“Leadership in the education sector can be challenging, and we find that Judicium is understanding and supportive and not judgmental of the situations that we're in. They are genuinely supportive and want our organisation to flourish.”

Griffin Schools Trust was founded more than a decade ago by a group of experienced educationalist who took on a small portfolio of schools needing improvement. Now headquartered in Bromley and Kent, GST has recently grown to 13 primary and secondary schools across the Midlands and South East, with most of them graded good or outstanding by Ofsted. HR Services and support was provided by Strictly Education until spring 2025 when the service was transferred to Judicium Education. 

The level of support has changed and developed as GST has expanded, says GST CEO Anne Powell. “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.”

When GST was formed all schools had different HR contracts, or no HR contract at all. “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 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. The support provided by the experts at Judicium has been instrumental in this.

"Judicium’s HR service feels like part of our back-office. The service and support isn’t one size fits all; it has taken time to build up a deep understanding of who we are, what we do and where we want to go. That makes it very personal."

If you’d like to learn more about Judicium’s Employment Law and HR services, please feel free to contact enquiries on enquiries@judicium.com or 0345 548 7000