Efficiency Savings FAQs

This is being undertaken very carefully so that the well-established ‘learning journey’, which has enabled our students to make such good progression from Year 7 to GCSE and beyond, will be sustained. These changes will not reduce the time allocations for sixth form students.

There will be one fewer teaching period in the afternoon on Monday – Thursday and therefore an earlier finish to compulsory classes. This responds positively to some of the feedback from parents, staff and students that the longer school day has required very high resilience. We are confident that we can achieve the same exceptional academic standards with less formal teaching time, as has been seen at Twyford. The proposals for the exact school timings will be agreed by the Student Committees of the Local Governing Bodies in w/c 12th May and communicated to parents as soon as possible after this point.

By bringing the amount of teaching time in the standard school day into much closer alignment, we will be better able to share the high-quality teaching resources, which are developed in-house by our most expert teachers, across the four schools. This will help us sustain standards and give the same guarantee of excellence. We also hope to improve accessibility to parents and students to support better independent learning at home, through further improved to how resources are presented on Copia.

Our formal taught curriculum will continue to be supplemented by our wider learning offer, enabling students to get greater immersion in particular areas such as Music and Sport. This wide-ranging offer from chess to debating to eco-club develops soft skills (teamwork, creative problem solving, self-expression, etc.) as well as good independent decision-making. For upper school/post-16 students this is particularly valuable and includes super-stretch activities vital to preparation for high-challenge university pathways. All Trust schools also include additional support and additional stretch sessions as part of the wider support.

Much of our CIAG is integrated into the pastoral programme and helps students to make good choices on subject options/courses within school. The systematic nature of this process also helps the schools to plan its own provision so that it accurately meets the needs of our students. 

Our success as a Trust has come from the curriculum and assessment model being strong – but also our teachers being skilful in their delivery. It has also been hugely beneficial that we have shared with students (and their parents/carers) how they can ensure they learn well. We will continue to work on this, giving extra help where necessary so no one is put at a disadvantage.

The reductions in teaching time have been spread  across the curriculum rather than cutting a particular subject. The priority for us has been to maintain a broad and balanced curriculum and to bring the schools in alignment with each other. The exact detail of these time reductions therefore  differ slightly between the three newer schools where in some cases time in particular subjects has crept up because we had the luxury of additional staffing and time available. The time allocation for each subject will be confirmed in the Summer term when we confirm the timings of the school day for each school. It has always been the case that particular courses may not run at GCSE /A Level if the number of students expressing an interest in it are low, making the course too small to run viably.

There are no plans to reduce the number of GCSE courses that a typical student studies, even with a slightly reduced curriculum time. It has always been the case that particular courses may not run at GCSE and A-Level if the number of students choosing it are low, making the course too small to run viably. This will continue to be the case.

Twyford has had experience over time of running additional extra-curricular GCSE courses in some circumstances on a reduced curriculum time outside of the main timetable if they were not a viable size in the main school day – the other schools will be able to draw on this experience as they look at the course choices students are making – for example currently in Year 9 ahead of next year’s GCSE courses.

We sincerely hope not and will continue to offer a full range of Art, Drama & Music as well as PE and a range of digital applications. Parents of students in or moving towards the upper school will be aware that students have choices to make and will prioritise depending on their own strengths. Our experience learnt over a much longer period at Twyford has been that the wider learning programmes (particularly extra-curricular Sport & Music) can also add breadth where students cannot fit them into their options choices.

Obviously this is a risk, however our curriculum has been very well designed and does allow additional time for revision in class. As long as students keep up with prep and make use of revision materials that they are given, they should not be at a disadvantage.

Some subjects do already use adaptive teaching and learning programmes to supplement classroom learning (such as Sparx in Maths). We also encourage all students to use self-directed learning in Computer Science (Code Avengers in KS3 and Skills Build in KS4 & 5). Whilst we will continue to use these programmes to supplement class teaching, they will not be a substitute.

Students and parents are already aware of the high emphasis our schools already place on prep and it is certainly the case that we will be emphasising its importance as we move forward. However, this is not because we will be setting more prep, it is simply that there is currently quite a disparity in students completing it well.

The schools are aware of the students who face disadvantage and prep may be an area affected by this. All four schools are reviewing their after-school support options for students who struggle to complete prep. These sessions will target students who are eligible for free school meals.

The pastoral programme (delivered through tutor times and workshops) already supports this and will continue to do so.

Although Ada Lovelace, Ealing Fields and William Perkin have had the same number of teaching periods making up the longer day, each of these three schools has previously had a slightly different start and finish time and slightly different timings for break and lunch times. The school timings have now been agreed by the Student Committees of the Local Governing Bodies and communicated to parents.

It has been agreed that from September 2025 all 4 Trust schools will have a start time of 8.30am.

The end of the main school day will be 3.10pm Monday-Thursday at Ada Lovelace, Ealing Fields and William Perkin. Twyford will retain its current 3.20pm end of day.

The schools will all continue to run an extended offer for some students which will include wider learning (such as Music and Sports clubs), intervention and study support sessions, or taught lessons for some students (for example for additional GCSE courses for some students in Years 10-11) with the majority of these finishing by 4.00pm.

All schools will continue to have an earlier finish time of 2.15pm for students on Friday to allow for staff training.

No, there is no plan to change the timings at Twyford.

All four schools, including Twyford, are giving close attention to class sizes to achieve an average of 25. This is a slight increase but will still allow us to have smaller classes for students needing extra support, with class sizes of 30 only for the higher sets. Some subjects (such as Humanities and Creative / Practical subjects) will teach in the equivalent of tutor groups which are mixed ability and have a class size of 28/29. Improving the efficiency of our class sizes enables us to make better use of our staff time.

The overall subject teaching time across the schools will be the same from September 2025

However Ealing Fields, Ada Lovelace and William Perkin will continue to use the basic model of 50-minute periods (6 x 50mins per day on Monday to Thursday and 5 x 50mins on a Friday).

Twyford’s school day will not change and will continue to have 60-minute periods for subject teaching for the majority of the week (5 x 60mins per day on Monday to Thursday). On Fridays Twyford has already moved to a 5 x  50-minute lesson shortened day.

Yes, all schools will continue to have an early finish on a Friday to facilitate staff training. We anticipate that high quality staff training is all the more important to ensure teachers are prepared to deliver the curriculum in slightly reduced time.  

The school leadership teams and the Local Governing Bodies considered a number of factors including the before and after school extra-curricular slots, opportunities to manage inter school events and fixtures, impact of our students on the local area, travel issues for students & staff and helpful / unhelpful overlaps with other local schools. The agreed school timings were agreed by the Student Committees of the Local Governing Bodies in w/c 12th May and communicated to parents as soon as possible after this point.

Yes, there will continue to be afterschool activities, clubs and in some cases classes and study support sessions after school. As is current practice, students are expected to communicate their own extra-curricular choices with parents.

Yes we will continue the same detention practice, and the school will continue to communicate detentions to parents.

No. Our curriculum continues to place a high emphasis on success in a broad academic core of subjects (English, Maths, Science, RE, Humanities and Languages) and we have calculated that there is ample time between Y7 & Y11 in our timetable model for students to continue to get top grades.

There are no plans to change the curriculum time available for A-Level and T-Level courses within the sixth form.

It will continue to be the case that we aim to run viable courses with an average class size of 18-19 in the sixth form. This does mean that some classes are larger than this, and some are smaller. Where a course recruits a notably lower than average number of students over a period of several years we may not be able to continue to run this course in the future.

Yes - all 4 schools will meet this recommendation.