The Tiffin Girls’ School
When it comes to leadership excellence, few schools stand out like The Tiffin Girls’ School. Faced with the universal challenge of maintaining strong leadership in a complex and evolving education landscape, Tiffin Girls’ has achieved remarkable results. Their leadership practices place them in the top 2% of Edurio’s leadership scores, making them an invaluable source of insights.
To help other schools and trusts unlock similar success, Edurio interviewed The Tiffin Girls’ School to understand the strategies behind their achievements. Along with other trusts we interviewed we created a leadership guide which acts as an encyclopaedia of leadership approaches, practices and advice.
The Tiffin Girls’ School is a selective state school and single academy trust in Kingston upon Thames with over 1,200 pupils, aged between 11 and 18, and has an ‘Outstanding’ Ofsted rating. The school has over 70 staff members. The Tiffin Girls’ School is steeped in heritage, celebrating over 140 years of history. There is a true sense of pride and belonging at Tiffin Girls’ School, a sentiment displayed by the loyalty of its staff, with some teachers and governors being graduates of the school.
Key contributor: Claire Russam (HR Director)
In this case study:
- Leadership structures and styles
- Specific leadership practices and the impact
- Challenges and solutions
- Practical advice to leaders
Leadership structures and styles
Leadership structure: strong governance and accountability
The Tiffin Girls’ School emphasises the importance of governance in their leadership structure as a mechanism to support the school’s SLT. Strong governance ensures the leadership strategy is regularly monitored and that there are check-ins to ensure progress. This process involves extensive documentation and monitoring and is well-attended. Notable is the loyalty of the people around the school, both staff and governors, which drives its success and role as a key institution in the community, steeped in history.
Alumni giving back
“Two of our governing board members are Tiffin girls themselves. So their positive experience of the school in adult life has made them want to give something back.”
In its leadership structure, the school also focuses on communicating the vision and values to staff. There’s a yearly refresh, inset day at the beginning of the academic year, followed by weekly staff briefings. Then, throughout the year, there are various other inset days to dedicate time to sharing and consulting. The leadership structure accommodates the involvement of a wide range of stakeholders, ensuring the school’s direction is shaped by a diverse array of insights.
Leadership style: collaborative and open-door
The leadership within The Tiffin Girls’ School is characterised by a highly collaborative and open-door approach. Key to their leadership style is the active involvement and empowerment of both teaching and non-teaching staff. The Senior Leadership Team (SLT) is very approachable, with initiatives like open-door blocks for informal staff chats and a strong emphasis on walking the talk. In their daily actions, they embody the school’s values of Community, Love of Learning, and Character.
A notable aspect of their leadership strategy is the investment in staff, highlighted by the existence of a dedicated people team, which is not common in all schools. This team focuses on being available for staff, providing support through drop-ins and signalling the importance placed on people within the organisation’s leadership framework.
Culture: value of community
The leadership team actively engages in community and outreach activities, recognising the importance of extending their impact beyond the immediate school environment. This outward-looking approach is also manifested in their use of facilities, such as a new sports hall, to benefit the wider community, demonstrating a leadership style that values societal contribution and the wellbeing of both pupils and staff. Additionally, the school’s legacy, highlighted by the return of former pupils as staff members, underscores a culture of loyalty, pride, and continuous improvement. This culture not only celebrates the school’s historical significance but also ensures that its values and successes are perpetuated through generations.
Specific leadership practices and the impact
Community building to combat financial pressures
Being a state-funded school, The Tiffin Girls’ School is mindful of the financial pressures in the sector, from staff retention to keeping up with changes in technology, for example, AI. Having a strong leadership strategy, which emphasises the importance of community, has other positive impacts. Tiffin Girls’ is an academically selective school that is able to maintain its high-achieving GCSE and A-level results, making it oversubscribed – people want to enrol and be a part of the school
Community outreach is a part of their values, the collegiate values at the leadership and staff level and making sure that this gets disseminated to the pupils themselves. Some examples include teachers going to primary schools to work with pupils, 6th form pupils reading with other pupils, the dance club visiting a special needs school to spend a morning dancing with pupils and visiting old people’s homes on the holidays. But, HR Director Claire Russam shares that community outreach can also have monetary benefits, for example, letting out the new sports hall to local sports or community clubs on the weekends.
Cannot be complacent
The school puts a great deal of effort into reviewing and monitoring their progress, saying, “You can be doing any number of things, but it is the continual review that is key and continuously checking in” that drives success. The strategic development plan is reviewed on an annual and regular basis to ensure progress is being made and everyone is still aligned on the goals.
Continuous improvement and reflection
“It’s about not being complacent. Yes, we’ve got a great senior leadership team who are out there. We’re getting out into the community. We’re developing our equality, diversity and inclusion plans through the curriculum. Yes, our students do really well in the curriculum. But it’s that continual review. It’s those checkins and… What are we missing? The headteacher will often ask me. What am I missing? What haven’t I done? What should I be doing? So it’s that constant questioning.”
Challenge and solution
Challenge: balancing workload and wellbeing
The Tiffin Girls’ School takes teacher workload very seriously. To better understand the challenge, the leadership team asks themselves: “The teacher is a teacher: they have to do preparation and marking, but outside of that, what other pressures do they face, and how can that be alleviated?”
Solution: creative timetabling
The solution that works for the school lies in creative timetabling and constant review and implementation of how to adjust things for the betterment of staff. This includes streamlining processes, such as reducing the number of assessment points, reducing the number of reports, and keeping parents’ evenings online.
It also means being acutely aware of when there are pressure points and how to create more time. So, if there’s been an open evening at the school, inviting prospective parents and pupils to the school and staff have worked late in the evening, the next day, there is a late start to balance out the previous late hours.
Another example of how the school balances workload with wellbeing is its approach to staff appraisals. Knowing that it is hard for staff to find time to prepare for their appraisal meetings with line managers on top of their regular workload, the school has built in time for this to happen by dedicating half an inset day to this preparation. Being aware of pressures and proactively providing solutions is at the heart of the school’s approach to supporting its staff.
Practical advise to leaders
Communicate with respect and integrity
HR Director of The Tiffin Girls’ School, Claire Russam admits that it is inevitable that not everyone will be happy 100% of the time with 100% of the things going on in a school. Still, if the communication is proactive, then leaders can face challenges head-on. Claire puts it like this, “Being upfront and facing it to say: Okay, you may not like this. The reason we’re doing it is this, and the reason we’re not changing it or doing it is because of this.” If leaders communicate with empathy and understanding, then there’s a shift in the conversation from “That’s tough, we are not changing” to “We hear you and here is why that cannot be changed.”
Ensure accountability
Claire notes that having a governing board that is active and continuously engaged with the work of the school ensures high outcomes. Two of the governors on the board are “Tiffin girls,” and their positive experience of the school in adult life has made them want to give back. Accountability comes back to wanting the best outcome for pupils. Claire reflects that if leaders make all decisions by considering what is best for pupils, then they can rest assured knowing they are doing the right thing.
Pupil centered approach
“Everything comes back to wanting the best outcome for the students. Any new practices put in place always go back to that. Wanting to employ and retain the best teachers comes back to wanting the best for the students. So I think it’s that sort of mantra that it comes back to.”