Assistant Cook – Maternity Cover

We are looking for an Assistant Cook to work alongside our Catering Manager and her team in our busy school kitchen, to cover a maternity leave for 1 year. 

The successful candidate will have experience of working in a school kitchen or similar commercial catering operation, and have a passion for cooking and inspiring children to eat. You will use your skills to prepare and cook meals from scratch using fresh, seasonal ingredients from local suppliers, ensuring a consistently high quality of service to our children and staff. 

This is an opportunity to work as part of our friendly and enthusiastic team in a modern professional kitchen, encouraging our children to eat a variety of appealing and healthy meals.

We are a large 635 place primary (which includes 32 children in our 2 year old unit and 78 in our 3 year old nursery), with a rich ethnic mix of delightful and well-behaved children. Our modern school has recently been refurbished and extensively extended and sits in large attractive grounds.  We pride ourselves on our caring ethos and the value we place in our dedicated and friendly staff teams.  We are a popular school, and have a waiting list for most year groups. 

DDAT welcomes a diverse population of both children and staff and is committed to promoting and developing equality of opportunity in all its functions.

DDAT is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and expects all staff and volunteers to share this commitment. All appointments are subject to satisfactory references, online checks, completion of a probationary period, pre-employment and Disclosure Barring Service checks. The possession of a criminal record will not necessarily prevent an applicant from obtaining this post, as all cases are judged individually according to the nature of the role and information provided.

This post is exempt from the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 and therefore applicants are required to declare any cautions, convictions, reprimands and final warnings that are not protected (i.e. that are not filtered out) as defined by the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 (Exceptions) Order 1975 (as amended in 2013 and 2020).

Please take a few minutes to watch our school video on our Welcome page  to get a true flavour of Arboretum Primary School.

Please read the attached Job Description and Person Specification for more information about the role.  For application details, please see application forms below.  Please complete both the DDAT Support Staff application form and the Monitoring form.  Note that the correct forms must be completed, and that CVs or other methods of application will not be accepted.

Applications should preferably be emailed to jobs@arboretum.derby.sch.uk or posted to the school address.