Interview for Extra-curriculum coordinator

[Fieldday]

I have an interview for a new role within the school coming up. It is paid £2500 per year and it basically involves championing, organising and promoting the school’s extra curriculum programme. It doesn’t come with any time, so I was somewhat ambivalent about applying, but I am an organised person and so hope I’d find it manageable.

Has anyone had a similar role and how do/did you find it, both in terms of career development and time?

I’d also be really grateful for any advice about internal interviews only. What kind of questions might they ask for this kind of role and is the tone more informal than when interviewing to join the school initially?

Thanks for any tips or guidance you might be able to give!

Well, it will essentially be how you are going to deliver that.

Examples of promoting:

Reminders on school Twitter feed or school facebook

Certificates/credits/badges* for attendees

Posters/noticeboard

Form tutor message/timetable on PowerPoint reminder in form time

Timetable of activities on school website

Free biccies/juice* for attendees

Monitoring attendance/numbers/take up

Extras e.g. Writing competitions, bake offs, charity days*

Linking in with their careers soft skills (secondary)

Workshops/drop ins (secondary)

It depends on how many departments already run a club...if many do, it is collating it all in an easy snapshot. What Where Which year groups
Including sports training, fixtures etcetera

You would want to bring in Every Pupil matters/inclusion
You would want to bring in Culture Capital

As to how formal, depends on number of internal candidates
Could just be a chat, if only you applying
It could be a quick tick box exercise
Why are you interested
How will you approach role/implement
How will you ensure accessibility to all
Safeguarding question

Only difficulty is if you have no staff doing stuff already, nothing up and running, no budget or resources and no-one you can strong arm
How will you persuade volunteers? Are your extra curricular pre school, break, lunch or after school?

Are you primary or secondary?
Do you have parents who can get their clearance, share skills or run something
Do you have any outside crafters who could run courses at a price/outside scienctist courses coming in

Offers
Reading/creative writing/book club/debating/ writing comps
Drama or choir or dance or band or glee
Science
Languages/mfl drop in
Chess/board games/Lego
Sports
Charity/fundraising
Environment/book swap/uniform recycle etc

*costs?

Good luck!

As a parent btw, our primary has promoted
Sport twice/three times a week £1 a session (one run by teacher/two by sports staff)
Various local offers
Music instrument offer (£££)
Sign language
Choir
Pottery (£)
Science workshops (£)
Only the sport has been the most regular/accessible

As a teacher, I have run a club before and currently, support one but most departments run their own e.g. Art club, maths club
These are promoted by the staff themselves and all form boards have details. You would need to find out who is doing what to champion them online. You could ask senior leaders to ask for volunteers nqts in Autumn to put themselves forward to running something or heads of dept to recruit/volunteer staff to do their bit but as it is all based on goodwill, your only issue is if you have none!

Thank you Braced for your hugely helpful and detailed response. So kind of you to take the time to respond with these thoughts.

Mine is a secondary independent - and a school like ours can rise or fall based on its extra curricular offer. So it’s quite a high profile role within the school. So high that I am concerned the role will turn out to be really big - and with no extra time to do it, and just a small financial reward, it may not be worth it!

In any case, the school includes the provision of one or two clubs or clinics in our teaching allocation - so all staff are involved really. I am going to suggest that it be a condition of entry to the sixth form that students need to be involved in running a society - targeting roles to the skills the careers team has identified the students need to develop. And that it be an expectation that all ks3 and 4 students participate in two activities per week. I have some ideas about including clubs into the end of year reports, running a fair and taster week at the start of each term, and producing a club booklet promoting each activity that would be sent home to families.

In any case it’s useful to consider some of these questions and catch phrases you have suggested.

Thank you again for your ideas and time!

@Fieldday sounds excellent.
I’m not sure about students running clubs linking to skills they “need to develop”. Sounds like a recipe for misery putting the disorganised in charge of finance or the quiet one as spokesperson. I’d let them do what they are good at and enjoy as they’ll be more successful ( better in the cv).

This is actually my job, mainly for STEM, but it covers other subjects too. It will be quite onerous on time if you're running the clubs yourself, but what we do is get the sixth-form students to do quite a lot of it. We have STEM perfects, and they pretty much run one of the clubs (I'm there for safety reasons, but I pretty much leave them to it whilst I do some marking). They do the promotion of events too. Your Head might like that idea, mine did. You can also suggest CREST awards, they are proven to improve achievement at GCSE, particularly in vulnerable groups. The award doesn't need to be done in a club (that would be quite teacher intensive), it could be done independently by the students at home, with the help of a teacher mentor, so improving independent study skills. Teachers could be asked to volunteer as mentors, which they could include in PM/UPS "wider school contribution". If you are a STEM subject, or if it will have an element of STEM focus, STEM Learning has some useful resources on this. Good luck!

*perfects, not perfects! Sorry, I hadn't read your reply before I posted, I see you've had that idea already.