Early Years Foundation Stage Leader

Job description / Role

Early Years Foundation Stage Leader - September 2025 start

Overview

GEMS Royal Dubai School is a vibrant, premium British school (currently FS1 - Year 7), expanding to Year 8 in September 2025 and growing annually to Year 13. With 850 students on roll from over 48 nationalities, GEMS Royal Dubai School is a family-feel school with exceptionally high standards and is fully accredited as a world-class high-performance learning school.

We are looking for a dynamic and passionate individual to become the school's strategic lead for Early Years Foundation Stage. This is an exciting opportunity for an enthusiastic leader and an outstanding teacher, with significant previous experience, to lead FS1 and FS2 and teach within the phase.

If you are ambitious, excited about children's learning, and want to be part of our high-performing team, this is an opportunity for you to make a difference as you drive the #RoyalStandard.

Job Purpose

To drive the development of the EYFS through innovative learning opportunities and rigorous monitoring which enables an outstanding, holistic, and dynamic experience for our students and leads to exceptionally high outcomes.

Responsibilities

• Creating a culture of optimism, motivation, and inspiration. All staff within the team believe that the school and department can and will reach agreed goals and targets.
• Promoting high quality and innovative ideas across all areas of learning and teaching, planning, the learning environment, learning skills, positive behaviour, the use of specialist teachers, and maximising use of release time to improve outcomes for children.
• To lead, develop and enhance the teaching practices of others by observing, modelling, team-teaching, and offering guidance as an EYFS expert.
• Work alongside senior leaders and curriculum teams to ensure a high-quality monitoring, evaluation, and review (MER) process of standards in learning and teaching within the key stage.
• Providing regular and appropriate professional learning development opportunities for members of your team to identify and grow talent.
• Setting challenging team and individual targets for performance management that are consistently monitored and reviewed.
• Drive the review and development of the EYFS curriculum based on internal and externally validated data and cohort needs, ensuring skills progression is rigorously mapped for all areas of the curriculum.
• Develop effective assessment and moderation models, including standardised materials, to ensure accurate and robust assessment information.
• Conduct data analysis for all areas of the EYFS framework, presenting trends and strategic next steps to leaders and teachers and use data to contribute to the school's self-evaluation and improvement planning.
• Holding teachers to account for the attainment and progress of students across both year groups.
• Rigorously quality assure the planning and delivery of high-quality interventions that lead to clear, measurable impact.
• Leading parents as partners, including promoting high quality termly parental engagements, workshops, communication, EYFS events, and visits.
• Manage and drive the quality of communication between teachers and parents ensuring Pulse accurately captures all engagements with parents.
• Maintaining outstanding attendance and punctuality, intervening effectively to improve student lateness and attendance, where it drops to below the school's expectations.
• Facilitate and manage effective and purposeful transitions between lessons and during break times.
• Plan and facilitate an effective transition to school programme for FS1, and transition between key stages for FS2 and Year 1.
• To lead a challenging, developmental, and impactful line management cycle for teachers and TAs across the key stage.
• Initiating a positive, friendly, and approachable relationship with students, parents, and staff.
• Actively pursue your own professional development as a leader.
• To carry out any other reasonable duties as directed by the executive leadership team.

GEMS Education is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of all of its students and staff. A UK-enhanced DBS or equivalent police check is a pre-requisite for all appointments.

About the Company

GEMS Education is a pioneering education company with an international network of award winning K-12 schools. Over the past 55 years GEMS has grown from one school to being a truly global company with one incredible mission – to make quality education available to every student. Over 20,000 education professionals unlock the potential of over 250,000 students across 14 countries each and every day, preparing children of all ages for real world success.