Tiffin School

About the School

Tiffin School is a unique, vibrant and exciting school, which inspires students to not only achieve academically, but to develop, as rounded individuals, their talents, skills, interests, personalities and whole character, enabling them to successfully progress in the wider world.

Tiffin School is a large, successful and extremely popular school, with approximately 1400 students including 500 in the Sixth Form. With the School being formed in Kingston in 1880, and its origins going back to the seventeenth century, Tiffin has a long history of providing a top class education. Although proud of its heritage, Tiffin is also a forward thinking, outward looking, and dynamic institution, aiming to prepare students for their future lives in a modern society. Tiffin School changed to a mixed Sixth Form, a move to individual student Chromebooks and use of Google Classroom, and this significant investment in premises and resources, are all indicative of its continual desire to further enrich, adapt and improve the educational environment and opportunities that Tiffin School can offer to its students.

The vision of the School is that it inspires students to engage, aspire and excel. The vision and aims of the School support their education in a selective and high achieving environment. Through constantly working to sustain an outstanding quality in its teaching and learning, staff aim for all students to become confident independent learners who engage in their education.

Coupled with this is the belief that the development of these young people is best achieved by fostering an engagement in a rich range of wider opportunities, allowing them to explore and develop all aspects of their characters, and become mature young adults. Throughout staff encourage students to aspire to high aims, and excel through their engagement, enabling them to go on to higher education and successful careers of their choice.

Tiffin is renowned for its academic success, and staff strive for the highest of academic standards with all students. They can study a range of subjects that will allow them to follow a path of success that leads to the top universities and beyond. Results are consistently outstanding, with an average over 3 years of approximately 85% of all GCSE grades at 9-7, and 90% of all A Level grades at A*-B.

The new Government measure, Progress 8, also indicates that students make outstanding progress between KS2 and GCSE. With 98% of its students going on to university, the vast majority to the top Russell Group universities, including about 20-25 each year to Oxbridge, the evidence of the success of the students in being able to pursue the courses and careers that they have wanted to follow, is clear.

At Tiffin, they believe that education is about more than just academic success; it is also about developing the whole person, and they provide the opportunities and encouragement for students to engage in a quite extraordinary range of activities that will encourage and cultivate commitment, leadership, teamwork, initiative, responsibility and confidence. In particular, Tiffin School invests in a breadth of curriculum that reflects a specialist interest in the Performing Arts, Languages and Sports, and they prepare students for the challenges of life in modern Britain with a tailored PSHE programme. What is learnt in a Tiffin education, are the skills for life, and the knowledge that learning goes beyond the classroom.

Pupils enjoy Tiffin and the opportunities it offers, and their overall wellbeing is encouraged by a focus on developing empathy, generosity, and a respect for others in its community. Tiffin School takes pride in its principles of equality, and the respect and liberal tolerance they encourage for alternative views, cultures, and religions, and towards different people regardless of gender, disability, race, or sexual orientation.

In addition, the school cares for and nurtures the young people that are there, supporting them in their social and moral development through an ethos and codes of behaviour, and of course doing all they can to protect and safeguard all students. The unique Tiffin community embraces and includes the many parent groups that support the school in its wider opportunities, and staff could not achieve a lot of what they do without the tremendous support Tiffin School receives from its parents.

Tiffin has excellent facilities, but the continual development of the School facilities is an ongoing focus of the Board of Governors. In 2018 it opened a substantial new building to accommodate a new dining hall and kitchens downstairs, with new classrooms and an IT suite on the first floor. This was built in the same style as the landmark Learning Resources Centre (2004), and was complemented by an impressive new pupil entrance, front boundary wall, and playground changes. In addition, Tiffin School also opened in September 2018 an excellent new Sixth Form Centre, with study and social areas. In 2021 the school opened a large new extension to its existing Sports Centre, creating new changing facilities as well as new fitness, weights and conditioning rooms, to complement a floodlit multi-use games area opened in 2009. The current project is to further invest in and develop the Sixth Form facilities for its very successful and thriving large Sixth Form. These projects were completed not only after winning bids for Government funding, but also because of generous Parental and Alumni contributions to fundraising campaigns.

Investment at Tiffin is not just in facilities, but in its work in partnership with other schools in Kingston through a specialist interests and Academy status, and in the work they do with a wide range of community groups who use Tiffin School as their venue, or use the sports facilities in evenings and at weekends. Through a partnership with Kingston Rowing Club, Tiffin School has refurbished its boathouse in Canbury Gardens, after successfully winning a large grant from British Rowing.

Tiffin School recognises its historical roots in the centre of Kingston and enjoy close collaboration with All Saints Parish Church, and The Tiffin Girls’ School.