Core values are what support the vision, shape the culture and reflect what the school values. They are the essence of the school’s identity by reflecting the community’s beliefs about what it considers to be the most important desirable qualities to guide everybody’s behaviour. As with any organisation, schools with a culture of strong core values are likely to do better than those without a strong core value system. By “strong” I mean to say that the values should be alive within the school culture – exemplified through the activities, attitudes and behaviours of all key members of the school community, including school leadership, teachers and students.
School must create a “values-based” culture if they are to be successful at nurturing a happy community of students (and staff) who will make the most of their teaching & learning opportunities. An interesting point made by Ron Berger, author of An Ethic of Excellence (2003, pp. 41), is that the power of the culture rests in community:
When I’ve visited effective schools I’ve been struck with the realisation that though the settings and resources are often widely different, every school I’ve seen has a strong sense of community… Students and staff in all these settings feel they are part of something – they belong to something.
In my school, for example, there are three core values – and below, I provide several examples from my experiences in previous schools of ways in which such core values can be brought to life within any school setting.
Another important point made by Ron Berger is that it is through students’ own work that their self-esteem will grow:
When they can begin to make discoveries that impress their classmates, solve problems as part of a group, put together projects that are admired by others, produce work of real quality, a new self-image as a proud student will emerge.
In my early days of teaching in London, I organised a Young Enterprise initiative for students. Drawing on a pool of willing secondary school students to help facilitate the programme, this effectively gave all students involved a real world project in which to learn financial literacy through business education. Real world projects, I believe, are a great way to teach values such as integrity. By giving students an idea about how their actions can impact others in a real world context (global trade in this example), they can begin to see the application of values such as integrity in their daily lives.
Finally, it’s important that values are visible for the school community. Again, this can be a great project for the school council to take on – creating displays of the school’s values for everyone in the community to see.
The whole community plays a critical role in bringing school values alive. By embedding the school values into teaching and learning opportunities, bringing different sections of the school to work together and ensuring the values are made explicit through displays, a values-based culture can be created. This can take a lot of time and energy to implement, but the benefits will be felt throughout the wider community for a long time to come.