Senior school office admin interview tasks and likely questions

[193liz]

Does anyone work in a school office? I have an interview as a senior admin and I have to do tasks. Does anyone know what sort of things I could be doing and what questions they might ask please?

Are you already working at the school?

No, I have a job interview never worked in a school before

When I interviewed for a similar role I had to write a sample letter and sort a list of pupils and classes into some kind of order on an Excel spreadsheet.

Sorry. Do you mean it’s in a high school. Or that it’s a senior admin position.

I read it as a senior position which, from my experience, always go to the person in post (acting). But maybe you just meant it’s a high school?

Yes think OP means secondary school.
There will always be a question about your understanding of safeguarding.

For any school interview there will be a safeguarding question. The answer is pretty much always ‘TELL THE DSL’ there will probably also be a confidentiality type question - as school office you know absolutely everything as you are first port of call and will triage phone calls. How will you deal with difficult/angry parents? There will probably be an intray/prioritisation task (safeguarding is always the top priority). There’s lots of data management, common sense, accuracy for things like registers etc. attention to detail is really important. If you have to phone Johnny’s mum to say he’s bumped his head, you need to make sure you’re calling the correct parent…

Sorry its in a primary school as a senior administrator role

Its for a primary school

Then the junior administrator will get it. It’s advertised externally because it has to be.

Then surely they'd need to appoint someone else for their role cause they only have one admin at the moment? She was doing that job temporarily but has stepped down

Yes, no doubt they would. If you’re happy with the junior job then concentrate on safeguarding, confidentiality & any transferable skills you may have.

Not really as its not the job I have applied for, I also know the head teacher and she made it clear that the current admin is staying in her role as shes not qualified for this job

But are you if you’ve never worked in a school?

Sorry, years of experience in the field has maybe made me cynical. If you are a friend of the Head that could be enough.

Genuinely, best of luck.