Imagine you’re teaching a class and you're asked to choose just one word to describe each of your students. Now imagine that every student is required to wear that word on a badge every time they enter your classroom. You might be tempted to have a bit of fun with it. After all, there’s always one student who comes to mind straight away—often because they’ve been pushing your buttons all term. But what about everyone else? The quiet student who's been quietly building confidence? The unpredictable student who's shown real moments of brilliance?
Reducing a whole human being to a single word isn't just reductive—it’s misleading. And uncomfortable.
Now flip the scenario. Let’s apply the same challenge to your colleagues. One word for each teacher in your department. One word for each member of the leadership team. Imagine them walking around with that word pinned to their chest. Suddenly, what started as a thought experiment becomes ethically murky, if not completely absurd. Because we know how unfair it is to be summed up by a single aspect of ourselves.
And yet—ironically—we often do this exact thing when we talk about school culture.
As school leaders, we are sometimes encouraged to distil our school's culture down into one-word descriptions: “inclusive,” “ambitious,” “supportive,” “rigorous,” “traditional,” “trauma-informed.” These words might sound impressive in a strategy document or Ofsted report, but they’re often a gross simplification of something far more complex.
School culture is not a slogan. It is not a branding exercise. It is the daily lived experience of students, staff, families, and leaders. It’s shaped by everything from behaviour policies to the way we greet each other in the corridor. From how decisions are made to how conflict is handled. From who gets heard in meetings to who feels safe in the staffroom.
For school leaders, the danger of trying to define culture in a single word is twofold:
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It silences nuance. When we fix a label to our culture—especially a positive one—we risk overlooking the uncomfortable or unresolved parts of our community life. If we say our culture is “inclusive,” do we stop looking at who might still feel excluded? If we call it “high expectations,” do we risk ignoring the quiet burnout among staff?
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It encourages performance over authenticity. A culture described in glossy terms can become a performance that staff feel pressured to uphold, even when their experience tells a different story. Leaders must be especially mindful of this. Culture isn’t what’s written in a handbook; it’s what happens when no one’s watching.
Instead of forcing culture into neat typologies, we need to cultivate spaces where the contradictions and complexities can be named and explored. We need to move from branding to belonging.
For school leaders, that means listening more than labelling. It means holding space for honest conversations. It means embracing complexity rather than fearing it.
So next time someone asks you to describe your school culture in one word, try this instead: tell them a story. Talk about your students. Talk about your staff. Talk about what’s changing, what’s working, and what still needs work.
Culture, like people, is always in motion. It deserves more than a badge.
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