School Culture and Climate

School Culture and Climate

Introduction

School culture and school climate are two important factors to maintain the environment of school. They describe the attitude and behavior of personnel who are part of school, mainly teachers and students. School must establish and maintain environment of school without the discrimination of sex, race or religion, which requires a close watch on climate and culture of school. Sustaining school environment in term of culture and climate have an insightful impact on the behavior and achievement of students that reflects the culture of school as a whole. It is my primary role as a principal of the school to bring improvement in culture and climate of school to make it successful.

Discussion

School Culture

School culture describes the shared beliefs, values and assumption, which gives a school its standards and identity to constitute its behavior. It gives the understanding to teachers, students and staff to maintain the behavior and attitude in the response from inside the school or from the outside. It helps to provide the action plan to carry out things in the school. The main components of school culture are values, assumption and artifacts.

Values: Values are the behavior in which staff, principal, and administrators function and work together. Values support the involved personnel, including parents, teachers, administrators and students to take participation in decision making.

Artifacts: Artifacts and symbols show the way its school building is maintained and decorated. The building of the school reflects the students and their needs, and their learning achievements.

Assumption: Assumptions are the beliefs about human nature that are usually takes for granted. The basic assumption about the children is that everyone can learn, and parents want success for their children.

Research in England on 134 secondary schools show that schools that have demanding culture are the successful schools who hungers for improvement, holds hope for every student, and promotes excellence, whereas schools who do not promote improvement in the culture of school are less successful (CEF, n.d.).

School Climate

School climate helps the school to maintain and organize the school building and classes at a level that gives a feeling of a school. School climate gives the feeling to students, staff, teachers and parents to feel the way about being at school every day. School climate is an important factor that helps in improving educational performance and in reforming school. It also provides solutions to different problems that can arise in the school, such as bullying, conflicts, moral education etc.

Improving school climate is an important factor. It defines the environment of the school where teachers, students, and every personnel linked with school feels valued and work together by concerning about safety and disorder. There are several factors which contribute to maintain a school climate, including faculty relations, leadership and decision making, attitude and culture, appearance and physical plant, disciplined environment, relations between school and community, and learning environment.

To improve the school climate in school, the focus must be on chief four components that define school climate.

Physical environment

A physical environment must be set ...