Engagement Officer

Chefs in Schools; Greater London; Hybrid; GBP 30,000 - 40,000; Full time

Job summary

A charity focused on child health is looking for an Engagement Coordinator to boost school engagement across the UK. The role involves supporting outreach efforts, maintaining relationships with schools, and implementing engagement strategies. Ideal candidates should possess strong communication skills, a passion for improving food education, and experience using CRM software. This position requires a willingness to adapt as the charity expands, aiming to provide children with better food and educational resources.

Benefits

Generous holiday allowance

Bupa Dental Insurance

Cycle to Work scheme

Access to health benefits

Qualifications

• A belief in improving child health through better food education.
• Strong writing and communication abilities.

Responsibilities

• Support the Engagement Manager in delivering engagement plans.
• Maintain and update the engagement pipeline.
• Support event logistics and marketing efforts.

Skills

Relationship building

CRM software experience

Communication skills

Educational sector knowledge

Outreach or engagement

Job description

This is an exciting chance to join us at a pivotal moment of growth. You will be a natural relationship-builder, engaging schools and multi‑academy trusts across the country with programmes that spark real change in school kitchens and food education.

Who we are

Chefs in Schools is an ambitious charity that’s rapidly growing. Our mission is to improve kids' health, through improving school food & food education. We focus our efforts in areas of high socio‑economic deprivation, where more than a third of children are entitled to free school meals, and diet‑related disease is driving further inequality.

We support and train school kitchen teams to serve the best, freshest and tastiest food possible, alongside meaningful food education. We share learning and resources, aiming to inspire and enable others to follow our lead.

We’re backed by some of the biggest names in food and have ambitious targets to ensure every child has access to incredible school food and food education, setting them up for life with the skills and knowledge to feed themselves well.

About you and the role

The purpose of this role is to support engagement with schools and multi‑academy trusts by coordinating outreach, responding to enquiries, and helping to deliver our engagement activities. You will work closely with the Engagement Manager to implement engagement plans and ensure effective communication with schools and partners.

You will be supported by the Engagement Manager, Co‑Director of Partnerships and Impact, and work closely with the Senior Programme Managers, Programme Managers and Communications team.

You will support the Engagement Manager to deliver our school engagement strategy, ensuring alignment with our organisational goals and funded programme commitments. You’ll be a key first point of contact for schools and Multi‑Academy Trusts, assessing their suitability and needs before referring them to the appropriate programme.

Working with the Engagement Manager, you’ll create marketing strategies to generate interest and participation in our programmes through direct mail, digital marketing campaigns, and in‑person at conferences and events and meetings with prospective school partners.

You’ll help build the engagement pipeline, support onboarding to ensure a smooth handover for training participants and schools to our programme delivery teams.

This role will be primarily based in London, but will include supporting the engagement of schools in locations across the UK as we scale and develop new hubs. You will be joining a dynamic and growing charity who are passionate about delivering exceptional training, skill sharing, expertise and know‑how to advance the quality of food preparation, food service and food education in schools.

You will ideally have an understanding of the education sector and have strong people skills with the ability to build relationships and manage effective partnerships with external organisations.

The responsibilities, skills and experience listed below are intended to give you an idea of what we need for this role. If you don’t meet every requirement but feel you would be able to work with us to deliver the majority of them, we urge you to apply anyway. We’re dedicated to building a diverse and inclusive workplace, and for us the most important ‘experience’ is passion for our mission. You may be just the right candidate for this or other roles. We encourage applicants from all backgrounds, especially those from underrepresented communities, to apply.

We want to get to know you at the interview and understand we can do this best if you’re at ease. We’re an inclusive employer and are passionate about creating a welcoming working environment for everyone. We’re continually updating our DEI policy and have a neurodiversity champion. If you need adjustments to the interview process please let us know.

As we work with children and young people, an offer of employment will be subject to satisfactory references and DBS clearance, in line with our safeguarding policy.

Key responsibilities

• Support the Engagement Manager in delivering school engagement plans and activities, ensuring they align with our organisational marketing strategy.
• Help build and maintain positive relationships with schools, academy trusts and partner organisations, with the support of the Engagement Manager.
• Maintain accurate data records and ensure our contacts database is up to date with relevant school, participant, partner and engagement information.
• Maintain and update the engagement pipeline, tracking enquiries, supporting follow‑ups, and coordinating the handover to programme teams.
• Work with the Engagement Manager to build upon our current onboarding and customer journey for schools and training participants, developing and improving this for future schools and cohorts.
• Work closely with the Comms team to support marketing of training programmes to schools and school chefs.
• Support Engagement Manager with incoming enquiries, ensuring timely and effective responses.
• Support the delivery of engagement campaigns - helping with content and materials, logistics, scheduling, and coordinating with the Communications team.
• Represent Chefs in Schools at national and regional conferences, exhibitions, and networking events to promote our programmes and mission.
• Coordinate event logistics such as registrations, attendance tracking, and follow‑up communications, supporting colleagues where needed.
• Provide administrative support within the wider Partnerships and Impact team.

Skills & experience

• You have interest and belief in our mission, to improve child health through improving food and food education in schools.
• You’re an excellent writer and communicator with strong presentation and communication skills.
• You have experience of maintaining and building relationships with a wide range of audiences.
• You have experience of using CRM software.
• You have experience supporting outreach or engagement activity, ideally within education, food, charity or related fields.
• You have the ability to listen, understand and interpret customer requirements.
• You demonstrate self‑motivation, flexibility and the ability to adapt to an ever‑changing, growing organisation.
• A good understanding of the UK educational system is desirable.

Benefits

• You would be joining a friendly, supportive team who work hard, but believe in a healthy work / life balance. We seek a diverse range of perspectives, skills, experience and knowledge. Joining a small, collaborative team means you’ll be able to contribute to, and draw on, a variety of projects and strategic insights.
• We offer 33 days of holiday per year including bank holidays, 3 additional office closure days over the Christmas period as well as wellbeing days over the summer school holidays. We also have a Cycle to Work scheme, hybrid working, enhanced parental leave, and free access to the CODE app for discounted restaurants & hospitality venues. We are committed to developing our team and will support you with relevant training opportunities including £250 towards elective training and development of your choice.
• We also offer Bupa Dental Insurance, Income Protection Insurance, as well as access to the Aviva Smart Health Platform which offers health benefits including free rapid access online GP appointments, free counselling and wellbeing support.

Application process

In line with our commitment to ensuring a fair and unbiased recruitment process, we invite candidates to answer a series of questions related to their day‑to‑day job. Please follow this link to answer the questions and submit your application along with your CV.

We recommend that you develop your answers offline and copy them in when you’re ready to ensure you don’t lose your work if interrupted.

Your answers will go through our sifting process : all answers will be anonymised, randomised and then reviewed by a panel of reviewers. A long list of candidates will then additionally have their CVs reviewed. Shortlisted candidates will be invited to a 30 mins online interview. Successful candidates will be invited to attend a second, in‑person interview at our office in Brixton, London.

Expected duration of this application process : 4-6 weeks

In line with our commitment to ensuring a fair and unbiased recruitment process, we will invite candidates to interview based on their answers to a series of questions related to their day‑to‑day job.

The deadline for applications is Sun 11th Jan 23 : 59

Shortlisted candidates will be invited to an online 30‑minute competency based interview to take place on Wednesday 21 or Thursday 22 January 2026.

Successful candidates will be invited to an in‑person second interview on Wednesday 28 January to be held at our office in Brixton, London. You will be asked to complete a task in advance and give a 10 minute presentation to the interview panel on the day. The interview overall will take a maximum of one hour.