Salary BR7 (£28,594 - £30,841, Pro rata approx. £24,869 – 26,823 pa) Pro rata term time only; 36 hours per week, 39 weeks per year

Full Time, Permanent

January 2025

25 November 2024

Are you ready to play your part in transforming the lives of children with complex needs and the lives of their families? Do you have the passion, resilience and dedication to enable our pupils to find true fulfilment? If so, we’d love to hear from you. Riverside is a highly-regarded school for children with severe and complex learning difficulties, many of whom are on the autistic spectrum.
We are a forward-thinking and innovative all-age special school with a diverse population: our 350 pupils are based on four sites, St Paul’s Cray, Beckenham, West Wickham and Phoenix (Bromley) and this post could be based at any of our sites. Pupil, family and staff engagement is extremely important to us and we strive to involve the whole school community in making Riverside a happy, safe and truly exceptional place for our pupils to learn. Our talented, multi-disciplinary staff team have the highest expectations of our pupils and we aim to provide the kind of specialist education which families want for their children.
We are looking for enthusiastic Teaching Assistants to join our team. The post could be at Riverside St Paul’s Cray, Riverside Beckenham, Riverside West Wickham or Riverside Phoenix and this position would provide the perfect opportunity for you to help build a better future for children with severe and complex learning difficulties and autistic spectrum disorders. Experience of working with pupils with a diverse range of needs would be an advantage. If you want to join a fantastic team of professionals working in a multi-disciplinary way to enable our special young people to be all that they can be then we would love to hear from you.
Riverside School is committed to providing equality of opportunity and to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and young people and expects all staff to share this commitment with enthusiasm and excellent attendance. All appointments will be subject to receiving satisfactory references; clearance of a full DBS check and satisfactory health clearance.
Closing date for applications: Monday 25 November 2024 at 9am
Interviews: Provisionally scheduled for the w/c Monday 2nd December 2024
Previously shortlisted applicants need not apply.

Welcome to Riverside School

Riverside, a school where every pupil is truly valued for who they are; a school that gives every pupil every opportunity to Be All That They Can Be. We strive for excellence in everything we do, because our pupils and families deserve nothing less.

Our core values

Our core values are at the heart of everything we do:

Aspiration Resilience Creativity Humility Integrity Trust Enthusiasm Courage Teamwork

They make up the acronym ARCHITECT to signify our passion for designing and building a school that will make an indelible mark on the world for generations to come; a school that will impact positively on everyone who enters, on people we may never meet, and in ways we may never know. We see our pupils’ time at Riverside School as just the first part of their journey and we want them to leave us at the age of 19 as confident, lifelong learners. We also want them to remember their time with us with great affection, with memories of life-enriching experiences and enduring relationships.

Our mission

Our core purpose, our mission, is to transform our children’s lives and the lives of their families and our vision is to inspire breakthroughs in the way society enables children with complex needs to find true fulfilment.

Our mission and vision are underpinned by four pledges:

We will equip our pupils with a bespoke package of profoundly personalised support so that when they leave school, they succeed, flourish and leave their mark on society.
We will inspire our pupils, families and the wider community to make the seemingly unachievable achievable through the Performing Arts.
We will ensure current and future pupils make remarkable progress by attracting and training the highest calibre special educators at Riverside School and beyond.
We will influence the world of specialist education by creating an innovative curriculum framework based around The Pursuit of Happiness.


The best way to learn more about our work is to visit and spend time with our inspirational pupils and dedicated staff. I am confident that when you walk around the school, you will get a sense of The Riverside Way, and once you have experienced our community, you will want to become a part of it. We look forward to working in close partnership with you as we embark on the next stage of our irresistible journey.
Steve Solomons
Headteacher