Job Description

Early Years Practitioner (Senior)

Location: Rowlands Gill, Gateshead

Salary: £27,300 per annum

Contract/Hours: Permanent/Full Time – 40 hours per week.

Closing date: Midnight on the 29th of June 2026

Benefits:

• 25 days annual leave plus bank holidays
• Professional qualifications and excellent training
• Flexible maternity, adoption, and paternity packages  
• Up to 5% employer contribution and life assurance cover  
• Blue Light Card eligibility with discounts at 15,000 national retailers  

About the role

As a Senior Early Years Practitioner, you’ll play a key role in the nursery’s daily routine, leading your room to deliver high quality early years education and care for all children. You’ll plan, implement and review engaging activities that promote learning and development in line with the EYFS, ensuring every child thrives in a safe, stimulating, and inclusive environment.

In this role, you will support and guide other practitioners’ model best practise, and help maintain strong, positive partnership with parents and carers. You'll be responsible for completing accurate and up-to-date observations assessments and records.

About the nursery

Located in , Rowlands Gill Spring Highfield offers high quality childcare within a warm, calm and stimulating environment for children aged 3 months to five years.

A vibrant setting, with a team who are passionate about nurturing curiosity, confidence and creativity through play-based learning.

As a Senior practitioner, you’ll join our dynamic team, working together to support each child’s learning to ensure each day is fun and engaging.

What you’ll be doing   

In the role of Senior Early Years Practitioner, you'll be:  

• Leading the staff within the room on providing learning programmes for individual or groups of children appropriate to their needs and developmental stages in accordance with Early Years legislation and guidance.
• And find support children with emerging or established special educational needs, working closely with family’s staff external agencies and professionals to ensure each child's needs are understood and met.
• Ensuring the compliance and application of nursery policies and procedures and relevant legislative requirements, informing management immediately of any instances of non-compliance or variations in practices.
• Contributing to and participating in the wider nursery management through leading on specific areas of development within the nursery, as directed by the Nursery Manager.
• Preparing and supervising dedicated areas/rooms within the setting on specific working patterns through planning, monitoring of outcomes, managing ratio of children, and the provision of a stimulating and appropriate range of activities whilst ensuring health and care needs are met.  

What we need from you   

In the role of Senior Early Years Practitioner, we're ideally looking for someone who has:  

• Level 3 early years and childcare qualification e.g., NNEB, CACHE, NVQ Level 3 in Childcare and Education.
• A thorough knowledge of children's developmental needs from 0 to 5 years.
• Experience working and leading in an early year setting.
• Strong planning, observation and reflection of children and their learning.
• Effective communication skills across multiple age groups.
• Paediatric First Aid qualification.

Why Spring Nurseries

Imagine a place where laughter echoes, imaginations run wild, and every day is new adventure. At Spring Nurseries, where more than a collection of settings, we are a family, dedicated to nurturing children to thrive and supporting staff through a clear career pathway.

Whether this is a career change for you or the next step in your journey, we'd love to hear from you.  

We work together to reach our mission to give children a healthy start in life.  

Good luck! We can't wait to hear from you.  

Contact: If you need support with your application, please contact our Recruitment Team at RecruitmentService@actionforchildren.org.uk quoting reference 13128 .

We'll be happy to give you any support you require.  

Diversity, Equality and Inclusion 

At Spring Oscars we are dedicated to building a diverse, inclusive, and authentic workplace. We actively encourage applications from Black, Asian & Minority Ethnic and disabled candidates as they are under-represented within the organisation. We want to take deliberate and purposeful action to ensure equal opportunity to all groups.  

Male staff are often under-represented within this sector, and we would like to encourage more male applicants for our roles.  

We are  committed  to safer recruitment practices to protect  our  service users; therefore, all applicants are expected to  have  an  understanding  of and  commitment  to  safeguarding best practice.  

Don't meet every single requirement?  

If you're excited about this role but your experience doesn't align perfectly with the job description, we'd love you to apply anyway. You might just be the perfect person for this role, or another role within the Action for Children family.  

Application Process

Please note we are unable to offer visa sponsorship for this  role.

There are 5 sections for you to complete - Personal Details, CV, Supporting Statement & Information, Equality & Diversity, Submission & Declaration – please refer to the Job Description when applying.  

We also want to know what unique qualities you can bring to help us reach our vision for children and families.   

Talent Pool: We're sure you've got what it takes to join our ambitious team. If you're unsuccessful this time around, we'd like to hold your details in case similar jobs come up that you might be better suited for. But feel free to let us know if you'd rather, we didn't do that.  

Want to know more about Spring and Oscars? 

Check out our socials on  Linkedin, Facebook or Youtube

See below for further information about working with us:

Employee Reward Booklet

Spring Early Years Career Pathway