Deputy Director

First Steps Childcare Group (FSCG) have an exciting opportunity for you to join us as a Deputy Director at our Chichester Nursery. You will join us on a full time, permanent basis. In return, we will offer a competitive salary pro rata of £39,493 - £41,885 per annum.

37 hours per week, 52 weeks per year

The Deputy Director role:

First Steps Childcare Group (FSCG) is seeking an experienced and inspirational Deputy Director to support the operational leadership and strategic development of our nurseries.

Working closely with the Director, you will oversee the day?to?day operational running of all FSCG settings and provide effective leadership and support to Nursery Managers. You will play a key role in ensuring consistently high?quality early years provision, strong safeguarding practice, regulatory compliance, and a culture of continuous improvement across the Group.

This is a senior leadership role suited to someone with strong early years expertise, proven managerial experience, and confidence supporting settings through inspection and ongoing development.

First Steps Childcare has nurseries in several locations across West Sussex and offers childcare options right from birth through to children ready to start school. The settings are open 51 weeks of the year, with core opening hours of 7.30am to 6.00pm, closed only for Bank Holidays and the period between Christmas and New Year.

Key Responsibilities of our Deputy Director:

• Provide overall leadership for the daily operations across all settings, ensuring smooth, efficient and effective running.
• Support Nursery Managers with daily queries, incident resolution, and operational decision?making.
• Line manage the Nursery Managers, providing regular supervision, coaching, performance monitoring, and development planning.
• Support managers with staff supervision, to ensure consistency and ongoing development.
• To lead on staff training and continuous professional development, to include:
  - Lead on liaising with apprentice coaches and trainers to ensure apprentices receive high quality training and experiences and maximise their 20% off the job training time.
  - Planning and delivering content for staff development days to ensure staff are kept up to date of sector and government changes, and have appropriate CPD to enhance their knowledge of child development and the curriculum.
• To ensure that all settings deliver the best possible nurturing and learning environment for all the children, and ensure that all settings meet the required regulatory standards in line with Ofsted,and Department for Education.
• Provide expert knowledge and lead and monitor the delivery of the Group’s curriculum to ensure consistency and high?quality teaching.
• Ensure all settings meet Ofsted requirements, EYFS statutory guidance and relevant regulatory frameworks.

Our ideal Deputy Director should have the following skills and experience:

• Level 5 in Early Years Care and Education or willingness to work towards
• Detailed knowledge of the EYFS Statutory framework and Ofsted EIF/toolkit
• Previous nursery managerial experience
• Previous experience coaching and mentoring staff
• Clear vision of quality provision and experiences for children

Our Staff Benefits:

We have a fantastic range of staff benefits, highly competitive against what is offered by the private sector and other organisations, including:

• Competitive annual leave scheme plus bank holidays and closure days over the Christmas period which are not deducted from annual leave entitlement.
• Significant discount at First Steps Childcare nurseries.
• Other Discount schemes – including discounts on shopping, restaurants, travel and onsite facilities.
• Family friendly policies – including enhanced maternity, paternity and adoption leave (dependant on continuous service).
• Continuous professional development opportunities.
• And much more - check out the Staff Benefits booklet attached to this advert for more information about our fantastic range of benefits available to staff.

Apply now to join a fantastic team!

Closing date: 24th May 2026

Interview date: 2nd June 2026

You will be asked to upload a CV before starting an application form for this role. The system will take information such as education and employment history from your CV and auto-populate the relevant parts of the application form to save you time. For the best results, we recommend your CV is formatted without columns or tables. Please check the auto-populated information for accuracy.

Please note that your CV will not be seen by Recruiting Managers so please ensure your application form is fully completed.

Suitable candidates may be invited to interview prior to the closing date and we reserve the right to close the vacancy early should sufficient applications be received.

If you would like to learn more about our Deputy Director role, then please click ‘apply’ today!

All posts are subject to an enhanced Disclosure and Barring Service check, which may include a check of the barred lists and any relevant overseas checks.

The Chichester College Group is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children. All posts are subject to an enhanced Disclosure and Barring Service check, which may include a check of the barred lists and any relevant overseas checks. We vigorously pursue all references and safeguarding checks to ensure applicants are suitable to work with young people.

As users of the disability confident scheme, we guarantee to interview all disabled applicants who meet the minimum criteria for the role.

We are an equal opportunities employer.