Griffin Schools Trust

“Strictly Education understands our vision and what makes our family of schools
successful. They are genuinely supportive and want our organisation to flourish.”

Overview

Griffin Schools Trust was founded a decade ago by a group of experienced educationalists who took on a small portfolio of schools needing improvement.

Now headquartered in Bromley, Kent, GST has since then grown to 12 primary and secondary schools across the Midlands and the South East – 11 of them now graded good or outstanding by Ofsted.

GST’s CEO Anne Powell began working with Strictly Education as head of one of the schools – in Waltham Forest – and was so impressed by their HR services that more schools started to procure their services.

Strictly Education’s support has changed and developed as GST has expanded. “Our schools have always been spread over a number of different local authorities in different geographic regions of the country
so some sort of standardisation across our schools in HR processes has been important, even though we want our schools to maintain their individuality and autonomy in other areas,” explains Anne.

“We’ve always been a head-led trust, but HR was one of the first things that we agreed we needed to align on. It was that need to have shared processes, common practices, and then to move from the reactionary to the developmental.”

The Response

At the beginning of GST all schools had different HR contracts, or no HR contract. “It was the same with everything: payroll, finance systems, school operations – every system you might expect to find in a school, we had a different version of it across our portfolio of schools,” says Anne.

That development over the years – GST now has more than 700 staff – means that while recruitment never stops, GST now sees its HR services as being focused on people strategy, getting the best out its
current staff and ensuring that the trust’s people needs can be met in the future.

The focus now is freeing up GST’s leaders to focus on providing excellent opportunities to pupils by making HR and other back-office processes simpler and more streamlined. Strictly Education has played
an instrumental part in this.

That relationship has encouraged the development of HR strategy at GST, says Anne; rather than solving problems Strictly Education expertise is being used to equip the GST back-office team with the skills that they can then go away and use.

"The relationship has gone from calling on Strictly Education’s HR consultants when we had an HR issue or a question to accessing the whole suite of HR resources and services that Strictly Education offers. So, our operations teams are now more likely to be using the Strictly HR resources hub and access the webinars or training modules.”

One of those training modules focused on developing people strategies and recruitment strategies. The session provided valuable guidance for GST on developing their people from apprenticeships through the headteacher level and beyond.

GST also relies on Strictly for updates on legislation changes. “Leaders don’t have the time to read every new HR directive so we rely on Strictly for that expertise which we may not have as educators.”

HR troubleshooting will however continue to be a key part of Strictly Education’s support for GST. “Obviously there are always HR issues that need to be resolved. These have reduced considerably over the last few years as we’ve become a more mature organisation, but there will always be a case where a colleague will be faced with an issue or question that’s not not arisen before, and Strictly Education’s team always has the capacity to help.”

The Result

It is difficult to accurately estimate the impact that Strictly Education’s HR support services and advice have had at GST given the trust’s gradual development over the years – taking on different schools in a range of different contexts with very different challenges, against a backdrop of a changing conditions in the sector as a whole – but Anne believes that the partnership with Strictly Education has helped to promote retention and, most importantly, support and stimulate a culture of people development across the trust.

“We are always thinking about how we can be more proactive with our teams, supporting and developing people to progress their careers,” she says. “We’re now training up new leaders to have this approach so they can identify and develop the next generation of leaders, and we track their progress meticulously, always looking at how we can develop our talent pipeline by providing people with great developmental opportunities.”

She adds: “Having better systems, processes and support in areas like HR has helped us to become a more mature organisation, with a strong infrastructure, and that has also helped our pupil strategy.”

 For further information or to speak to a member of the team please call 0330 123 2549 or email enquire@strictlyeducation.co.uk and we would be delighted to be of assistance.