Culture Shock (Part 1)

"A nation’s culture resides in the heart and in the soul of its people.” Mahatma Ghandi

One of my favourite parts of leading Phoenix Community Primary School are the comments I get from people as they come and look around the school. Be they prospective parents, prospective employees or colleagues from other schools the first thing that they always comment upon is the welcoming nature of the school.

As we walk around they invariably comment on the calm yet creative nature of the environment (and if they don’t I point it out), the exemplary behaviour of the children and the fact that everyone seems happy (we all save the tears for after the children have gone home!) 

Recently we used one of our INSET days to conduct a school self-review and one of the first things we reviewed was the culture of our school. What was it? Was it what we wanted for the children? Were there areas that we, as a staff, were falling down on? Just as importantly, what was it that we were doing well? (so easy to overlook).

The culture of a school is so important; it is the culture that shapes everything that happens in the school. It is the way in which the adults work together which impacts upon our teaching; the way in which we treat the pupils which impacts on learning; the language that we use in school; the way we distribute attention and respect and how we respond to setbacks and difficulties.

These are the things that have the greatest impact on the success of a school, not government diktats or initiatives. Every success that Phoenix has achieved can be attributed to the culture of the school.

So how do we define culture. We agreed that the culture of the school was our shared values and beliefs.

In order to identify these ‘values and beliefs’, we conducted an exercise where we took thirty cards and, in groups, sorted them into a diamond with the most important at the top and the least important at the bottom. The groups were asked to sort these according to the ‘ideal culture’ that they would like to see in school.

Once the results were recorded, we then asked staff to repeat the activity but this time, placing the cards according to what they felt the ‘current culture’ of the school was. I then took these cards and conducted a little gap analysis to find where the similarities were and more importantly, the differences.

Current Culture

1. Creating opportunities for everyone – widening horizons – fighting injustice
2. Focusing on the value added – holding hope for every child – every gain a victory
3. Raising capability – Helping others learn – laying foundations for future success
4. Setting achievable goals and realistic expectations – incremental improvements
5. Making sacrifices to put pupils first
6. A hunger for improvement – high hopes and expectations


Ideal Culture

1. Creating opportunities for everyone – widening horizons – fighting injustice
2. Raising capability – Helping others learn – laying foundations for future success
3. Creating a pleasant and collegial working environment
4. Focusing on the value added – holding hope for every child – every gain a victory
5. Working together – learning from each other – sharing resources and ideas – investing in others.
6. Setting achievable goals and realistic expectations – incremental improvements

Looking at the top six values and beliefs from both ‘current’ and ‘ideal’ I was really pleased to see that there was a lot of overlap. It has also highlighted two areas that staff feel that we should be promoting but maybe are not doing as successfully as we’d hoped.

So why the disparity? We had the culture that we wanted to promote within school, but for some reason, we were not promoting all of these specifically (3) and (5). We then looked at how we communicate these values and beliefs: obviously we communicate verbally all the time, but it is actually our unconscious and semi-conscious models of communication that express and reinforce our values and beliefs; these are our behaviours.

Staff within the school are held up as role models: to pupils, other staff and even the parents(!). It is important to reflect and consider our less conscious behaviours and whether or not they reflect your values. If we’re completely honest with ourselves, they don’t always.

This was not the opportunity for ‘name and shame’ or self-indulgent guilt but a prompt to consider our own beliefs and values and how they match the values of our school.

We asked ourselves the following questions:

• What was the school’s biggest celebration in the past year? What were we celebrating?
• Who is the most respected person in the school? What are they respected for?
• What is the first thing you notice in the school reception area?
• What happens commonly in our school that does not happen in other schools?
• Please name the behaviour, in an adult, that is most frowned upon.
• Please name something that people regularly ‘get away with’ (things you know are wrong but still do – e.g. late for meetings)
• Please name something that people worry about a great deal.
• Complete the following sentence: “We will raise standards of achievement most effectively if we focus on…”

Part of having a shared culture is about communicating this. Going forward, we identified what we wanted to see and what we did not; the behaviours we would promote and the behaviours that we would challenge.

If only it were that simple…