy. 

EYFS knowledge, experience, curriculum leadership, delivery and collaboration skills are critical for this role.

This is a full-time role with an expected start date of April 2026, though we can explore an earlier start with the successful candidate. We will consider flexible working requests. You’ll work predominantly remotely, joining colleagues in person only for occasional events and team activities. Our core collaboration days are Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.

�� What You’ll Be Doing

• Responsible for the continuous improvement of full curriculum packages in the Reception year.

• Maintain specialist expertise in EYFS and be the authority across Oak and more widely across the sector.

• Using our programme management and curriculum design approach, and working with our curriculum partners, lead the redevelopment of Oak’s curriculum and resources in Reception.

• Establish strong relationships with the EYFS community.

• Represent Oak externally at conferences, webinars and EYFS events, both in-person and online.

• Manage individual curriculum partner relationships and contract performance management.

• As a member of the Oak Team, you will contribute to the wider success and culture of the organisation.

• Work in cross-functional and product-oriented squads with colleagues from across the organisation, as required.

• Deputise for the Head of Curriculum Design and take on other general responsibilities as required.

�� What We’re Looking For

• 5+ years experience of teaching and/or leadership in EYFS settings.

• Extensive knowledge of latest research and practice in curriculum design, instruction and assessment in EYFS.

• Hold qualified teacher status (QTS) with direct experience of teaching in a school/schools in England in EYFS and Key Stage 1.

• Experience of teacher development e.g. EYFS Phase Lead; University PGCE or SCITT mentor/lead.

• Proven success managing high profile and sensitive senior relationships. 

• Experience of curriculum design and delivery across subjects in EYFS.

The successful candidate will have a desire to contribute in all areas to ensure Oak is successful. You will be comfortable working at pace, with a range of digital systems (including proprietary ones as required) and you will continuously look at ways that the team can keep getting better. You will be excellent at working as part of a remote team, building relationships and managing your time effectively.

�� Our Benefits

If you're joining us from a school, here’s what you can expect in a role that’s still rooted in education, but shaped for flexibility, balance, and impact beyond the classroom.

• 25 days annual leave, plus one extra day for each year of service (up to 28).

• Additional Oak closure days over Christmas/New Year to give you a nice festive break.

• 11% employer pension contribution (with no minimum employee contribution, which can be varied as you choose). Please note this is a workplace pension rather than the Teachers’ Pension Scheme.

• A 36-hour working week (not tied to term-time patterns or school-day hours), with half-days on Fridays or every other Friday off.

• Fully remote working - we’ll support your home set-up and offer coworking options if preferred.

• Twice-yearly 'whole Oak' in-person offsites to collaborate, connect, and have fun, as well as some role/team-based in-person events

• A culture that genuinely supports flexibility, autonomy, and trust.

�� Inclusion and Belonging

We believe diverse teams build better products. We warmly welcome applicants from all backgrounds, particularly those who are underrepresented in the tech and education sectors.

We use the Applied recruitment platform to help reduce bias in our hiring process. 

�� Key Info

• Location: Remote, but you must be based in the UK with the legal right to work here.

• Sponsorship: Unfortunately, we’re unable to offer visa sponsorship at this time.

• Closing date: We’ll be reviewing applications as they come in and may close the role early.

If this sounds like the kind of role and team where you could do your life’s best work, we’d love to hear from you.

Next steps

You’ll answer some questions related to your day-to-day job. Your answers will go through our sift process: all answers will be anonymised, randomised, and then reviewed by a panel of reviewers (real humans).

If you are shortlisted, we’ll invite you to the next stage, which will consist of two-stage remote interviews.

We love giving feedback, so at the end of the application process, we'll share how well you performed.

We aim to begin interviews in early/mid December 2025.

We are receiving excellent responses to our job advertisements. This may lead us to close the role early, so if you are considering applying, please submit your application promptly to avoid missing out.

We are an equal opportunities employer.

We are committed to a policy of Equal Employment Opportunity and are determined to ensure that no applicant or employee receives less favourable treatment on the grounds of gender, age, disability, religion, belief, sexual orientation, marital status, or race, or is disadvantaged by conditions or requirements which cannot be shown to be justifiable.

Additional information/context for the role and Oak's work in Early Years.

As part of the government’s Best Start in Life strategy, the Department for Education has asked Oak to redevelop our reception resources so teachers can access optional, adaptable, high-quality materials to support their work in the classroom and help them manage workload.

As you know, Oak set up during the pandemic to support teachers and pupils with remote learning. At this time Oak developed a range of resources for reception.

While usage was high during the pandemic, these resources are not really suitable for reception teachers to use in class and an update is needed.

Over the last few years Oak has redeveloped all of its curriculum and lesson resources for key stages 1-4 across all national curriculum subjects for in-class use. They are very popular and used by around one in three teachers. You are probably familiar with their structure.

However, we’ll be taking a different approach for the updated reception content. At this age, children are best supported to develop in a different way so our reception resources will be designed to reflect their developmental and educational needs, and our resources will support the pedagogical needs of reception teachers. They will be developed using the best evidence of effective learning at this age and on the basis of best practice in the sector.

To make sure we get this right, we’ll be working closely with reception teachers, expert organisations and the wider early years sector to develop our resources. We’ll also create straightforward ways for reception teachers to explore the materials early on and share their thoughts as they develop.

Oak will be recruiting an EYFS curriculum specialist to lead this engagement with the sector and work with the Oak team to develop our product, the curriculum sequence and accompanying resources. We will share and iterate as we develop the new product and resources, and intend to have these ready in summer 2027 in time to teach in the 2027-28 academic year.

These updated reception resources will support children to make a smooth, successful progression from reception to key stage 1. They won’t cover phonics, as this is already well served by other providers, but they will fully align to the phonics approach.

And, as with all Oak resources, everything we produce will be high-quality, adaptable and entirely optional. They will comprise a model teachers can explore, draw on and adapt in ways that best suit their own curriculum and the needs of their pupils.