Information for Candidates

Applying for Posts in the PE Department

Rugby Coach, 30 Hours per Week

THE SCHOOL

St. George’s is a heavily over-subscribed traditional 11-18 co-educational school boarding and day school with over 1325 pupils including nearly 400 in the academic Sixth Form and 107 boarders. The school was rated as outstanding at its last Ofsted in October 2014; and in the last nine years running over 90% of students in Year 11 have achieved 5 or more GCSE passes at grades A*-C.

The school is a Christian Foundation with an active inter-denominational Chapel life. Staff are expected to attend once a week Chapel Services with their tutor groups and to contribute to the strong House system. Many staff lead some kind of extra-curricular activity within the school.

As a Christian Foundation, St George’s expects high personal standards from its staff, and attention to dress, manner and behaviour are as important for teachers as for the pupils. Staff are also appointed as tutors to one of the four pastoral divisions in the school and have an extensive range of responsibilities attached to this position. The House system, which includes all pupils in Years 7-13, is of central importance to the life of the school.

THE DEPARTMENT

Current England Rugby internationals, Farrell, Ford, and Itoje attended St George’s, as did current England Lacrosse International Laura Merrifield.

The school is able to field A and B Lacrosse teams in every year group, with C teams in junior ages and a senior third team: over 200 girls played competitive lacrosse for the school in 2015-16.

The attractive site offers opportunities for sport, music and drama and new building projects have substantially increased the provision of classroom and office accommodation. A Sports Hall was completed in the Autumn Term 2008. This is 4 badminton courts in size, and includes a fitness/weights room and 2 specialist PE classrooms. The Physical Education Department consists at present of 6 specialist members of staff. In addition to the Head of Department, there are promoted posts for Head of KS4 PE, and Head of Lacrosse.

St. George’s enjoys an attractive self-contained site which includes 4 lacrosse pitches, 3 rugby pitches, 3 netball courts and training grids. In the summer term the site provides a full size 6 lane athletics track together with all field event areas, 4 tennis courts, 4 rounders pitches and 2 cricket squares. There is also a gymnasium, used largely for gymnastics and basketball.

Physical Education is taught throughout the school according to National Curriculum requirements, and students have either 90 minutes or 2 hours of PE per week in Years 7 to 11. Sixth Formers have a choice of options on their compulsory games afternoon.

The curriculum has been designed to offer a broad range of sports at St. George’s through both Key Stage 3 and 4: Rugby, Lacrosse, Netball, Gymnastics, Dance, Outdoor Education, Health Related Exercise, Badminton, Basketball and Volleyball in the autumn and spring terms; with Athletics, Cricket, Tennis and Rounders being taught in the Summer Term. The range of activities we offer has expanded as the Sports Hall has been completed to include table tennis, trampolining, handball, and so on.


St. George’s also offers an extensive extra-curricular activities programme with clubs running during lunch and after school, together with a full fixture list occurring after school and weekends. In particular the school has a vibrant house system, and competitions between houses provide a rich opportunity for non-elite competitors to stay involved in a wide range of sports including swimming, golf, and sailing competitions.

The successful post holder could also expect to be involved, should they wish, in a very extensive programme of extra mural visits. These include annual ski trips, sports tours, expeditions (to Bolivia in 2015, Zambia in 2017), and residential trips to Brittany, Normandy, the Rhineland, WW1 Battlefields, Berlin, Eastern Europe, Iceland, Beijing, Space Camp, Paris, Florence, St. Ives, Snowdonia, and so on. The school offers Duke of Edinburgh Award to well over 100 Year 10 students each year, and has its own Army cadet detachment.

The school offers its pupils both GCSE and A Level Physical Education. Both of which have run for a number of years and have enjoyed the success of gaining very good pass rates.

The Rugby Coach Post

This post would involve supporting our PE staff and non-specialist teachers, in taking classes, coaching practices, and accompanying teams. We would expect to support the post holder to achieve at least Level 2 coaching and Level 1 refereeing qualifications during their time at St.George’s should they not already be qualified to that level.

We would expect the post to run from September 2016 to the end of March 2017.

A successful candidate could be supported, during their initial time in post, to apply for the GTP teacher training scheme. If successful, this might enable the candidate to continue for a further year at St. George’s, working towards becoming a fully qualified teacher.

We see Rugby as a flagship part of the school’s operations, and a main focus of boy’s P.E., with a major extra-curricular programme including overseas tours. The successful candidate will report to the Head of PE and support other PE teachers who specialise in this area, as well as assisting non-specialist staff and parent helpers

Further contact might be made with:

Anne Marie Dwyer as Head of Physical Education, or

Neil Harris as Head of Boys’ PE