Thomas Tallis School, Greenwich

Contextual information

Thomas Tallis School is a comprehensive school in Greenwich, southeast London. The school has a mixed-ability intake.
In the school’s 2002 Ofsted inspection, the school was described as follows:

“Thomas Tallis is a very effective school where standards of teaching, learning, leadership and management are very high. Students’ attainment in the GCSE examinations is above the national average and is improving.

What the school does well:

• Students make very good progress through Years 10 and 11, so that standards of attainment in the GCSE examinations are steadily rising
• The school is successfully raising standards in literacy and numeracy in Year 9
• It provides very good teaching
• All students have very good access to appropriate educational opportunities
• The school benefits from very good leadership and management

What could be improved:

• Levels of attendance
• The quality of the accommodation”

Continuous self-evaluation and development was already a key feature of this school and the management felt that the Well-Being Programme would provide an invaluable tool to gather the views of school staff.

Thomas Tallis’s Well-Being Programme has been championed by Douglas Greig, Assistant Head, who is the member of the senior leadership team responsible for facilitating the process in the school and leading the Well-Being team. Douglas was the point of contact for this case study.

The Well-Being process so far

In the summer of 2003, the DfES Teacher Retention Unit agreed to fund 15 local authorities (involving a total of 378 schools) to pilot the Well-Being Programme in London. Thomas Tallis joined the programme as part of this initiative.

The survey response rate has been very good for a school of this size (60% in Phase 1 and 63% in Phase 2) and receiving encouragement to complete the OSRM online has given staff a strong sense of purpose. To demonstrate how important the online audit was considered, the school allocated a specific slot of time for staff to complete the survey during a training day and the whole process was facilitated by Douglas and his team. The fact that the second response rate was higher than the first reflects how seriously Well-Being has been taken within the school.

In each phase, after the school’s Well-Being team received initial feedback of the data, the findings were presented to the whole staff. Individuals were then invited to contribute their ideas for development. From these discussions, the Well-Being team was able to draw up an action plan, which was subsequently included in the School Improvement Plan.

Thomas Tallis has remained on the Well-Being Programme following the end of the London pilot and began Phase 3 in Autumn Term 2006.

Key outcomes to date

Following whole-staff feedback and discussion of the OSRM data, the following areas emerged as priorities for action at Thomas Tallis School:

• Ease of movement around the school
• Physical surroundings in the classrooms
• Security
• Admin and IT support
• Systems for conflict resolution
• Communication between staff
• The perceived ‘gap’ between SLT and staff
• Links between teams
• Worklife balance

Douglas feels that the Well-Being Programme has provided the following benefits to the school and the staff:

• Participation in the programme has been a very positive experience as it has reinforced a culture of self-evaluation that underpins much of the development work already taking place
• Staff wellbeing is now a regular agenda item at staff meetings; and the number of staff meetings has increased as a direct result of the feedback from the OSRM
• In what has been an exceptionally challenging term in the teaching profession (TLRs, SEFs etc.), the programme has provided an extremely effective and constructive method of channelling some high emotions amongst the staff
• The information provided by the OSRM has been invaluable. Issues which could otherwise have gone unnoticed and/or unresolved were identified at an early stage, enabling the Senior Leadership Team to act on them. For example, as a result of the discussions surrounding the Well-Being data, one tier of management was identified as not working as effectively as it might. The Well-Being Programme enabled the school to pinpoint this issue, which gave the SLT a tremendous headstart in resolving the issue
• The Well-Being Programme has provided a powerful focal point around which support staff and teaching staff have been able to work together positively and constructively
• The process has helped with the school’s re-accreditation to IiP

Any problems encountered?

There were a few administrative challenges in setting the programme up in such a large school.

In summary

Participating in the Well-Being Programme has been a very positive experience for the school’s staff and the benefits have been tremendous. “The information we’ve received is so important. Cost is not an issue - the programme is great value for money”.