Early Years Practitioner

Brighton & Hove City Council; Hove; On-site; GBP 27,000 - 28,000; Part time

Job summary

Brighton & Hove City Council is seeking an Early Years Practitioner for Jeanne Saunders Centre, 18 hours per week, term-time only, fixed-term for 1 year. The role involves working with children with complex communication and learning needs and partnering with families to support development.

The post offers a pro rata salary of £27,254–£27,694 and is based in Hove, reflecting the council’s commitment to inclusive early education and safeguarding. Interviews scheduled for August 25, 2026.

Qualifications

• Experience working with young children and families
• Flexibility, reliability, creativity and energy in a nursery setting
• Interest in early years education and SEN

Responsibilities

• Work with young children with complex communication and learning needs
• Support families and work as part of a happy, successful team
• Develop skills as an Early Years Practitioner and take part in supervision and training

Job description

Basis Fixed Hours

Job profile for Early Years Practitioner

Jeanne Saunders Centre, 31 Palmeira Avenue, Hove, BN3 3GD

23/08/2026

Early Years Practitioner

Job details

Salary £27,254 - £27,694 pro rata

Contractual hours 18

Basis Fixed Hours Package

We are pleased to offer a wide range of benefits to support you and your wellbeing. You can read about them on our Why work for us pages.

Job category/type Childcare and Nursery

Date posted 20/07/2026

Job reference REQ0001276

Attachments

Shortlisting Questions for Early Years Practioner .docx

1444bm.Jul26.Early Years Practitioner - JSC.JDPS.docx

Job description

Come and join our amazing nursery for children with complex communication and learning needs. We are looking for a flexible, reliable, creative and energetic person, who enjoys working with young children and families. Develop your skills as a practitioner and work with our happy and successful team.

This position is for 18 hours per week, term time only.

Contract type: 1 year fixed term

Interview date: 25 August 2026

There is full information about the role below and attached but, if you would like an informal discussion, please contact please contact Anne Rhodda Headteacher at [e-mail] .

About the role

The Jeanne Saunders Centre is a unique specialist nursery in the heart of the city. We offer outstanding care, education and support to Early Years children in the year before they start school. We also work in close partnership with parents, carers and the wider multi disciplinary team around each child.

We are looking for experienced and talented Early Years Practitioners to expand our outstanding service. Working here is interesting, varied and rewarding. If you want to join a team who are really passionate about making a difference to children and families then come and join us. You will not only use your skills and interests to help children to be the best that they can be but we can offer you the chance to build your expertise and knowledge of early years and SEN. You will be supported through on going supervision sessions to reflect on your professional practice and further development training to build your expertise and knowledge.

Encouraging a diverse workforce

Our city is known and loved for its diversity. Not only is the mixture of people, culture and skills vital to the economic and social development of the city, it's what makes Brighton & Hove such a great place to live, work and visit. We are committed to developing and retaining a workforce that is representative of the diverse communities we serve so we welcome applications from individuals from all backgrounds. In order to achieve our aims of proportionate representation, we particularly encourage applicants from a BME or White Other background as well as those who identify as disabled, male or trans.

Find out more about our commitment to being a fair and inclusive place to work where everyone can achieve their potential by reading about our fair and inclusive actions, our anti-racism strategy and the work we are doing to encourage a diverse workforce (brighton-hove.gov.uk).

Why work for us?

As a council, we want to:

• be connected
• be confident
• be innovative and creative
• be diverse and inclusive
• be healthy and psychologically safe

For more information about our values and the benefits of working at the council, visit Why work for us which gives details of our wellbeing support, our benefits including leave and pensions as well as details of our training and development.

AI advice for candidates

We are interested in hearing about your experience and skills in your own words. While we value people who know how to use AI, we ask that you minimise using it in your application.

We are keen to hear how your experience and skills align to our values and the skills and experience needed to perform well in our roles with clear real examples from you. To support you in this, we have guidance on using the STAR model which can help you ensure you are telling us your whole story. We also provide clarity on the skills we are looking for in our adverts and in the job description/person specification attached to each job advert.

All the applications we receive are read by at least two hiring managers and we do not use AI in this process.Our experience of reading applications is that those that have heavily used AI contain generic paragraphs that are strikingly similar to other applicants’ responses. This makes it extremely difficult to differentiate between applications, and doesn't give us enough evidence of your individual skills. There is a risk that we will therefore not be able to shortlist you. Instead, we recommend you ensure your application stands out by presenting clear examples of your actual skills and experiences in your own words.

Additional information

Your starting salary will be pro rata if the above position is less than 37 hours or term-time only.

Please note that this post is exempt from the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974, and is subject to a Disclosure & Barring Service (DBS) Check.

We are a workplace that supports flexibility and employee wellbeing in the way we work whilst providing the best service for our customers. Team and service working arrangements are designed to support both employee work life balance and team collaboration. These would be part of your individual working arrangements alongside any personal preference agreed with your manager in advance of joining. Your contractual location will be the designated council office for your team and travel to and from your contractual location would be at your own expense.