School admin supporting statement: cover each criterion

A school admin supporting statement answers the school's person specification one line at a time, with an example of your own for each. The three specifications read for this guide each ask for IT skills, confidentiality and work with parents, name a school information system and carry a line on safeguarding.

What the roles are

The National Careers Service says "School secretaries provide administrative support in schools." Its tasks include "act as the main contact for parents, governors and pupils", "answer queries face to face, by email and by telephone", "keep records up to date" and "order resources, pay invoices and deal with banking".

It says "Employers would expect you to have a good standard of general education and experience of office work", and "You could start as an admin assistant in a larger school or multi-academy trust and work your way into a secretarial post with more responsibility." For admin posts in the NHS, see the NHS admin guide.

What school admin person specifications ask for

This guide reads three specifications, as they stood on 3 November 2026: the School Administrator specification of Kings Hedges Primary School (Grade 3, job listed 22 October 2024), the Administrator specification of Lipson Vale Primary School (Grade C, dated September 2024) and the Admin Officer specification of Oxhill Nursery School. Teaching Vacancies shows the Kings Hedges and Lipson Vale jobs as expired, and any of the links may stop working.

Line	Kings Hedges	Lipson Vale	Oxhill
Office and IT	Essential: "Experience in an office environment"; "Good IT skills. Knowledge of all main Microsoft Office Packages"	Essential: "Have confident IT skills including Word, Excel, Publisher, email, and database programs including Teams". Desirable: "Office experience"	Essential: "Use of Word Processing, and other Office Programmes."
School information system	Desirable: an understanding of the school system Sims.net	Desirable: "Knowledge of SIMs and Eduspot"	Essential: "Experience of SIMS"
Finance	Desirable: "Financial understanding"	No line	Essential: "Experience of FMS/Oracle systems and managing finance"
Attendance	No line	Essential: "Have knowledge of school attendance and working in collaboration with external agencies to support families."	Essential: "Experience of managing school attendance"
Parents	Essential: "Communicate effectively with pupils, parents & colleagues"	Essential: "Establish and develop appropriate relationships with parents and governors"	Essential: "Pleasant and professional manner when dealing with colleagues, pupils, parents, visitors and Governors"
Confidentiality	Essential: "Able to maintain confidentiality"	Essential: "Confidential"	Essential: "Confidentiality"
Safeguarding	Essential: an understanding of the importance of Keeping Children Safe in Education	Essential: "Understanding the statutory requirements of legislation concerning Safeguarding, including Child Protection, Equal Opportunities, Health & Safety, and Inclusion."	Desirable: "Experience of working with the Child Protection Manager to record and monitor safeguarding information"

The schools differ on where the experience must come from. Kings Hedges makes "Experience in an office environment" essential and "Experience of working in a school environment" desirable. Oxhill makes "Experience in an administrative setting in a school environment" essential. Kings Hedges also has a Possible Evidence column that names "Application Form", "Copies of certificates", "Letter of application", "Portfolio" and "Interview". The person specification guide explains columns like this.

Safeguarding for office staff

The Department for Education's Keeping children safe in education (September 2026) says schools in England "must have regard to it". It says: "It is essential that everybody working in a school or college understands their safeguarding responsibilities." It asks governing bodies and proprietors to "ensure that those staff who do not work directly with children read Part one of this guidance", and it says "Safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children is everyone's responsibility."

The same guidance says schools "must maintain a single central record of pre-appointment checks". For schools, the record must cover "all staff", and it must show, among other checks, whether "an identity check", "an enhanced DBS check (with children's barred list check) requested/certificate provided" and "a check to establish the person's right to work in the United Kingdom" have been done. Oxhill's specification has an essential line that reads "Experience in maintaining the SCR, ensuring that all documentation is in place and updated." The document does not spell out SCR. If you are not sure it means the single central record described above, ask the school. If your specification asks for record keeping, say what records you have kept in another job, a club or a charity, and how you kept them up to date.

On the application, the guidance says "Schools and colleges should only accept copies of a curriculum vitae alongside an application form. A curriculum vitae on its own will not provide adequate information." On offers, it says "All offers of appointment should be conditional until satisfactory completion of the mandatory pre-employment checks." The National Careers Service lists "pass enhanced background checks" as a requirement of the job.

The shape of one answer

The two criteria below come from the Kings Hedges Primary School specification. The three lines are the structure. The lines after "Made up" are invented to show how much one line holds, so replace them with things that happened to you.

Criterion: "Experience of a public-facing role"

• When and where: the setting and the dates. Made up: the front desk of a leisure centre, weekday mornings, 2023 to 2025.
• What you did: one task you handled yourself. Made up: took each complaint at the desk and passed it to the duty manager with a note of what the visitor said.
• What happened: what changed for the people you served or the team. Made up: the duty manager could reply without asking the visitor to repeat the complaint, and asked the other staff to use your note format.

Criterion: "Able to meet deadlines"

• When and where: the setting and the dates. Made up: the office of a training provider, the monthly attendance return, 2024.
• What you did: one task you handled yourself. Made up: kept a checklist of what each tutor owed and by what date, and chased the late ones two days before the return was due.
• What happened: what changed for the people you served or the team. Made up: the return went to the funder on time for six months running.

Before you submit

Check that every essential line has an example, that no pupil, parent or colleague is named and that your text is inside any limit the form shows. You can check your draft against the person specification to see which criteria still have no example.