Job Description

Early Years Practitioner (Qualified)

Location: Yarm

Salary: up to £27,299 per annum

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

Closing date: Midnight on the 31st of July 2026

Benefits:  

• Time off to recharge – 25 days per annum plus bank holidays
• Treat yourself: Staff discounts portal and blue light card with 15,000 + retailers.
• Salary Finance – access to financial advice and the ability to manage savings or loans directly from your salary.
• Childcare Discount – A whopping 60% off childcare within our nurseries and out of school clubs
• Up to 3 Days Dependency Leave – to care for dependents in an emergency.
• Paid maternity, adoption, and paternity leave.
• Gain professional qualifications and excellent training/development opportunities. 
• Secure your future: Pension with up to 7% employer contribution with included life assurance cover. 

About the role:

As a Level 3 Early Years Practitioner, you'll play a key role in creating a safe, nurturing inspiring environment where children can learn, develop and thrive.

You’ll plan and deliver engaging activities that support each child's individual needs, build positive relationships with families, and work collaboratively with your team to provide outstanding early years education and care. You'll also ensure children's well-being remains at the heart of everything you do and while helping them to achieve the very best start in life.

What we need from you   

In the role of Early Years Practitioner (Level 3), we're ideally looking for someone who has: 

• A Level 3 Early Years and Childcare qualification (NNEB, CACHE, NVQ Level 2 or 3 or equivalent)
• A genuine passion for supporting children's learning development and well-being
• The ability to build positive relationships with children, families and colleagues
• knowledge of the early years foundation stage (EYFS) and safeguarding practices.
• A positive, reliable and enthusiastic approach, with excellent communication and teamwork skills

About Spring Layfield:

Spring Layfield is it welcoming, inclusive setting at the heart of the community, working closely with Layfield Primary School, offering wrap around childcare. It is a nurturing early year setting for children aged 0-5 that follows the EYFS framework. Focusing on play based learning, school readiness, strong communication and social and independence skills through a supportive, caring environment.

About Spring

Spring offers award-winning childcare services, as part of the national charity Action for Children. It's our mission to be the best provider of outstanding quality early education to children throughout the UK, which is accessible to all. We are focused on enabling young people to learn, have fun and make friends in our bright, engaging settings. That starts with creating a happy environment for our team.

Join us and you can look forward to:

• A kind, caring culture with an emphasis on wellbeing, both physical and mental.
• Flexible working – wherever possible we offer flexibility on hours and/or hybrid working.
• Lots of opportunities for training, learning, development, including gaining qualifications.
• Excellent benefits that compare favourably to other employers in our sector.

Ready to make a difference in the lives of children? Whether you're looking for a career change or the next step in your journey, we'd love to hear from you! 

Contact: If you need support with your application, please contact our Recruitment Team at RecruitmentService@actionforchildren.org.uk quoting reference 13580.

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

Job Description

Diversity, Equality and Inclusion 

At Spring Oscars we're 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. 

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 did not 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