Student voice manager jobs in Birmingham

What does it take to lead the national voice for special schools at a time of real change?

Chief Executive Officer (CEO) – National Association of Special Schools (NASS)

National – home-based, with regular travel across England and Wales, particularly London

£90,000–£110,000 per annum

Full-time, permanent.

About NASS 

The National Association of Special Schools (NASS) is the membership association for special schools in England and Wales. We bring together independent special schools, non-maintained special schools, special academies, maintained special schools and multi-academy trusts with specialist provision.

We exist to inform, support and represent our members, helping specialist schools improve outcomes for children and young people with SEND and secure the place of specialist provision within the wider education system. NASS is known for being accessible, responsive and personal, combining national influence with practical support that members value as timely, human and trustworthy.

This is a pivotal moment for the organisation. In February this year, the Department for Education published a major white paper on SEND reform which will require NASS to both influence national policy on behalf of our members and children and young people, as well as support them to navigate the changes. Our new CEO will need to review our strategy while building on our strong platform and momentum to further deepen our influence and strengthen our internal capacity.

As our next Chief Executive, you will:

• Strategy & Impact: Lead NASS through a period of policy and structural change, ensuring the organisation remains clear on purpose, responsive to members and influential in the SEND landscape.
• Governance & Finance: Work closely with the Board of Trustees to provide strong governance, prudent financial stewardship, robust risk management and clear strategic oversight.
• Operational Leadership: Provide confident leadership to a small, remote team, strengthening collaboration, accountability, resilience and a positive, high-trust culture.
• Income Generation: Oversee budgeting, planning and reporting while developing thoughtful opportunities to diversify income through membership, partnerships, events and related activity.
• Community & Partnerships: Build and sustain trusted relationships with government, parliament, regulators, sector bodies and member schools, ensuring NASS remains relevant and well connected.
• Member Services: Protect and enhance the practical offer to members, from briefings and special interest groups to conferences, webinars, training and peer-to-peer learning.
• Brand & Profile: Act as a credible public ambassador for NASS, helping to modernise communications and broaden the organisation’s voice beyond a founder-shaped model.
• Future Growth: Shape a distributed leadership profile and support a more varied, accessible and engaging approach to membership, advocacy and communications.
• A seasoned senior leader with experience in a charity, membership body, education or public sector setting, and a clear track record of leading through change.
• A strong strategic thinker, able to absorb complex information quickly and translate it into clear, practical direction.
• A confident communicator with the gravitas to represent NASS with members, staff, trustees, MPs, peers, media and national partners.
• A politically astute relationship-builder, comfortable navigating a complex and fast-moving external environment.
• Experienced in governance, with a sound understanding of working with boards or trustees and supporting effective decision-making.
• Numerate and commercially minded, with experience of budgets, financial planning, income generation or partnership development.
• Credible, approachable and resilient, with the emotional intelligence to lead well in a high-profile, remote and sometimes uncertain context.
• Direct SEND experience would be a significant advantage, alongside understanding of specialist education or similarly complex stakeholder environments.

Why NASS?

• This is a chance to lead a respected, member-led organisation with a strong national reputation and a clear public purpose.
• You will help shape the future of specialist education at a time when SEND reform is high on the agenda.
• NASS has a loyal, experienced and collegiate remote staff team, supported by an active Board of Trustees.
• The organisation offers a genuinely influential platform, with strong connections across the sector and with government.

Application

For full details of the role including how to apply, please download the full appointment brief. For an informal and confidential conversation about this position, please contact Jenny Hills at Harris Hill via apply button with times to speak and (optional but appreciated) a CV or professional profile which will be treated with the strictest confidence.

Closing date for applications: 9am, Monday 8th June 2026

As leading charity recruitment specialists and a certified B Corp, Harris Hill is committed to high and ever-improving standards of equitable and inclusive recruitment. We actively welcome applications from all sections of the community regardless of age, disability, gender, race, religion, sexuality and other protected characteristics.

The Head of Programming will set the creative direction for CST’s conference and events portfolio, shaping ideas, themes and experiences that resonate with school trust leaders. This role is responsible for turning complex issues — in education, public service and wider society — into compelling, well-crafted programmes that feel distinctive, relevant and worth attending.

The Head of Programming combines strategic oversight with hands-on creative leadership: curating speakers, designing formats and building narratives that challenge thinking and spark new connections. The role will lead and develop CST’s conference producers, building a high performing team with the capability to design and deliver consistently strong programmes that are intellectually sharp, well-paced and grounded in what the sector needs now to deliver the best outcomes for children.

Key responsibilities

• Set the overall programming strategy for CST’s conference portfolio, aligned with organisational priorities and audience needs

• Lead the development of conference themes, narratives and session architecture

• Ensure programmes are coherent, purposeful and drive engagement and learning

• Ensure programmes are completed to time and budget

• Design and test innovative formats that build engagement and connection

• Keep abreast of event trends in the wider sector to ensure that CST’s offer continues to be compelling and unique

Speaker curation and content development

• Identify, secure and brief high-calibre speakers from across education and related sectors

• Collaborate closely with CST’s Professional Community Chairs and CST’s system, commercial and charity partners to design insightful and enjoyable conference experiences for delegates

• Shape session content with speakers to ensure relevance, clarity and practical value for CST’s audiences

• Ensure diversity of perspectives, backgrounds and voices across programmes

Audience insight and quality assurance

• Maintain a clear understanding of the current challenges facing school trusts and audience needs

• Use insight from members, partners and previous events to inform programme design

• Set and uphold quality standards for all conference content and delivery

• Evaluate programme effectiveness and use insights for continuous improvement.

Cross team collaboration

• Work closely with colleagues in events, marketing, partnerships and policy to ensure that programmes are deliverable, well communicated and commercially successful

• Align conference content with CST’s wider community and professional development offers

• Support sponsorship and partnership conversations by shaping compelling programme opportunities

Leadership and delivery

• Lead the end-to-end programming process from concept to delivery 

• Manage timelines, decision points and speaker processes to ensure that programmes are delivered on schedule and effectively marketed

• Provide on the day support for speakers, ensuring smooth delivery and strong audience experience. 

Contract: Permanent

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Hours: 28 hours per week (35 hours is full time)

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Location: Glasgow

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Starting salary: Psychological Therapist -£38,939 - £45,169 (full time £48,674 - £56,462)

Clinical Psychologist £45,360 - £ 53,417 (full time £56,700 - £66,772)

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Closing date 10 June 2026

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Expected date of interviews:  ​17 June 2026 in Glasgow

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Job ref:
 

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Join a powerful and passionate human rights organisation and winner of the UK charities 2023 Overall Award for Excellence.This included successfully challenging the UK government on the lawfulness of the Rwanda scheme for people seeking asylum and leading a multichannel, survivor- led campaign to directly compel 4 out of the 6 airlines to rule themselves out of flying refugees to Rwanda, including survivors of torture.

Would you like to use your clinical skills to lead a team who provide tailored psychological therapies to help improve the lives and wellbeing of survivors of torture and organised violence?

We have an exciting opportunity for a Clinical/Counselling psychologist or psychological therapist ​Clinical Lead to work with an innovative and friendly multidisciplinary adult team at our Glasgow Centre.

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You will support a team of highly skilled and dedicated clinicians, in the service delivery of a range of NICE guideline recommended therapy interventions, offered to our clients, who are survivors of torture and organised violence. You operate as an integral part of the our Clinical Services Team. This is an exciting chance to join us as we place survivor empowerment and movement building at the heart of our strategy.

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About the role

This is a wide-ranging position, and your key areas of responsibility will include:

• To supporta multi-disciplinary team, including paid staff and volunteers from different professions and disciplines and provide professional and clinical supervision to qualified clinicians and trainees in the service including, clinical/counselling psychologists.
• This role may also include providing remote clinical supervision, support and advice as well as line management and guidance around risk and safeguarding to clinicians across our other centres as required.
• To ensure that Freedom from Torture's clinical model continues to be fully rolled out, with particular emphasis on survivor empowerment and evidence-based practice for addressing PTSD and other mental health impacts of torture.
• Championing people development as well as influence delivery of evidenced -based practice, clinical standards, quality initiatives and audit-based services.
• To formulate psychological treatment and management plans for survivors of torture and to provide psychological treatment for a caseload, using a range of psychological interventions in line with our clinical pathway that draws on a range of evidence based models for the treatment of survivors of torture.
• Being an effective role model and leader to encourage, develop and enhance skills of others.

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About you

This is an important role within Freedom from Torture. To be successful in this role you must have a high level of commitment to maintaining excellent standards of client care and service delivery. It is a key requirement that you must have knowledge of appropriate clinical standards and external regulatory bodies. You must also have sound financial awareness and experience of balancing the provision of quality care against budgetary parameters.

To be considered for this role you must fulfil the professional qualification section of the person specification. You must have professional experience of working with clients with complex PTSD and have post-qualification experience of using evidence-based trauma focused therapy models. It is essential that you have a clear understanding of the experience of refugees and people seeking asylum, both in terms of pre-flight experience and the experience of living in exile. You must have previous management and supervision experience and be able to provide demonstrable examples of how you have successfully led and influenced clinical teams within community or health care settings.

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We also offer access to high quality clinical supervision and a clinical case load alongside your management practice

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You will also have the opportunity to attend a range of forums and working groups to support the clinical development of Freedom from Torture.

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In return, we offer a competitive package, with a generous 30-day annual leave entitlement, and 6% employer pension contribution. (minimum 1% employee contribution)

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Freedom from Torture is committed to showing the salary for all advertised roles and not negotiating salaries for roles, in light of evidence that this contributes to structural inequality.

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Our policy is that all appointments will be at the start of the salary range but successful candidates will have the opportunity to move up the scale over time. The progression up the salary range is reviewed on an annual basis and subject to affordability. For this role, the full time salary range is Psychological Therapist £48,734 - £56,531.Clinical Psychologist £56,700 - £66,772

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To view the Job Description and Person Specification, please see the attached files. We may consider applicants who fulfil the essential clinical professional and experience criteria but who may not have all the management criteria. If so, this may be recruited for a lower grade than Clinical Lead.

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Please note a CV and a cover letter addressing the job description and person specification of the role are mandatory to be considered for the position.

Freedom from Torture is dedicated to healing and protecting people who have survived torture. We provide therapies to improve physical and mental health, we medically document torture, and we provide legal and welfare help. We expose torture globally, we fight to hold torturing states to account, and we campaign for fairer treatment of torture survivors in the UK.

We campaign for national and global change, using evidence from our services and survivor voices to protect and promote survivors' rights and hold torturing states to account. We are proud to play a significant role in the global anti-torture movement. Survivors, active and empowered, are at the centre of all of our work.

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Freedom from Torture is committed to its responsibilities under safeguarding and expects all staff and volunteers to share this commitment. This post is subject to an enhancedPVG disclosure, as well as a need for full employment history and up to date employment references.

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This post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act (Exceptions Order) 1975 and as such it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service (formerly known as CRB) to check for any previous criminal convictions.)

Freedom from Torture is an equal opportunity employer. People with lived experience of torture or asylum, from Black, Asian and minority ethnic backgrounds, LGBTQIA+ individuals and people with disabilities are strongly encouraged to apply.
 

We reserve the right to close the vacancy early if we receive a high volume of applications.

No agencies please.