Early Years Practitioner Unqualified presso Action for Children

Role: Ref 12027– Early Years Practitioner Unqualified/ Qualified  

Location: Braintree & Witham, Essex

Salary: £12.21 per hour (dependent on qualification)

Contract/Hours: Full time 40hours - Permanent (Shifts worked between 7.30am to 6pm, Monday to Friday) - 

Closing date: Midnight on 15^th October 

Benefits:  

• 25 days annual leave PLUS bank holidays
• 60% discount on childcare within our nurseries and clubs 
• Gain professional qualifications and excellent training/development opportunities 
• Flexible maternity, adoption, and paternity packages 
• Pension with up to 7% employer contribution with included life assurance cover 
• Staff discount portal and Blue Light Card eligibility with 15,000 national retailers’ discounts 
   

We're thrilled that you're considering a career with Spring. Spare us five minutes, and we'll tell you what you need to know… 

  
About Spring

Spring offers award-winning childcare services, as part of the national charity Action for Children. It's our mission to be the best provider of outstanding quality early education to children throughout the UK, that is accessible to all. We are focused on enabling young people to learn, have fun and make friends in our bright, engaging settings. That starts with creating a happy environment for our team.  Join us and you can look forward to: 

• A kind, caring culture with an emphasis on wellbeing, both physical and mental. 
• Flexible working – wherever possible we offer flexibility on hours and/or hybrid working. 
• Lots of opportunities for training, learning, development, including gaining qualifications. 
• Excellent benefits that compare favourably to other employers in our sector. 

About the nurseries

Spring has three nurseries in Braintree and Witham, Essex to work across: Spring Carousel, Spring Seesaw, and Spring Harlequin. 

Spring Carousel is a 49-place nursery that offers affordable, high-quality childcare in Braintree, Essex for children from 0-months to 5-years.  At Spring Carousel, the team ensure children feel happy and settled, offering a huge variety of activities, opportunities to grow and socialise.  The nursery offers a sensory room, and a spacious garden that backs on to a large playing field and big playground as well as a nature garden which the centre kindly allows us to use where the children can explore nature and have access to a lovely frog's pond.

Spring Seesaw is an open plan purpose-built nursery which caters for up to 49 children from 0-5 years of age, situated within central Braintree close to the town centre, adjacent to John Bunyan Infant and Junior School. Spring Seesaw caters for children with additional needs and pride ourselves in providing an inclusive service with support from our highly trained SENCO worker, with friendly and welcoming staff who are highly qualified, and passionate about the children's development.

Spring Harlequin is a well-established 37-place nursery with a stimulating, caring and nurturing environment which provides high-quality care and education for children from 0 months to 5 years. Our staff strive to provide a stimulating, fun, exciting and educational environment. Our Nursery allows the Children freedom of play through our natural home from home organic way of learning. Our Children are supported to be the best version of themselves in our safe, warm and secure Nursery. We have a trained SENco lead as well as a lead PANCO to support all Children. Our Nursery children enjoy endless amounts of play opportunities indoors as well as outdoors in our spacious garden which includes a mud kitchen, fairy garden and challenging construction area.

About the role

We're looking for an enthusiastic and proactive Unqualified/ Qualified Early Years Practitioner to join our team here at Spring Nurseries in Braintree in Essex to provide a safe, caring, fun and stimulating environment to the children who come through our doors. When you join us, you'll be part of a passionate and creative team committed to giving the highest standards of care and education and helping children to find their feet – making friends, having fun and sparking their imaginations through play.

We believe in our people and as member of our family you'll be supported to be the best practitioner you can be. You'll follow our internal development programme, and we'll provide full training. We'll help you to build your career with us by funding you to get qualified while you are working – helping you to quickly grow, fulfil your potential and develop your career with us.

What you’ll be doing   

In the role of Early Years Practitioner Unqualified you'll be: 

• Supervising the children and keep our active, flexible nursery environment safe and suited to their needs.
• Giving children a wide range of stimulating, safe and well-planned activities.
• Creating engaging, fun, and informative learning opportunities, helping the children make excellent progress and meet the requirements of the Early Years Foundation Stage.
• Building solid relationships with parents / carers, families and professionals involved with the children.
• Meeting each of the children's individual needs, keeping accurate records and regularly communicating with parents / carers.
• Having a positive attitude, making each day count for the children in our care.

What we need from you   

In the role of Early Years Practitioner Unqualified/ Qualified, we’re ideally looking for someone who has: 

• A passion to learn and develop whether you are new to the sector or an experienced practitioner.
• Experience working with children in an early years or childcare environment.
• Understanding of children's emotional, physical, psychological, and educational developmental needs from 0 to 5 years.
• A positive attitude with an unwavering commitment to service excellence to allow us to maintain our high standards.
• A willingness to complete further childcare training & qualifications.

Whether this is a career change for you or the next step in your journey, we'd love to hear from you. 

We work together to reach our mission to give children a healthy start in life. 

Good luck! We can't wait to hear from you. 

Contact: If you need support with your application, please contact our Recruitment Team at [email protected] quoting the above Reference.

We'll be happy to give you any support you require. 

Diversity, Equality and Inclusion 

At Spring Oscars we're dedicated to building a diverse, inclusive, and authentic workplace. We actively encourage applications from Black, Asian & Minority Ethnic and disabled candidates as they are under-represented within the organisation. We want to take deliberate and purposeful action to ensure equal opportunity to all groups. 

Male staff are often under-represented within this sector, and we would like to encourage more male applicants for our roles. 

We are committed to safer recruitment practices to protect our service users; therefore, all applicants are expected to have an understanding of and commitment to safeguarding best-practice. 

Application Process

Please note we are unable to offer visa sponsorship for this role.

There are 5 sections for you to complete - Personal Details, CV, Supporting Statement & Information, Equality & Diversity, Submission & Declaration – please refer to the Job Description when applying. 

We also want to know what unique qualities you can bring to help us reach our vision for children and families.  

Talent Pool: We're sure you've got what it takes to join our ambitious team. If you're unsuccessful this time around, we'd like to hold your details in case similar jobs come up that you might be better suited for. But feel free to let us know if you'd rather we didn't do that. 

Want to know more about Spring and Oscars? 

Check out our socials on X (Twitter), Linkedin, Facebook or Youtube.

See below for further information about working with us:

Employee Reward Booklet

Spring Early Years Career Pathway

Job Description