New

Head of Visual Arts
For August 2025
YK Pao School is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children, and requires all staff to always respect this commitment, regard it as their own responsibility, and evaluate the work all-round from the perspective of children's safety. To comply with, participate in and implement the work and requirements of child protection is the primary task of all staff members. At the same time, the school expects the staff to take the initiative and contribute to the school community and school’s development in a wider range.

• Undertake teaching responsibilities as determined by the Campus Principal
• Demonstrate exemplary and impactful teaching of their subject
• Create stimulating, challenging and supportive learning environments, promoting student agency for learning
• Lead the annual review and development the school’s scope and sequence of learning for the subject; liaising with Ho D within the middle and senior schools
• Lead the annual review and develop the school’s handbooks for parents and staff, focusing on subject specific information
• Actively contribute to the review and development cycle of the school’s teaching and learning policies and processes
• Plan for and implement authentic across-curriculum learning links, making this evident at the start of each school year and remaining flexible throughout the year
• Develop schemes of work that ensure rigorous learning of subject knowledge, skills and concepts alongside fostering student-lead inquiry and the transferability of learning to new settings
• Document and implement planning and reporting expectations for those within the department, providing regular and consistent feedback to ensure maintenance of high expectations
• Maintain processes that support the ongoing informal and formal review of teaching and learning programs using multiple sources of evidence including student assessment data, feedback from parents, staff and other school leaders
• Ensure subject curriculum materials are stored and shared in accordance with school processes, including but not limited to the use of the school’s online learning management system
• Provide forward focused feedback around planning to members of the department creating links between planning and evidence of student success with learning
• Devise and lead the implementation of the department’s annual assessment and reporting plan, ensuring expectations are clearly articulated, understood and upheld
• Devise and lead the implementation of the department’s student feedback process; ensuring consistency and impact of implementation
• Guide the writing of academic reports for students; ensuring consistency and continuity of information between subjects, classes and cohorts
• Adhere to national curriculum requirements; keeping up to date with subject developments
• Provide timely advice and guidance about future developments in curriculum, pedagogy, staffing and resources
• Support other leaders in their curriculum reporting requirements to government authorities, the Board of Governor’s and other like authorities (CIS etc.)
• Ensure impactful teaching and learning, playing a significant role within and beyond their subject
• Model collective responsibility for students’ educational outcomes and overall wellbeing
• Build a professional learning community within the department that is focused on the ongoing improvement of teaching and learning
• Set high expectations for self and others; establish and pursue professional goals
• Support the PPO in lesson covers the emerge within the department
• Review the effectiveness of teaching strategies and schemes of work; leading colleagues in this ongoing process
• Share impactful classroom practice through the teaching of demonstration lessons and other such strategies
• Mentor and/or coach colleagues to review and expand their repertoire of impactful teaching strategies
• Implement the school’s performance and development processes within the department, including but not limited to assisting with recruitment, induction, probation and appraisal
• Strengthen the school’s ‘open classroom’ approach, conducting an impactful and responsive balance of informal and formal walk-throughs in addition to formal lessons observations
• Lead the application of processes to ensure consistency and continuity of learning outcomes and timely response to student intervention; for example, baseline identification, target setting, moderation of work, book-looks, and pupil progress meetings
• Lead the development and implementation of the department’s continuous professional learning plan (CPD) drawing on the strengths of others within the department
• Contribute meaningfully to the planning and implementation of the school’s overall CPD plan
• Clearly articulate the school’s pedagogical beliefs and how these are applied in practice within the department
• Enable student achievement and learning progress to be shared with the broader school community; creating department strategies and expectations to support this
• Establish reliable processes within the department to provide feedback to students that adopt a balanced approach to valuing student performance and measurable achievements with student’s learning behaviors and recognition of them developing intrinsic motivation for learning
• Create differentiated learning pathways for students; proactively planning to accommodate differing prior knowledge, skills and attitudes of students
• Provide timely interventions by engaging members of the department in an ongoing cyclic process of reviewing evidence of student learning to inform upcoming planning and resource allocation
• Engage students in goal setting and the adoption of other strategies to support assessment for learning
• Maintain holistic oversight of student progress with the department by proactively sharing student data and information with other school leaders, including the Head of Learning Development

Job requirements:
1. Bachelor’s degree or above
2. Major in education
3. Arts related qualification (preferred)
4. 5+ years of full-time teaching experience
5. Teaching experience in international or bilingual school (preferred)
6. Working experience as a Head of Department/Subject
7. Teaching qualification

Founded in 2007, YK Pao School has become one of China’s leading bilingual and international schools. In four of the last five years the school has been ranked as the top bilingual school in China by the Hurun report and in 2023 Forbes ranked us as the top international school in China. We now have just over 1600 students spread over our Primary (Y1-5), Middle (Y6-8) and High School (Y9-12) campuses. The School offers a unique Y1-12 educational programme that integrates the Chinese National Curriculum with international curricula which culminates with the IGCSE and IB Diploma Programme. The vast majority of our students then go on to attend world leading universities in the US, UK and Canada.


The School is passionately committed to holistic education ensuring that we are nurturing the emotional, social, physical and intellectual aspect of each and every child.


The Primary School of some 600 students is located in Shanghai’s city centre whilst the Middle School of some 450 students is located in Hongqiao and includes a stunning new state of the art building whilst the High School provides UK/US style boarding for most of its 550 students in the attractive surroundings of Shanghai’s Songjiang district.


YK Pao School is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and expects all staff and volunteers to share this commitment. References, background checks and criminal record checks will be required.