NPQH Understanding culture and ethos - the why and how?

hello i would like to introduce kylie who is head of inspiring learners trust she's an executive head teacher for tinter's field and bowling primary schools and she's in nla she's also been involved in facilitating with mph for many years she's going to talk to us about understanding culture and ethos for why and how hi everyone i'm here today to talk about leading culture and ethos the why and the how and i want to share with you today some of my thoughts on leading cultural ethos and share some practical examples from my own experience so fulham

says school culture can be defined as the guiding beliefs and values evident in the way a school operates it can be seen to encompass all the attitudes expected behaviors and values that impact on how the school operates so do leaders impact on the culture of the school absolutely we do and if you're in any doubt consider what happens to the culture in a school where there is poor leadership and if you have experienced that you'll understand i have experienced poor leadership more than once in my career and the impact on school culture was significant as

leaders as heads we have a profound impact on school culture and it's so important that we are very aware of this and that we use our influence to positively impact on developing a culture where pupils and staff can flourish peter drucker famously said culture eats strategy for breakfast and i truly believe this it's not the strategy isn't important in fact in my opinion it's crucial and i actually spend a lot of my time working on strategy within my trust with our schools and when i'm supporting other schools too but the point i want to make

is that strategy alone will not enable you to achieve your vision why well if people who are driving and implementing the strategy your staff your middle leaders your governors if they're not passionate about what you want to do about what you are doing if they are not passionate about the changes you are making or even apathetic in their own role you'll never achieve your aims if staff are against the change being implemented but do it because they have to they'll only ever do the bare minimum they'll only ever partially implement and the changes you want

to see will never become fully embedded in practice too often i think we as leaders can get focused on the what this is sometimes where we put a lot of our time and our energy yet we need to secure buying from others before implementing the what and we can be in danger of having an amazing school development plan it can be wonderful it can be accurate you can have a really rigorous cpd program where staff have the training they need to implement the change yet without buying any change will at best be surface level and

often will fall from practice after only a few months it's that plate that falls and stops spinning after a period of time simon sinek's golden circle theory is one i i use a lot and it explains very simply how leaders can inspire cooperation trust and ultimately get the change in the organization that we want and he would argue start with the why and if you haven't seen it i urge you to watch simon's ted talks on start with the why it's brilliant great leaders inspire and get buy-in but culture isn't just something that we can

just create overnight it isn't something we can just build quickly it has to grow it grows gradually but if seeds are sown and if those seeds are nurtured and watered they will grow and flourish creating a school culture should not be left a chance and it doesn't happen as i said overnight but in fact for me i think the creation of school culture is actually quite deliberate so my vision for the school culture is very simple i want a school where every child every pupil every member of staff experiences a positive enriching environment where they're

happy where they thrive and where they achieve a place where they feel valued and get a sense of belonging i want that for our children and i want that for our staff i want high standards of professionalism i want respect mutual respect and i want trust i want collective buy-in for the vision so that we're all striving to achieve the same thing so we're all on a journey together and we're all excited striving to achieve the vision that we have and for me culture starts with relationships i've worked in a couple of schools where relationships

were probably at the worst there was no trust staff didn't trust leaders leaders didn't trust staff staff didn't trust staff and the one school that i went to in as a leader on my day one i just focused on trying to provide the leadership i felt the school needed calming reassuring warm presence it was about being sincere being genuine in everything i did and everything i said it was about being real it was about being me and i'm really conscious as a leader of what my real me is and i'm actually quite deliberate in my

behavior and actions i'm authentic i'm me but i'm also deliberate and very conscious of my actions and behavior and then the first day becomes the first week one week becomes one month one month becomes one term one term quickly becomes one year and each day building relationships taking steps building on what's gone previously but all the time being honest consistent and strong it's about me walking the walk talking the talk being visible it's so important as the leader that i model the behavior and discussion i want to see and hear if you don't want a

culture of moaning in your school don't get drawn into moaning yourself if you want stuff to be solution focused then ask them what their thoughts are to a problem before you jump in and try and solve it we have to foster the culture we want to create and then when a difficult decision has to be made one that's potentially unpopular where the relationships are built on trust honesty respect a community far more likely to understand and accept decisions they may not agree with or understand so relationships at whole school level underpin a culture they also

underpin relationships in the classroom and for me effective teaching is underpinned by these relationships i've seen teachers in my career who are technically really really strong yet they don't connect with the pupils and this has an impact i know the staff where there will be potentially increased behavior issues increased parent concerns lower achievement i have two teenage daughters who can articulate very very clearly to me the teachers they like the best the best teachers in their opinion and it is in part but significantly based on the relationships that that teacher has with the class i

can see it myself when i go to parents evening and i meet those teachers i know those teachers have connected with my daughters they know them they've connected with them there's a strong professional relationship so culture in the classroom is influenced by a wider school culture but it's also significantly influenced by the relationship between the teacher and the pupil i'd urge you to spend time with your staff on picking this idea exploring how to foster a positive culture in the classroom talk to the children talk to people students find out their lived experience and crucially

act upon what you hear encourages staff to reflect upon the culture in their classrooms and as a leader when you have concerns about quality of teaching remember to reflect upon the how as well as the what when considering next steps for that particular member of staff as leaders we have to foster a culture in our schools where leaders and staff connect with our school communities connect with our parents and our children when i also talk to my daughters about the best teachers in tandem with strong relationships ultimately comes up teachers high expectations i see that

with the teachers in our school but what does it mean to have high expectations this is something i spent a long time reflecting upon and thinking about and i would argue that we first have to be aware of our own mindset on this do we truly believe that every child can achieve do you truly believe that every pupil in your school will achieve stats such as these would suggest to still work for us to do as a profession in this area but i know that mindset is a huge factor in influencing outcomes and changing the

trajectory for children who are under attaining subconsciously we may have lower expectations for pupils because of prior attainment we may have lower expectations because of background because of their behavior because of learning barriers if you ask every member of staff in your school these questions what would they say if you ask yourself these questions what would you say do you believe that every child every pupil every student you work with can achieve do you talk positively and ambitiously about every pupil do you ever create an unintentional feeling if you can answer yes to those then

i would challenge you does this really truly translate into your day-to-day actions and your interactions and your strategy because if we can create a culture in our schools or we truly believe every pupil can achieve then this in turn will influence the way we behave and our actions we have a moral duties leaders to create this culture of high expectations for everyone developing staff who have a positive mindset who truly have these high expectations and want to overcome barriers and have that mindset to do that i want staff who are solution focused and enabled and

empowered to think and to overcome barriers and that's fostered by a culture of learning our pupils in our schools are not the only learners we're all on this continual journey of professional learning and as leaders we shape that culture of learning in our schools staff training has its place staff training is doing too there's a time and a place for training learning how to use a new piece of software health and safety training you leave a safe training session with some newly acquired knowledge that you can then use in your role it's a newly acquired

skill that you can then use in your role but professional development professional learning is not only about developing the skill and knowledge it's also the mindset it's about developing that member of staff and enabling them to really think about how to apply what they have learned within their own practice so creating a culture where staff are inspired to continually develop their professional skill and knowledge so they're even more effective in their role is our priority it's certainly my priority and coming back to my vision i want a school where every child and every member of

staff experiences positive enriching experience where they're happy where they thrive and where they achieve i also want a culture where children thrive and achieve their potential but to achieve that i need motivated inspired staff and it absolutely is my role to invest in them and invest in the conditions that foster that learning so as head i'll invest time i invest in the finances the staffing structure that enable our staff to actively engage some examples of how we've done that on what things we're working on at the moment we encourage and promote staff reading and engaging

with current educational thinking and research in one of our schools recently we've introduced inspiring learners time which is reading and research time for staff we've allocated time and finances and staffing to release teachers to have some time for reading and research we've been involved and continued to be involved in research projects um quite recently one bone spelling and working the university of manchester our english lead and then ultimately the whole staff have been involved in a research project that's impacted in how we teach spelling we invest in staff professional qualifications we invest in coaching there's

something still we still need to work and roll out across our schools but we've made a start and investing in coaching and we're in the process at the moment setting up the staff professional learning library in each school we recognize i recognise that for educational excellence to be achieved all our leaders and learners need to be hungry and driven to develop learn and improve their practice which leads into this culture of continual reflection and improvement coming back to simon sinek's golden circle it's about engaging staff with the problem at the start and discussing and working

through that together so then the solution becomes bottom up not top down i try where possible to engage staff in the process of school improvement not just in the action so that they're involved in the why and the how as well as the what it's about presenting the challenge not the solution and involve staff in that journey of improvement i do believe and i have seen for myself that where we enable and empower staff they have ownership of that improvement journey for example a couple years ago we were looking at developing our feedback policy really

thinking about our practice so that we made most effective use of feedback we had several staff meetings looking at the issue and we started with what is feedback and we started to understand what sort of a culture needed to be in place for feedback to be effectively received and whilst this was ultimate about the feedback we provided to the children we started from the staff perspective and we talked about how it felt to receive feedback as a member of staff on what culture and climate we wanted for that feedback to be effectively received and acted

upon and we talked about the benefit and purpose we talked about how the feedback was given we talked about the feelings and emotions of when you're receiving that feedback and the impact that has to get staff to really walk in the shoes of the children by thinking about their own experience of feedback and then we use that to influence an impact on how we deliver feedback to the children in actual fact that piece of work not only influence our feedback with the children but it had a significant impact on us thinking's leadership how we feed

back to staff so i'm really eager to empower our staff to think and be solution focused and to continually reflect on their own practice and for them to continually be impacting on whole school evaluation and development i want a culture where everyone is not only just open to but eager to receive feedback as part of this journey of improvement i am also very very aware if we truly to have that culture where feedback is actively sought received and acted upon with true learning culture in our schools trust will sit at the heart and having worked

in schools and seen where trust is not there and actually trust is broken the importance of it and the significance of it is not lost on me we need that culture of trust to be embedded so i've talked about culture of high expectations a culture of learning a culture of trust a culture of reflection and continual improvement about the importance of relationships and connection so how how to go about that come back to where we started it is like eating an elephant one bite at a time one day at a time being really conscious of

yourself as a leader walking the walk talking the talk modeling the behaviors the expectations that you want to see and each day building on the steps you've taken previously all the time being honest consistent and strong where possible ensuring staff have an understanding of the why behind decisions sometimes we just have to make decisions because it's a legal requirement because it's compliance because it's a matter of safeguarding it's an urgent decision they have to be taken but actually that needs saying to stuff that's explained that's why we're doing this because we need to because it

because of safe health and safety for example but actually rarely should actions and decisions be taken in that way if you want to create a sense of team and foster staff who are with you on the journey who are not only share your vision but are excited and energized by it they need to buy into the why and behavior starts with your behavior then from your behavior it filters into slt behavior and then slt behavior filters and where there is consistency that will filter through to your school you are modelling the professional behavior you want

to see from your staff only then can you hold them to account against your high expectations so some top tips to finish first of all be authentic i am genuine i am me it's about being sincere being genuine everything i do and everything i say and it is about being real and being very aware nonverbal communication says so much every eyes are watching how what you say what you do how you behave which leads into my second top tip thinking about your methods of communication and the consistency you are the role model in the school

everything you say must align with the culture you want to foster in fact everything you say and do will determine the culture that grows in your school what you say and do has such a powerful influence across the school and provides the opportunity for you to model the culture you are striving to grow your visibility is key don't be stuck in an office get out and about around school and foster the culture you want to grow if you're starting ahead as a new head in a school you need to firstly understand the existing culture before

you can bring about change be the role model you want from day one but spend time understanding the culture in school be everywhere talk to everyone be eyes and ears listen and understand my third top tip it comes back to empowering and enabling your staff and i have three bits of advice and where to start with this first of all consider developing your school mission and values with your staff the development of our mission and values was a process that started with an inset day with the staff it was then followed by engagement with other

stakeholders but back to the insert day we considered the values that we wanted to hold as a school but then we considered the behaviors that we would want to see that aligned with those values so for example if we took the value of respect we looked at what would we want to see happening in a school if respect was strong if that behave if that value was alive we then considered all the behaviours we wouldn't want to see so where there was a lack of respect what would we be seeing it was a fantastic opportunity

to explore behaviours and culture with the staff and the outcomes of those discussions fed into our mission values and behaviour framework so in our schools for the values each value we have a list of behaviors that we do want to see and a list of behaviors that we don't want to see but crucially those behaviors are generated by the staff but enables us to then hold staff to account to a people to a behavior framework that they themselves generated the second area i encourage you to think about is appraisal and i urge you to consider

how to make the most effective use of the appraisal process to inspire your staff and hold them to account at our school we start with the values we ask staff to come with examples of where they can exemplify the value that they've lived in their practice but we also ask them to come along with an example of where they've fallen short the appraiser will also do the same thing if they have any awareness of any particular strengths or weaknesses within the behavior of that member staff in line with the framework it's an opportunity to reflect

and discuss and learn we allocate half a day for every appraisal meeting we don't have to use it but we rarely finish early it's precious time that we give to that member of staff and it's uninterrupted our targets are not universal and the star starting point is not our school development plan rather we start with teacher standards job description and through a dialogue with that member of staff we understand their strengths and areas for further development within their own practice together we identify how we can enable them to improve the effectiveness of their practice this

is always our starting point and then we connect with our school development plan we never go into a meeting with pre-populated targets rather we start literally with a blank pro forma and we write the target together but ahead of the meeting a lot of thought takes place both the appraiser and the crazy have to consider possible targets that would be appropriate based on their current role and based on a reflection of their practice over the last 12 months but crucially we agree the target together and the important part of that is the dialogue that leads

to the ownership and the understanding of why every target we set we articulate on the sheet why this target was chosen and the third area under this i would urge you to consider is your professional learning within your school for your staff is your cpd program a training program that you deliver to staff is it a done-to process or do you foster a learning culture are staff actively involved in your school improvement process are there research and development opportunities do you promote professional qualifications collaboration with other schools do you have a professional learning library in

your school how much does your cpd promote staff ownership and empowerment and how much it is done too i urge you to reflect on that and my final top tip is never apologize for your own high expectations and never settle for anything less as a leader i'm very clear my expectations and i model that in how i behave with others but part of my role in being authentic is addressing behavior that doesn't align with the values of the school and it is actually this behavior that can undermine a culture you're striving to create sometimes whether

it's collective behavior that might be a challenge for example negativity in the staff room or a mindset that's not inclusive then you're not going to change that behavior overnight come back to the one day one week one month and you modeling what you want to see and what you expect but one strategy i've used is identifying key personnel in one school that i joined as head there was absolutely no learning culture staff were tired with a cycle of repeated planning they'd been in the same year group for years there was no thought and it wasn't

necessary in their eyes practice was very tired and very dated initially i spent time in and around school just understanding the school getting under the skin of the culture and it was through that identified there were four really eager and capable teachers who were hungry to learn more and were keen to move their practice on so i started there i decided to work with them first it was a really deliberate strategy on my part working with them fired their passion and they became really quite infectious and within literally a matter of weeks two other teachers

came to find me to ask if i would work with them too and within 18 months approximately there was a significant shift in staff culture with many of the staff eager to work in this way and one or two others recognise it was time for them to move on really interestingly on reflection i saw that the tipping point did not come from me but came from the momentum within the staff body itself at other times it's not a whole staff issue you addressing but it's actually dealing with individual staff behavior and attitudes that do not

align with your values and leadership courage is required here it's so important to address behaviors attitudes mindset that are not aligned and not avoid these potentially challenging conversations so how do i do this well i always start with the behavior framework which we've generated with the staff it's a great place to start first of all it's often awareness raising so i can think of an example where i heard a member of staff shouting at a child my first response was to go over and ask the member staff were they okay they're actually quite surprised that

i asked them that of course i said oh but it's because i just heard you shouting as a child and that's not how we behave immediately they haven't realized that that was the they hadn't had an awareness that was their behavior at that time and actually it made them stand back and reflect on where they were at it's picking up immediately that's a small thing sometimes there are much bigger issues it but it's not turning a blind eye if you haven't read this book i would urge you to look at it susan scott talks about

having fierce conversations fierce conversations are not angry loud conversations she calls them conversations that require courage ones are open honest and real and she talks about the need to master the courage to interrogate reality is there a conversation that you need to be having with a member staff in your school at the moment if you avoid those if you don't deal with them they undermine the culture that you're striving to achieve and actually unintentionally you're promoting the behaviors you don't want to say so to finish i'm going to return to where i started i spend

a significant amount of my time working on strategy strategy is so important for school improvement but without the right culture within the school you will never achieve your vision i am really clear about what my role is as a school leader and what it isn't my direct influence on pupil outcomes is virtually zero now i don't teach but my indirect role is huge as head in the school i am hugely influential within our school it is my role to inspire to motivate to empower and enable our staff team to be the best professionals they can

be so that they impact on the outcomes for pupils my role is to foster and grow the culture that enables us to implement successfully the strategy thank you