Socioeconomic factors, school culture and professional environments.

The socioeconomic status:

Although Windsor North School has a decile rating of 9 and is zoned it doesn't seem to marry with our school community as we have a large number of out of zone pupils, along with our in zone pupils seeming to come from a growing number of lower socioeconomic families. Our ESOL roll is increasing rapidly as with many other Southland schools and plans for a regional initiative to grow our population will see many more multi-cultural families arriving through SoRDS (Southland Regional Development Strategy) where up to 10.000 people are anticipated to transfer into Southland by 2025.

The organisational culture:

I like the reference to the climate of the school being 'how does it feel?' (Academy for SELinschools, 1998). As a walking DP I am frequently observing lessons across all levels of the school and find myself repeatedly commenting about the 'great feel' in our classrooms. The culture runs deeper though - it's how we do things and over the past 2 years we have recorded many of these things by generating a 'what does writing/maths/reading etc look like at WNS?' These delivery plans were generated by collecting and agreeing on what we value and what we put time and effort into. It is a great resource for new staff and is also valuable to revisit and self reflect upon from time to time. I am thinking that the MOE's introduction of CoLs (Communities of Learning) would need very careful consideration of the different cultures in different schools and the variance in what's important due to differing values and traditions embedded there.

Our school opened 140 years ago in 1877 and is steeped in tradition but has a recent infusion of modern practice with a new management team 4 years ago. The school has a leadership team that encourages reflective, collaborative, improving practice with a focus on developing 21st century skills in both teachers and students. Most staff and community members have embraced the changes as our school goes through the 're-culture' process (Stoll, 1998).

The professional environment:

On reflecting on the various readings this week (Stoll, 1998) I feel I could have placed more importance on understanding our school culture as a starting point in leading change towards school improvement. I see the important role of leadership in relation to school culture and appreciate that culture is "shaped by its history, context and the people in it". (Pg 9 Stoll, 1998).

However it is heartening to see that we embed every one of the 'Norms of Improving Schools'! - especially in that we have 'mutual respect', 'collegiality' and a big dose of 'celebration and humour'.

References:

Academy for SELinSchools. ( 2015, Apr 28).What is school culture and climate? [video file].Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-_NvhlcusQ

Stoll. (1998). School Culture. School Improvement Network’s Bulletin 9. Institute of Education, University of London.