Project Management Assistant - Inside IR35

Role purpose:
The Office for Students (OfS) is the independent regulator of higher education (HE) in England. Our mission is to ensure that every student, whatever their background, has a fulfilling experience of higher education that enriches their lives and careers.
These roles are based in the Regulation directorate. We’re looking for skilled, committed people to support delivery of our work both to ensure higher education providers meet our minimum regulatory expectations, and to influence and incentivise even better performance, in order to achieve our objectives.

The primary function of the Regulation directorate is to develop and implement the OfS’s regulatory framework. We design and deliver high quality services for market entry, degree awarding powers and university title, and are responsible for the ongoing monitoring of registered providers. We also implement the OfS’s new approach to regulating quality and standards, including the Teaching Excellence and Student Outcomes Framework (TEF). In addition, we work to promote fair access to, and participation in, English higher education for students, no matter what their background. We regulate access and participation plans, and deliver funded programmes such as Uni Connect.

The main duties and responsibilities of the Project Management Assistant would be:

• Developing and implementing policy reforms to improve quality and standards and equality of opportunity
• Using experience and delivery expertise to actively manage risks, issues and dependencies for multiple delivery teams, adapting ways of working to improve delivery across teams and acting as the final escalation point for any risks highlighted by junior colleagues.
• Project managing aspects of regulatory implementation, including process development
• Assessing the effectiveness across multiple delivery teams, engaging with and motivating teams in different ways depending on their needs, and facilitating collaboration across delivery teams when required.
• Delivering in line with the capacity and availability of multiple delivery teams, leveraging frameworks to find the right suppliers and managing budgets to make informed decisions on resourcing and team profiles.
• Improving the systems within the OfS that deliver services to providers
• Supporting regulatory assessment of providers

About you:
While previous regulatory experience would be welcome, it is not essential as comprehensive training is available. Our teams have joined the OfS with previous experience working in regulators and higher education providers, as well as in the civil service, broader education roles, and other public sector organisations. Above all, we’re looking for people who share our commitment to working rigorously to protect students’ interests.

You’ll have:

• Strong previous experience in delivering projects ideally within the public sector
• The ability to demonstrate an understanding of decision-making processes which enable credible, evidence-based decisions to be reached.
• Experience writing complex strategic and operational details in a clear and concise manner, using appropriate grammar, style and language
• The ability to plan and manage own workload, resolving competing demands and coping with changing priorities in a flexible and proactive way
• A confident and co-operative style, dealing credibly with people at all levels, including with external stakeholders, to build positive working relationships
  Expertise in the design, operation, implementation and improvement of processes
• Ability to communicate complex information effectively, orally and in writing
• Personal resilience and ability to work effectively as part of a team

In applying for this role you acknowledge the following, this role falls in scope of the Off Payroll Working in the Public Sector legislation. Any rates of payment quoted will reflect the gross rate per day for the assignment and will be subject to appropriate taxes and statutory costs. As such the payment to the intermediary and your income resulting from this contract will be different.

Please be aware that this role can only be worked within the UK and not Overseas.

The OfS regulates the higher education sector on behalf of all students. We value diversity and the wealth of perspectives, experience and ideas that it brings to our work, and we strive to embed equality of opportunity in everything we do.

We recruit based on fair and open competition and welcome applications from candidates regardless of age, disability, race and ethnicity, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, religion or belief, sex, sexual orientation and socio-economic background.

A set of organisation-wide principles shape our approach to flexible and hybrid working, which our teams then use as guidance on how they deliver their business goals. We do our best to find an arrangement that works for everyone and many of us work flexibly, part-time or in job shares.