School Culture Audit

Create a school culture where your people, staff and students, can flourish.

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Culture plays a significant role in staff retention as it creates an environment where employees feel valued, supported, and connected. A positive and inclusive culture fosters a sense of belonging and promotes staff engagement, ultimately leading to higher job satisfaction and increased retention rates.

When school leaders prioritise creating a culture that celebrates diversity, encourages collaboration, and provides professional development opportunities, it not only attracts top talent but also nurtures a sense of loyalty amongst staff in education.

Why do the School Culture Audit?

School culture is how it feels to be and work there. As the saying goes, culture is “the way we do things around here”. It is about vision and values, systems and structures, the stories we tell, the relationships that keep us together and the routines and rituals that make our schools special places.

• Do you want to better understand how your staff feel about coming to work?
• Are you seeking to engage your staff in leading change?
• Do you need to pin-point where changes to policies and processes are needed to support staff morale?

How can the School Culture Audit help you achieve that?

The School Culture Audit provides a rapid assessment of key issues such as school improvement, staff retention and well-being.

In over 30 years of working with schools in a wide variety of settings, we have isolated the main performance indicators of school culture. We have captured them in a simple, rapidly deployable audit tool, followed by a one-day “what next” session with an experienced and impartial member of the SSAT education team.

It consists of a staff culture survey, followed by a school visit from one of the SSAT education team, providing a bespoke approach for your school.

Benefits

• Identifying strengths and areas for improvement
• Staff feel listened to and have opportunities to provide feedback
• Leaders develop greater understanding of the school culture and can take action

Other specific benefits of the school culture audit include:

• The opportunity to personalise the staff culture survey with questions of your own
• SSAT’s impartiality means staff can give their feedback anonymously
• Collated reports summarise the data and key findings
• A member of the SSAT education team will support you through the whole process and write a final report based on the survey and school visit.

How does it work?

The process begins with a briefing conversation with school leaders to understand more about the school and the reasons for participating. This is followed by an anonymous all staff survey (teaching and support staff) and a school visit.

Part 1: All staff survey

• 20 key questions gathering feedback on school culture
• Opportunity to add up to five personalised questions/statements
• Sharing link sent by SSAT for your staff to respond (two week window).
• Data analysis by role and length of service
• Data report generated by SSAT and shared with school lead
• Feedback meeting with school lead

Part 2: School visit

• Identifying focus areas
• School visit allowing for more in-depth review and follow up
• Meetings with representative groups, walk school site/learning walk
• Written summary report and identification of possible next steps

The audit process can be completed in as little as four weeks from start to finish but the timeline can be shaped by you. The deadline for completion is 3 months. Please note no refunds will be issued.

Suitable for MATs, primary, secondary and special schools.

Who will lead the audit?

The School Culture Audit is led by Dr Dan Belcher, Senior Education Lead, who will work with leaders in a supportive process of reflection and discovery.

Dan leads on SSAT’s leadership programmes and has a wealth of experience in designing and delivering professional development for all career stages. Before joining SSAT in 2009 he was a senior leader and teacher of French and German. Dan enjoys working with individuals and teams to realise their goals and grow leadership capacity.

What are schools saying about the audit?

As a school leadership team, we thought we knew about our culture and ethos but wanted independent verification.

The SSAT audit gave us this view by working with all stakeholders it enabled us to focus on the most pressing matters that were revealed by the audit and the visit.

Taking part was simple yet thought-provoking and very rewarding for all involved. The findings of the report facilitated an action plan which now forms part of our school improvement plan.

As a school, we continue to move forward in the areas that were identified.

We would recommend the SSAT audit to colleagues in other schools who are looking to identify, develop and improve the culture of their schools.

Calday Grange Grammar School