Centre for High Performance

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Centre for High Performance

The Centre for High Performance (CfHP) is a collaborative research group founded in 2010. It brings together senior academics from Kingston University, Duke CE, London Business School, Green Templeton College (Oxford), and Oxford University. The centre studies how organisations perform and works with sports, schools, and arts organisations, including British Boxing, Eton College, the Royal Shakespeare Company, and the Royal College of Art.

Founders and contributors

CfHP was founded by Alex Hill, a professor at Kingston University. Key contributors include Liz Mellon (executive director at Duke Corporate Education), Jules Goddard (London Business School), Terry Hill (emeritus fellow at Green Templeton College), and colleagues from Oxford University.

What the centre does

CfHP conducts research on organisational performance and shares practical findings with educators, business leaders, and policymakers to improve how groups work and perform.

Research and public impact

- Education: From 2010 to 2015, CfHP observed improvements in about 160 academy schools placed in special measures by OFSTED. The findings were shared with education leaders and attracted wide media attention, including coverage in The Times, The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph, The Oxford Mail, and The Yorkshire Post. The work helped prompt government action, including a white paper and the Education for All Bill, intended to prevent academies from excluding pupils to boost results. The Centre published its ideas in respected outlets such as Harvard Business Review and Duke CE’s Dialogue Journal, and The Independent highlighted the work as influential.

- Leadership: In 2016, CfHP examined how different leader types affect school performance, starting with the “superhead” model of executive head teachers. The findings were reported in Schools Week and The Times. Lead researcher Alex Hill noted the costs and risks of the superhead approach. Later that year, CfHP published The One Type of Leader Who Can Turn Around a Failing School in Harvard Business Review.

Why it matters

CfHP aims to uncover what drives strong performance in schools and organisations and to share actionable insights with policymakers and practitioners to improve outcomes.

Website

high-performance.org