Renewing Staff Engagement With School Values Renewal
Overview
The Head Teacher of Townley Grammar School wanted to overhaul and update the entire school’s values system. This was intended to inform the whole school culture, philosophy, behaviour management and ethos of everyone from first year students to sixth formers and throughout the teaching staff all the way up to school governor level.
This would also support the in-house branding to help create a new school crest.
Key Insight
“This worked alongside an enhanced student voice, with pupils directly contributing to the identity of the school they’re proud to belong to.”
Aims & Impact
1. New school values and branding
A new set of school values and guiding principles co-created with input from across the school community, rooted in real experiences, not just aspirational words.
2. Full stakeholder engagement
Renewed staff engagement and ownership, with teaching and non-teaching staff reporting a stronger sense of connection to the school’s purpose. This worked alongside an enhanced student voice, with pupils directly contributing to the identity of the school they’re proud to belong to.
3. Strong cultural foundation
With this inclusive and human-centred approach to change, the school as a whole developed a set of shared values to inform the school’s new visual branding, messaging and overall strategic direction.
“Thank you for supporting us in the important project. The way you facilitated the workshops helped bring the whole school and leadership team together”
Our Partnership In Action
Excitement of the new
As with every project we worked on, it was a real passion project but it’s rare for a Head Teacher to be brave enough to push ahead for such transformative change for the good of their students and their students’ future. This project genuinely inspired us and it was an honour to be invited to take part.
Participative Workshops
The school’s overhaul of its values could only ever succeed with the full support of the school’s pupils – their feedback and eventual reception of the new school values were critical to the entire endeavour.
Their open and honest input was therefore one of the most important steps of the early stages of our work. Designing workshops that drew on the pupils’ ideas and aspirations was our focus for much of the work.
Strategic, Tailored Communication
Communicating with stakeholders ranging from first year pupils to school governors required a very bespoke approach at every stage and a willingness adapt our style for every discussion.
Conclusion
This project shows what’s possible when schools treat their culture not just as a backdrop to education, but as a living, breathing force for learning, working and growing together.