Torquay Girls’ Grammar School - Insight visit 15th September 2026
As part of the Department for Education's Regional improvement for standards and excellence (RISE) Programme, which aims to break the link between young people’s backgrounds and their future success, all schools in Torbay were visited to identify strengths, weaknesses and to share best practice.
At the core of RISE are the RISE advisers, who are independent educational experts.
We are absolutely delighted and thrilled to share our review by Veronica Lloyd-Richards, Regional Director:
Overview
Torquay Girls Grammar School combines considerable academic ambition with a warm and joyful school culture. Developing the whole child is a clear organising principle, reflected in teaching and learning, pastoral support, personal development, enrichment and careers. The school is ambitious for its students and the wider community, and students spoke compellingly about how this ambition is experienced alongside care for their well-being.
Academic achievement is central to the school’s identity, but the school wears its academic success lightly. There is space for fun, house competition and the enjoyment of being young. Students described a safe environment in which they can be children without feeling pressure to grow up too quickly, while also being trusted to take responsibility and act with maturity. This balance was evident in both the classroom experience and the wider life of the school.
Culture Behaviour and Belonging
Behaviour was exemplary throughout the school, both within and beyond lessons. There is a strong culture of trust and assumed responsibility, which students clearly value and live up to. This sits alongside an emphasis on being an upstander: acting as a role model, standing up for what is right and supporting others.
Study skills are taught from Year 7, providing a practical foundation for the independence and maturity that the school expects. Students are supported to develop the skills to manage their learning alongside the responsibility they are trusted to exercise.
The house system brings considerable joy and competitive fun to school life. Students expressed strong pride in their houses and a clear sense of house identity. Staff were equally able to articulate the importance of fun and the contribution of extracurricular and enrichment opportunities to young people’s experience. They spoke with pride about working at the school and about the opportunities available to students.
Teaching Curriculum and Climate for Learning
The school has a research-informed teaching and learning framework, developed through a teaching and learning working party. The framework is not prescriptive but establishes elements that students should experience as part of their entitlement. The current focus on strong starts and ends to lessons is underpinned by a desire to secure inclusion for all young people at the beginning of the academic year.
Lessons visited were, without exception, rigorous and ambitious. Students demonstrated extremely high levels of intellectual engagement: they were interested in and challenged by their work, engaging with content that had substantial disciplinary depth. Behaviour in lessons was exemplary, with high levels of self-regulation supporting sustained engagement.
Students were confident in sharing emerging ideas with peers and the wider class, and willing to grapple with challenging content. Exceptional subject knowledge was evident in all teaching staff observed. This enables an intellectual freedom in lessons: students can explore ideas and engage in meaningful productive struggle, confident that their teacher has the expertise to support and challenge them. The combination of disciplinary expertise and students’ confidence creates space for demanding thinking and discussion.
Music was a notable strength. In the class visited, all students sang confidently in two parts, demonstrating musical skill and confidence in performing together. Significant numbers of girls were also auditioning in front of their peers for the forthcoming concert. This willingness to perform publicly provides a further example of students’ confidence and participation in the wider life in school and beyond.
Professional Learning and Quality Assurance
Professional development also creates opportunities for teachers to visit schools in different settings. Staff establish a learning intention for these visits and approach them in a spirit of professional curiosity, seeking insights that can inform their own practice.
Quality assurance includes senior leaders undertaking learning walks alongside middle leaders. Leaders described an interest in identifying ‘causal strands’: understanding what underpins the practice seen in classrooms and how to close the loop between observation and improvement. This provides a shared language for looking beyond what is happening to consider why it is happening and how leaders can respond.
Pastoral Care Inclusion and Wellbeing
Students spoke convincingly about the school’s support for their mental health. They described high academic expectations that are not pursued at the expense of their well-being. The school is proud of a culture in which students feel comfortable seeking and receiving support, including through its two SEND bases. Trained sixth-form well-being ambassadors provide a further strand of support within the student community.
Pupil profiles were a strong feature of every lesson visited. All teachers had detailed working documents capturing students’ specific needs and the adaptations planned for their learning. In every lesson, these planned adaptations were in place and supporting learners to be successful. This provided clear evidence of the relationship between knowing pupils’ needs, planning for them and responding through classroom practice.
The willingness to seek support is an important feature of this culture, allowing responsibility and independence to sit alongside access to help.
Student Leadership Activism and Responsibility
Student leadership is a particularly strong feature of the school. Opportunities include the head girl and deputy head girl roles, the wider head girl team, the head of student voice and responsibilities within the house system. Students also contribute as well-being ambassadors and academic mentors to younger pupils.
These opportunities reflect a clear commitment to female empowerment. Students are encouraged to advocate for themselves and others, and to become confident ambassadors for the school and its wider community. The emphasis on responsibility is connected to a broader expectation that students will stand up for what is right.
One student described advocating for a new role within the student leadership structure and also establishing her own Neurospace club to support younger pupils. This offers a concrete example of students taking responsibility for shaping the school community: identifying opportunities, speaking up for change and creating provision for others. It illustrates the confidence and agency that the school’s emphasis on female empowerment seeks to develop.
There is sophistication in this advocacy work. The popular Culture Day provided an opportunity to celebrate and learn about the diversity within the school. Students were also mindful of the risk of cultural appropriation, and awareness raising was built into preparation for the day. This reflects a thoughtful approach to student responsibility, combining enthusiasm for celebration with care about how cultures are represented and understood.
A student-led project with the local MP, focused on reducing misogyny in the workplace, illustrates how this work extends beyond school. Advocacy is a thread running through students’ development: speaking up for themselves, supporting others and contributing to the wider community. The school’s whole-child approach provides a common purpose across this work, personal development, enrichment and careers.
Sixth Form and Preparation for Life Beyond School
Sixth-form students were exceptionally positive about their experience of the school. They recognised the intentional support for both their academic development and their well-being and spoke with confidence about the care available to them. The non-teaching head of Year 12 is particularly valued as an anchor within the pastoral system.
The sixth form offers a broad range of A-level subjects, and significant numbers of Year 11 students continue into Year 12. Its enrichment offer is organised around three strands: academic development; contribution to the community, both within school and beyond; and well-being, including extracurricular opportunities and broader mental health. Academic mentoring of younger students connects the academic and community aspects of this provision.
There is clear intentionality in how the sixth-form offer is curated to support students’ development and transition into life beyond school. Opportunities for leadership, service and advocacy allow students to exercise the responsibility and maturity that the school places in them. Their accounts conveyed a strong sense of being known, supported and trusted.
Next Steps
The productive struggle, exceptional subject expertise and successful adaptations observed provide valuable practice from which to learn. Students’ work and thinking offer a strong anchor for this process. Looking closely at what students write, say and understand could help leaders identify the classroom decisions that are having the greatest impact and use these insights to inform further professional learning. This could build on the ambitious and inclusive classroom experience already evident during the visit.
Summary
Torquay Girls Grammar School brings an impressive balance of rigour and warmth to its work. The visit suggested a close relationship between the school’s whole-child ambition and students’ daily experience: demanding learning, intentional pastoral support, a broad enrichment offer and meaningful opportunities to lead and contribute.
Students’ pride in the school, their confidence in the support available and their willingness to take responsibility were particularly compelling. Academic seriousness sits comfortably alongside lightness, fun and a strong sense of belonging. The school’s commitment to female empowerment is evident in the opportunities young people have to advocate for themselves, support others and contribute beyond school.
Veronica Lloyd-Richards
Regional Director
One World Network of Schools