Access & Participation Officer - Bristol, United Kingdom - Office for Students

Office for Students

Verified Company

Bristol, United Kingdom

3 days ago

Posted by:

Tom O´Connor

beBee Recruiter

Description

Access & Participation Officer

Fixed term post (minimum 12 months)

Bristol

£34,695 - £36,470

Plus generous civil service defined benefit pension

The Office for Students (OfS) is the independent regulator of higher education in England.

We aim to ensure that every student, whatever their background, has a fulfilling experience of higher education that enriches their lives and careers.

These roles lie in the Regulation Directorate (RD) and we're looking for skilled, committed people to develop and deliver project and policy work around our regulatory objective, 'all students from all backgrounds, with the ability and potential to benefit from higher education, should be supported to access, succeed in and progress from higher education'.

We are looking for people who want to use their skills to help drive forward changes in higher education providers by being able to contribute to the delivery of complex programmes of work and developing policy areas.

A key part of our work is to regulate

Access and Participation Plans

(APPs), we also have teams focussing on the skills agenda; equality, diversity and inclusion; funding and school outreach. Once appointed your initial assignment will be within one of these areas, but opportunities exist to develop by working on a variety of projects across RD and the OfS.

You will have your own designated work areas, taking responsibility for managing your own workload to deliver defined pieces of work whilst supporting more senior colleagues to deliver results.

You'll be involved in internal and external stakeholder management engagement, including liaison with higher education providers, key third sector organisations and colleagues across the OfS.

About you - person specification

Knowledge and Learning

Commitment to developing own knowledge and understanding of relevant work area and how this supports the delivery of wider organisational objectives and use this to contributes to discussions
Work with internal and external stakeholders to share intelligence in a particular area of expertise
Collate, understand, interpret and use data, information and research from a range of sources. Use this to ensure effective engagement with stakeholders

Planning

Manages key processes and projects independently, often with competing pressures or challenging stakeholders
Ability to deliver discrete projects effectively, prioritising own workload and working flexibly to meet competing and changing demands, including implementing appropriate project methodologies (PB7)
Supports the delivery of key processes and projects independently, often with competing pressures or challenging stakeholders, proactively managing and organising your own workload
Improves and implements processes, supporting change to happen

Communications

Effective communication skills to develop high quality and professional relationships with a range of internal and external stakeholders
Demonstrates written and verbal communication that is clear and succinct
Ability to synthesize complex information to produce clear, credible advice that reflects and supports Directorate and OfS goals.

Relationships

Able to act as mentor for other colleagues, providing clear guidance on good working practices
Working in a team, supporting others to deliver as required
Develops and shares expertise and learns from expertise of others
Ability to build professional relationships with internal and external stakeholders

At interview we will be looking for you to demonstrate:

How you develop your knowledge of a new area of work
Improving and implement projects and processes, supporting change to happen
Evidence of working independently to deliver projects, involving all aspects of project lifecycle, often with competing pressures or challenging stakeholders
Using regulatory (or other) levers available to inform development and implementation of work, including judgements, assessments, and recommendation
A good understanding of current research, data, legislation, and broad data and information landscape for policy and practice areas relating to our work and/or Higher Education more generally
An ability to communicates clearly and fluently to a range of audiences using appropriate evidence, style and language including under a range of circumstances

Job Description for further information

Delivery and working in a team

Flexible, agile and collaborative working, including working with staff and teams in other directorates

Policy development

Contribution to the development of (potentially complex) policy according to the strategic priorities and directorate context.
Contribution to the development and implementation of funding or assessment criteria or new funded programmes
Develop ideas and identify risks, working with others

Delivery of programme and project management and process design