The importance of culture, climate and conditions – making our schools brilliant places to work

Leora Cruddas CBE, Chief Executive, CST

Teaching is an ancient and perhaps the noblest of professions. Education is the building of who we can be as a society, and teachers shape the next generation – they shape minds, nurture potential, and help children to lead good lives. The work of those who educate is fundamentally meaningful. And it is a privilege to do meaningful work – work that connects us with what it means to be human and to an ethic of service (as identified in the Framework for Ethical Leadership).

Teachers and schools are valued and trusted by parents and wider society. The Ipsos Veracity Index is the longest running poll on trust in professions in Britain. Teachers feature in the top six most trusted professions.

And schools are essential public institutions at the heart of their communities. In some communities, the school is the last public institution left. The value of schools and schooling cannot be overestimated.

We have seen through the pandemic the value of schools to society. Although most schools were closed to many pupil groups (but remained open for the most vulnerable children and the children of key workers), teachers, leaders and support staff exercised a duty of care, responding to a wider set of needs in the community.

However, we also know that the pandemic took its toll on children’s education despite everyone’s best efforts. 2022 saw a huge drop across OECD countries in maths and reading since 2018. This is most likely due to the impact of the pandemic. While this is obviously very concerning, it is also evidence that schooling matters – hugely. This has important implications for the way we communicate to parents about the importance of schools.

But this does not mean that current levels of workload are sustainable. And we must pay attention to the wellbeing of our teachers and all those working in education.

This is a duty of care we must exercise as a principle in its own right – the ethics of being a good employer. But it is also important because of the recruitment and retention crisis we face.

Ensuring the supply of teachers and leaders (and CST would argue support staff) in our schools is key responsibility of a strategic state. But retention is a shared responsibility with employers.

We do have the evidence for good working conditions that contribute to retention. Our thinking at CST is anchored in the rapid evidence review conducted by the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF). EEF reviewed the evidence base on school leadership, culture, climate, and structure for staff retention. There are three interrelated leadership approaches and associated practices highlighted in the report:

• Prioritising professional development;

• Building relational trust; and

• Improving working conditions.

CST will work with trusts as employers to develop the practices associated with each of these three interrelated leadership approaches. We do not think that workload should be viewed on its own, but rather as part of a wider set of conditions in our schools and trusts. We should not be focused only the transactional nature of workload reduction in the form of lists - we should also be building relational cultures. We should also not underestimate the influence of headteachers on their schools, as recent research from the Education Policy Institute has shown. While trusts set the culture of the group of schools, the headteacher controls to a large extent the climate within each school. The EPI report links an effective headteacher with outcomes for pupils, not just for staff. Therefore valuing and developing our headteachers, and paying attention to their workload and wellbeing is absolutely essential to our shared endeavour, and the success of our education system.

Longer term investment in the school workforce is essential, but a stronger settlement is conditional upon a better argument. We should not look to government to solve all the problems we face – particularly in relation to workload and wellbeing. As employers, we have powerful agency to create better conditions and a better climate for our staff.

We cannot have flourishing pupils if we do not have flourishing staff. So how can we as employers create a stronger virtuous circle that leads to better conditions and a better climate for our staff?

Many trusts are already adopting promising practices, defined by the EEF as:

• providing teachers with instructional support;

• offering professional development opportunities for teachers;

• cultivating leadership potential in teachers;

• demonstrating individualised consideration for teachers;

• treating teachers with respect;

• considering teacher voice;

• supporting teacher professional autonomy;

• promoting collegiality in schools;

• developing an equitable support and recognition system;

• establishing an effective communication structure;

• attending to developing a positive climate of school discipline; and

• promoting a climate of intellectual stimulation.

CST is curating a conversation on the importance of culture on 8th and 9th July at our CEO Leadership Summit. We will be discussing the challenges we face, what the evidence says and what we more we can do in relation to culture, climate and conditions in our trusts. By far the majority of trusts are already thinking about these themes and acting on them. We want to start to codify the approaches and practices that are beginning to have an impact. We think there are five potential approaches that trusts are already using:

1. Mobilising the trust as a protective structure – mitigate the impact of adverse, high stakes accountability by freeing your teachers and leaders from the fear and many of the adversative practices associated with the regime of accountability in England. Actively reduce or remove burdens from schools and teachers by utilising the trust structure.
2. Committing to an independent annual survey of all staff – so that you can benchmark your results and you have a baseline from which to improve. And ensure a ‘you said, we did’ approach.
3. Using the strategic capability and capacity of the trust to mobilise the best, evidence-informed professional development across the whole group of schools (the trust as a knowledge-building structure.)
4. Develop, nurture and value leaders and heads who build relational trust.
5. Focusing relentlessly on working conditions, creating a culture of ‘good’ work through purposeful and intentional decisions to do only that which is meaningful and creating the conditions for leaders, teachers and support staff to stop doing some things (the "fluffload”). It also means more intentionally ‘designing’ the workforce – we will explore the design principles that impact on decreasing workload with CST members.

We will continue to work with government and the DfE to help mitigate, or indeed stop, practices from Whitehall that impact negatively on workload and working conditions. We will also work with government and the DfE to create a more intelligent, proportionate and compassionate system of accountability. And we will continue to make the case for longer term investment in our schools and our school workforce, and indeed the public services around schools. The flourishing of our children, the future of our country and our economic prosperity depends on it.