Location
London Borough of Harrow

Hours
Term-Time Only

Salary
£43,089 per annum

About the Role
The London Borough of Harrow is committed to ensuring every child has access to suitable full-time education. The Child Missing Education Officer plays a vital role in helping children and young people who are out of education to re-engage with learning as quickly as possible. This role involves working closely with families, schools, and partner agencies to identify, track, and locate children missing education, while maintaining a strong focus on safeguarding, wellbeing, and positive outcomes.

This rewarding and varied position combines investigation, partnership working, and family engagement. The postholder manages a caseload of children missing education, conducting enquiries, home visits, and assessments to understand individual circumstances and remove barriers to education. Collaborating with schools, health services, children's social care, SEND services, housing teams, and other local authorities, the officer supports children back into appropriate educational provision.

Through a compassionate yet proactive approach, the role builds positive relationships with families, offers guidance and challenge where needed, and ensures vulnerable children receive the support they require. As part of Harrow's Education Services team, the officer contributes to continuous improvement of local practice by strengthening procedures, promoting effective information sharing, and supporting schools in meeting statutory responsibilities. Excellent communication, organisation, and problem-solving skills are essential, alongside a commitment to equality, inclusion, and safeguarding.

Note: This is a Term-Time Only opportunity.

Experience
- Strong knowledge and understanding of education legislation, statutory guidance, and local authority procedures, particularly relating to Children Missing Education (CME).
- Excellent understanding of safeguarding within an education context, with the ability to identify risks and maintain a child-centred approach.
- Experience working with children, young people, and families within local authority, school, academy, or education-related environments.
- Experience investigating, tracking, and monitoring CME, attendance, admissions, SEND, inclusion, or alternative provision cases in line with statutory requirements.
- Strong analytical skills including data interrogation, analysis, and report production.
- High level of IT competence, including Microsoft 365 and various databases/case management systems.
- Excellent organisational and time management skills, able to prioritise workload and work independently within a multi-agency team.

About You
- Ability to manage complex cases and work sensitively and supportively with families to overcome barriers to education.
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills, including report writing, presentations, formal meetings, and one-to-one discussions.
- Strong partnership-working skills to build and maintain effective relationships with schools, social care, health services, partner agencies, and other local authorities.
- Commitment to equality, diversity, inclusion, and anti-discriminatory practice.

Qualifications
- Educated to degree level or equivalent, or able to demonstrate relevant professional experience.
- Enhanced DBS clearance.
- Additional desirable knowledge includes cross-border CME arrangements and education law, and recent experience working with statutory and voluntary organisations supporting children and young people.

Please note: This role involves travel for business purposes.