SSAT School Culture Audit Survey 2025

All SSAT member schools can take advantage of SSAT’s unique School Culture Survey.

Culture plays a key role in any successful team or organisation. A positive culture enables everyone to do their best work and achieve great things. It means creating a place where staff feel valued, supported, and connected. This leads to increased staff well-being and retention, higher job satisfaction and improved performance.

Register your interest

The SSAT School Culture Survey has been carefully designed to give school leaders insight into the culture of their school community. Using the three themes of Vision, Values & Moral Purpose, Leading People and Operational Management the survey aims to get to the heart of how staff feel about the school and their role within it.

Our independent and anonymised staff survey allows you to take the temperature of your school. You will gain valuable insights into strengths, as well as areas for development that will inform your planning. The survey remains consistent year on year, with our first survey being conducted in 2024, allowing you to compare your survey results over time.

How does it work?

You will nominate a Culture Survey champion for your school who will be responsible for disseminating the survey to all staff, SSAT will do the rest.

We will send you:

• A link to the online survey. The survey consists of 20 questions using a five-point Likert scale where participants are asked to which extent they agree with each statement, from strongly disagree to strongly agree. It should take no longer than 10 minutes to complete.
• A PowerPoint slide to use in staff meeting to explain all about the survey and provide a QR code so staff can have instant access.
• A poster to display in staff rooms with QR code for instant access.

After the completion window has closed we will send you a summary report of the results from your school staff.

All responses are completely anonymous. SSAT completes the data analysis and the raw data is not shared with the school. Participants are asked for their role (senior leader, middle leader, teacher, support staff) and length of service (0-2 year, 2-5 years, 5-10 years, 10+ years) so that overall trends can be analysed using these metrics.

What will I get out of it?

You will receive a summary report which provides an overall numerical scoring for each of the questions based on the 1-5 Likert scale (strongly disagree to strongly agree), along with scoring broken down by role and length of service.

These results will give you insights into:

• Staff morale, well-being and workload
• Relationships, behaviours and collaboration
• Communication and change
• Leadership, professional learning and development

SSAT will collate the findings across all schools to explore the common themes and trends that emerge from the national picture. SSAT Members can read the 2024 report here.

When will it take place?

10 Jan – 03 Feb 2025: Sign up window – complete our short registration form to let us know who will be the champion for your school.

10 Feb 2025: All registered schools will receive their survey link and resource pack.

10 Feb – 14 March 2025: Window for survey completion. Your staff will have this three week window to complete the survey. Analysis will begin on 1st April so all submissions must be complete before then.

Week beginning 17 March 2025: You will receive your report.

How do I get involved?

Registration will open shortly – Look out for emails from our membership team.

How do I take it further?

If you would like to take a more in-depth look at your school culture, and give all stakeholders a chance to feedback to in impartial observer, we can arrange for one of our Senior Education Leads to conduct a culture audit visit to your school.

The visit agenda is designed in collaboration with you and can include:

• analysis of your survey results
• meetings with representative groups from across school staff and students
• learning walks, shadowing meetings or duties
• meeting with governors.

A full audit feedback report will be provided. Get in touch to find out more.

What are schools saying about SSAT’s School Culture support?

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