We ensure that all our communication, recruitment, admissions, staffing, development and financial activities support the Schools aims, and that the wider Tonbridge community (including parents, Old Tonbridgians, Tonbridge School Foundation, the Parents’ Arts Society and the Skinners’ Company) also helps us achieve them as well as feeling the benefits of them.
-
Staffing: recruitment and retention of the highest quality staff to deliver our aims remains one of the School’s main priorities, and the School will be increasingly flexible and imaginative in the employment packages it offers (whilst always following safe recruitment practices). The School will continue to identify, devise and offer the highest level of appropriate professional development opportunities for all academic and support staff.
-
Communications: our communications strategy will support our aims by ensuring the School is promoted in all appropriate media (locally, nationally and internationally) and via appropriate events as a centre of excellence, and that more effective use is made of electronic communications.
-
Recruitment and admissions: the School seeks to attract the most talented boys locally, nationally and internationally from a wide range of backgrounds, and adapts its recruitment and admissions approaches to ensure this is achieved.
- Facilities Development: to achieve our aims, our facilities need to provide the best possible learning environment for the boys and teaching facilities for the staff, support excellent pastoral care, make the School feel welcoming, safe and easy to get around, and maintain the tradition and character of the School, while demonstrating an openness to innovation.
- Financial Management: the School’s finances need to allow it to fulfil its mission and achieve its aims by setting appropriate fee levels, securing external and non-fee income, improving efficiency, generating a minimum core operating surplus of 5% of Net Fee Income, maintaining adequate reserves, limiting borrowing and attracting funding for investment.
- Wider Tonbridge Community: the wider Tonbridge community helps the School achieve its aims, and all parties must be kept informed of progress and respected for the contribution they make. The Tonbridge Society has been created to include the Tonbridge School Foundation, The OT Society, and the Parents’ Arts Society, and promotes collaboration amongst the three constituent bodies to build goodwill and support amongst parents, OTs and other friends, reinforcing the sense that joining Tonbridge can be for life, not just five years, and for parents as well as boys.
- The Tonbridge School Foundation is committed to supporting the delivery of the School’s strategic aims, to widening access by funding Foundation Awards, to supporting the longer term development of the School’s facilities, and aims to strengthen the culture of support by increasing participation in development amongst the wider Tonbridge community from 16% to 25% by 2015.
- Scholarships and Bursaries: the School provides a wide range of scholarships and means-tested bursaries to recognise the most able on entry, and to ensure that the School attracts and retains the boys who can benefit most from what Tonbridge has to offer, regardless of their parents’ ability to pay.