For teachers and school staff
Part of the Positive School Culture Guide for Teachers/School Staff: What students’ experiences of Year 7 can teach us
This series shares insights from research exploring how students experience the transition to secondary school, and what these experiences reveal about how Positive School Cultures develop through relationships, expectations, and everyday classroom interactions.
Introduction
When people talk about a positive school culture in secondary school, they often picture smiling students, cheerful classrooms, and an atmosphere where everyone seems happy. Values such as respect, responsibility, curiosity, and ambition are reflected in the ethos statements of many schools, and wider educational discourse often links positivity to well-being, behaviour systems, and academic progress.
In the student guide, we saw that students themselves help shape school culture through everyday interactions — through how they treat others, take part in lessons, and respond to the routines of school life. Culture is not something students simply experience; it is something they participate in creating.
But when students describe what makes school feel positive to them, the picture is often more complex.
In research exploring students’ experiences of starting secondary school, positivity was rarely described as simply feeling happy. Instead, students spoke about everyday experiences that helped them feel recognised, supported, and able to participate in school life.
These accounts suggest that positive school culture is not a general atmosphere that students and staff simply 'feel'. Instead, it is better understood in terms of the conditions that enable students to participate, be recognised, and feel secure within school life.
Happiness is not the same as belonging
Students can appear happy in school while still experiencing uncertainty or exclusion.A student might:
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enjoy spending time with friends but feel unnoticed in lessons
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feel cheerful at break time but unsure whether teachers value their ideas
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appear comfortable in school while still feeling uncertain about expectations.
In other words, happiness and belonging are not the same thing. It is also important to recognise that students do not all experience or express positivity in the same way. Some may be outwardly confident and vocal, while others participate more quietly. Some may value social connection most, while others find meaning in academic challenge or routine. Positive school culture is not about expecting all students to feel or behave in the same way, but about cultivating conditions in which different forms of participation and engagement are possible and valued.
This means recognising that students will not feel positive all of the time, and that moments of uncertainty, challenge, or withdrawal are part of how students navigate school life.
Belonging often develops when students feel:
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recognised as individuals
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safe to speak or ask questions
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treated fairly
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confident that effort will be noticed.
These experiences depend less on mood and more on relationships and everyday interactions. They also depend on whether students feel able to participate in the life of the school.
Crucially, these experiences are not distributed evenly across students or classrooms. Within the classroom, some students may feel confident and recognised, while others remain uncertain about their place.
What students actually describe
When students talked about positive experiences of school, they often referred to things such as:
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teachers noticing effort
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rules being applied fairly
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feeling safe asking questions
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knowing what is expected of them
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having supportive relationships with peers and teachers
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feeling like a valued member of the school.
These descriptions point to something important about how students experience and participate in school life.
These are not ‘nice to have’ experiences — they shape whether students can participate confidently and consistently in school life. They form part of the conditions that shape whether students are able to participate confidently and consistently in school life. Access to these conditions often varies between individuals and classrooms. This means that what students describe as 'positive' is closely tied to whether these conditions are available to them in practice.
Positive school culture is not simply an emotional state or general sense of happiness. It is shaped by patterns of interaction, institutional practices, and the expectations and meanings that develop around them, as well as organisational and systemic influences — all of which shape how students experience school day to day.
Culture is not something that can simply be announced
School culture is often discussed as something that can be defined by leadership or introduced through new initiatives.
School leaders set important expectations and priorities, but culture does not exist only in policies, ethos statements, or assemblies.
It takes shape through what happens every day — through thousands of small interactions across the school:
- how teachers respond to questions
- how rules are explained and applied
- how effort is recognised
- how students are spoken to and listened to — and how they respond
Because of this, school culture is not something that is simply created by leaders and then experienced by students.
It is continually produced through interactions between students, teachers, and institutional structures.
Over time, these interactions signal whether students feel:
- trusted
- respected
- included
Students are not only influenced by these interactions — their responses help shape how they unfold over time. Through their questions, relationships, humour, and engagement, students contribute to how classroom environments and the wider school develop.
This means school culture does not exist separately from practice, nor can it be fully designed in advance. While expectations and structures matter, what ultimately shapes culture is how these are interpreted, enacted, and experienced in everyday interactions within and beyond the classroom.
Not all school structures create the same opportunities for these interactions to occur. Timetables, class groupings, and classroom routines all shape how often and how easily students and teachers are able to build the kinds of relationships that support participation and trust.
For this reason, understanding school culture requires looking beyond what is stated or intended, and focusing on how school life is actually lived across different contexts and interactions.
Students also help shape school culture
Students are not only affected by school culture — they also participate in shaping it.
Through their responses, friendships, questions, humour, and everyday interactions with teachers and peers, students influence how classroom environments develop.
Year 7 students are still learning how secondary school works, and their influence is shaped by school structures, expectations, and adult authority. But their actions and responses still play a role in shaping the atmosphere of classrooms and corridors.
This means that school culture is not simply delivered to students.
It develops through ongoing interactions between students, staff, and the institutional structures of the school.
While students' influence is shaped by school structures and adult authority, their responses still matter. The way students engage, withdraw, support one another, or test boundaries all contribute to how classroom environments take shape over time.
These interactions are also shaped by influences beyond school itself. Students and teachers bring experiences, expectations, and ways of relating from their families, peer groups, past experiences of school, and wider social worlds. These can shape how comfortable students feel asking questions, approaching teachers, or taking part in classroom discussions, but these patterns are not fixed and may shift as students encounter different relationships and classroom environments.
When these expectations align with school practices, participation can feel more natural. When they do not, students may take longer to find their place or participate in different ways.
These influences shape how students interpret expectations, build relationships, and participate in the classroom.
What this means for schools
If school culture is produced through everyday interactions — and experienced differently by different students — then improving culture is not only about introducing new initiatives or refining policies.
It involves attending to the conditions under which students are able to participate, be recognised, and feel secure in their place within the school — and how consistently these conditions are available across different students and contexts.
This means focusing not just on what is intended, but on how school life is lived across different classrooms, subjects, and interactions.
Small, everyday practices matter because they shape whether these conditions are consistently available to students. These might include:
- acknowledging effort and progress
- ensuring rules are applied clearly and fairly
- creating spaces where students feel comfortable asking questions
- building relationships that help students feel known
However, these practices do not operate in isolation. Their impact depends on how they are experienced by different students, in different contexts, over time.
Because of this, similar practices can lead to different experiences across the same school. Some students may feel confident, recognised, and able to participate, while others may remain uncertain or less visible.
Improving school culture, therefore, involves paying attention to these patterns of experience:
- Where do students feel most able to participate—and where do they not?
- Which interactions help students feel recognised, and which leave them uncertain?
- How consistent are these experiences across different lessons and spaces?
A helpful way to think about this is that positive school culture is not located in a single moment or initiative. It emerges from the combination of relationships, expectations, and everyday practices that students encounter across the school day.
When these elements align, students are more likely to feel recognised, supported, and able to participate.
When they do not, experiences can become uneven — even within the same school.
This is not about making school feel the same for everyone, but about ensuring that the conditions for participation and recognition are more consistently available.
This is why positive culture is not the same as students appearing happy. Students may smile, socialise, and seem comfortable, while still feeling uncertain, unrecognised, or unable to fully participate in school life.
A positive school culture is better understood through the everyday conditions that support participation, recognition, and trust — and how consistently these are experienced across the school.
This guide is part of an ongoing research project exploring how students experience school culture. These posts are working documents and will continue to evolve. If your experience aligns — or challenges — what is written here, your reflections are very welcome in the comments.
Key ideas
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Positive School Culture is not the same as students appearing happy.
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Students often describe positivity through experiences of recognition, fairness, and support.
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Culture develops through everyday interactions between students, teachers, and school systems.
Students experience and participate in school culture in different ways.
Positive experiences are more likely where conditions support participation, although these conditions are not evenly distributed.
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Small relational practices can have a significant impact on how students experience school day to day.
Reflection questions for staff
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When students appear 'happy' in school, what other aspects of their experience might we be missing?
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In which lessons or spaces do students seem most comfortable asking questions — and why?
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How are recognition and belonging experienced by different students in everyday classroom situations?
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What small everyday interactions might strengthen (or weaken) relational trust in classrooms?
Where might students appear comfortable but still feel uncertain or overlooked?
How might students' prior experiences and expectations shape how comfortable they feel participating in different lessons or activities?
This series explores what students’ experiences of starting secondary school can teach us about how Positive School Cultures (PoSCs) are created through everyday interactions, expectations, and relationships.
The Positive School Culture Guide for Teachers/School Staff: What Students’ Experiences of Year 7 Can Teach Us
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Positive School Culture Is Not the Same as Being Happy
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Belonging Takes Time: What Schools Can Learn from the Year 7 Transition
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