Liz Lambe, the head of St Augustine’s Primary School in Cheshire, started using TEP when she took up her headship in 2024 to better understand how staff were feeling, and what she needed to prioritise to move the school forward. There had been a period of instability with various changes in leadership and Liz felt that TEP’s anonymity allowed staff to share their views honestly and without fear of retribution.

"People can come and tell you things, but I think knowing that they have a forum to be able to voice any concerns, or their thoughts, in that safe way means that they actually must really believe it. So that really helped me to think that what we're doing is working."

Over the last three census windows, the school has steadily increased its Wellbeing and Workload score from 7.7 to 9.10 in the latest results; 2.2 points above the TEP benchmark. Liz attributes the increase to several different reasons:

• When she first arrived, she was open in sharing her vision of a democratic school where all members of staff had input into how it was run; key to gain trust.
• She models a more flexible way of working; the focus is on getting the work done, with less emphasis on where and when it is done, and she believes staff feel trusted to manage their time.
• The highest score was 9.3 - 2.6 above a benchmark of 6.7 - for the question ‘the amount of marking administration and individual planning required is appropriate’ and Liz attributes this to a project the school is part of concerning Assessment for Learning and embedding formative assessment. The school now does live marking feedback in the moment and has a new assessment tool called Balance which allows tracking of pupil progress. Marking still happens but far less frequently and Liz believes it has been transformative for teachers’ wellbeing and workload, along with an increase in Team Planning.
• The layout of the staff room has changed; it now has a dining table and chairs, a sofa, and staff have commented that it’s a welcoming space to sit, eat and socialise.
• Communication also feeds into the high score. Staff had commented through TEP that communication could be improved so Liz brought in a weekly overview, so everyone knows what’s happening the following week.
• Liz has started to implement Relational Practice both with pupils and staff, with check-in circles at the start of each staff meeting which help people get to know one another, modelling behaviour and training, and encouraging a solutions and support-focused approach.

"As a leader, TEP helps me to get to see the bigger picture and to put it all together. It's definitely helped me to confirm what I think is going well."