Academic Coordinator Job Description

Key skills

Responsibilities

• • Own and maintain the curriculum map, ensuring coverage, sequencing, and progression across year groups
• • Build and maintain the timetable, balancing staffing, room, and subject constraints
• • Set and publish the assessment calendar and keep departments to it
• • Organise moderation and standardisation so grading is consistent between classes and teachers
• • Manage examination entries, registrations, and awarding-body or accreditation requirements
• • Observe teaching and give feedback that leads to a specific change in practice
• • Analyse attainment and progress data and agree targeted interventions with subject leads
• • Induct new teaching staff into the school's curriculum, assessment, and reporting routines

Requirements

• • A recognised teaching qualification and credible classroom experience, since the role advises teachers on their practice
• • Experience coordinating a curriculum, department, or academic programme beyond a single classroom
• • Working knowledge of the curriculum framework, awarding body, or accreditation scheme your school follows - these differ by country and by school type and are periodically revised, so confirm current requirements with the relevant authority or board
• • Demonstrated ability to influence colleagues who do not report to them and still hold deadlines
• • Comfort with attainment data and the judgement to act on what it actually shows
• • Clearance under the safeguarding and suitability checks that apply to staff working with children where your school sits

Nice to have

• • Experience with the specific timetabling or school management system you already run
• • Prior responsibility for examination administration with an external awarding body
• • Experience preparing a school for accreditation, authorisation, or a curriculum transition
• • A postgraduate qualification in curriculum, assessment, or educational leadership
• • Experience coaching or mentoring early-career teachers formally
• • Breadth across more than one subject area or phase

Test influence without authority, because that is the job

Ask: 'A subject lead has missed the moderation deadline twice and is more experienced than you. Walk me through exactly what you do.' The weak answers escalate to the principal immediately or avoid the conflict entirely. The strong ones describe a direct conversation first, an understanding of why the deadline was missed, a practical fix, and escalation only as a last resort with the relationship preserved. Follow with a question about a change they introduced that colleagues initially resisted, and listen for whether they brought people with them or simply outlasted the objection.

Give a real timetabling or curriculum problem as a task

This role is unusually testable. Hand candidates an anonymised, simplified version of a genuine constraint you face: a specialist teacher available two days a week, a room shortage, a curriculum change that has to be sequenced across two year groups without dropping coverage. Ask for their approach and the trade-offs they would accept. You learn quickly whether they think in systems or in patches, and whether they can explain a trade-off to the people it disadvantages, which is most of what makes a timetable survive contact with a staffroom.

Be clear about where the role sits and what it decides

This title is used for very different jobs. In some schools it is a senior post with real authority over departments and a place on the leadership team. In others it is largely administrative, coordinating calendars and entries without any mandate to change practice. Candidates from one shape will be frustrated in the other. State plainly what the post decides alone, what it recommends, who it reports to, whether it carries a teaching load, and whether observation and feedback are part of it. Ambiguity here produces early resignations.

Where to source Academic Coordinators

Experienced subject leads and heads of department are the natural pool, particularly those who have already coordinated across more than their own subject. Teachers who have run examination administration or led a curriculum change carry directly relevant experience even without the title. If your school follows a specific curriculum framework or awarding body, its own teacher and school networks are the most efficient place to look, because familiarity with the framework saves considerable induction time. Internal promotion works well here provided you are honest that the person will now hold peers to deadlines.

Time the appointment to the academic calendar

Curriculum and timetable work is seasonal. A coordinator who starts immediately before the new academic year inherits a timetable someone else built and spends a year administering decisions they did not make. Where possible, appoint early enough that they participate in planning for the year they will run. Teaching notice periods are usually tied to terms, so start the search well ahead. Keeping candidates, stage feedback, and check evidence organised in Pitch N Hire's ATS matters here because these searches run across months and good candidates drift when a process goes quiet.