Education Officer

The Scottish Seabird Centre (SSC) works to ensure that Scotland’s marine environment is healthy, wildlife-rich, valued and enjoyed by all. Our work is structured around four pillars:

• Conservation – We manage internationally important seabird islands, including Bass Rock, which is home to one of the largest gannet colonies in the world. We oversee research and island management on Craigleith and Lamb, where our community conservation project, SOS Puffin, has quadrupled the population of breeding puffins. We are a delivery partner of Restoration Forth, working with communities to restore oyster reefs and seagrass meadows.
• Education – We seek to build an understanding of and a passion for the marine environment through education programmes, science resources and events. Over 60,000 children and young people have engaged with our education programme.
• Experience – We operate one of the leading nature visitor centres in the UK, welcoming over 170,000 visitors a year, and were awarded the Gold Green Tourism Award in April 2025.
• Community – We work in partnership with diverse communities to connect people with nature and take a community-led approach to conservation. For example, our partnership with the Changes.

Job Description

The Education Officer will play a key role in developing, managing, and delivering the Scottish Seabird Centre’s education work with children and young people. This includes curriculum-linked workshops, outdoor learning sessions, holiday clubs, youth groups, public events and digital education, all designed to inspire young people about seabirds, marine wildlife, and the importance of conserving and restoring Scotland’s seas. This is a key role in the charity that offers a diverse and engaging workload and the opportunity to lead in the development and growth of our education offering.

Our education activities are delivered primarily in our onsite classroom, and outdoors, including on and around our local beaches. They are also delivered in schools and can make use of our Discovery Experience. The programme is supported by a growing range of physical and digital resources. The focus for this role will be primary and, to a lesser extent, secondary aged children and young people, with the opportunity to contribute to broader tertiary outreach and education activities. The Education Officer sits within a small learning team that is dedicated to outreach and engagement and works closely with colleagues across the charity to ensure the continued growth in our education offering and the impact it has.

Principal Duties

1. Develop and deliver a year-round, structured programme of activities for schools with a clear link to the Curriculum for Excellence and STEM learning (typically 2-3 sessions weekly during term-time).
2. Deliver and enhance our existing programme of fun wildlife club sessions (typically Friday half-day sessions during terms) and holiday clubs (typically 8 weeks of holiday club) for P1-P7 years.
3. Maintain and develop our physical and digital educational resources (e.g. Dive In learning packs, STEM videos, workshop support packs, Instagram stories, Virtual Reality), ensuring that these benefit from stakeholder input and are tested, evaluated and adapted.
4. Manage the administration of all education bookings and payments (with finance team) and ensure that appropriate data and evidence is gathered for our impact reports and/or evaluation reports to funders.
5. Contribute to the Scottish Seabird Centre’s year-round programme of events for children, young people and families.
6. Working with the Marketing Team, proactively promote our educational offer and share appropriate stories from education sessions that help build the profile of our offer through our social media channels.
7. With support from the Marketing Team, keep our education website pages up to date, ensuring that these effectively market our education offer to key target audiences and let people know ‘what’s on’.
8. Work with fundraising colleagues to develop and submit funding applications, and to identify new sources of funding for the charity.
9. Be an active member of our learning team, contributing new and innovative ideas that help us develop our education offer in fun and interactive ways and to increase our reach (audiences and geography).
10. Train and co-ordinate Volunteers and Visitor Experience Assistants, who support the delivery of our education activities.
11. Take responsibility for your own learning and development via online learning, through job shadowing or attendance at workshops and conferences.
12. Take responsibility for the health, safety and welfare of yourself and participants by undertaking appropriate risk assessments for activities and keeping these under review.
13. Support any other reasonable activities allocated to you by your manager, which help increase team resilience and support the overall delivery of our conservation and education activities.

Essential skills and experience

• Experience of teaching a range of ages in both outdoor and indoor settings, with a STEM focus.
• Creative flair with ability to produce new, high-quality sessions and resources (physical and digital).
• Effective forward planning and administration skills, with an ability to self-manage your work.
• Team player willing to be flexible and responsive to learning team needs.
• A clear, confident and adaptable communicator, able to tailor their teaching to different audiences.
• Ability to remain calm in high pressure situations and adapt to changing circumstances.
• Proven ability to work in line with Child Protection and Safeguarding Standards, ensuring adherence to best practice and professional codes of conduct.
• A Protection of Vulnerable Groups (PVG) check will be carried out through Disclosure Scotland and appointment to the role will be dependent on this being secured.

Desirable skills and experience

• A teaching qualification or other relevant teaching degree.
• Understanding of the Curriculum for Excellent
• Passion for and knowledge of the marine environment and environmental sustainability.
• Evidence of taking an inclusive approach to learning.
• Appropriately first-aid qualified or willingness to be trained.
• Experience of writing and undertaking risk assessments
• Full valid driving license

Our Values

Our values underpin everything we do. We take pride in bringing these to life in all that we do. We are:

• PASSIONATE about Scotland’s coastal and marine environment.
• INSPIRE others to explore and care for Scotland’s coastal and marine environment.
• INNOVATE with the approaches we use to engage with people.
• COLLABORATE with local and national partners to convey the importance of Scotland’s marine environment.
• INFORMED about the current health of Scotland’s marine wildlife and habitats and the actions required to protect it.
• TRUSTWORTHY providing reliable information and acting with integrity and without bias.

Performance: to be measured against clearly defined measurable and challenging goals.

Benefits

• Work for a successful conservation and education charity in a stunning location.
• 35 days annual leave
• Workplace pension
• Training and development opportunities for everyone.
• Access to Cycle to Work Scheme
• Access to Health Cash Plan
• Other benefits include: 20% discount in the charity’s Gift Shop and Seabird Café, and 10% discount on the Scottish Seabird Centre boat trips, and free access to a range of Scottish visitor attractions with an Association of Scottish Visitor Attractions card.

We welcome applicants with the right skills and experience and are happy to explore different working hours or patterns to support the right candidate. If you would like to discuss this role please email Fiona, HR and Business Support Officer at [email protected].