Behaviour

Building Culture, Not Just Managing Behaviour

Why managing behaviour incident by incident never moves anything, and how Heads of Year can deliberately build a year group culture where good behaviour becomes the default.

What does "culture" actually mean though?

Before I started in the role, if someone had asked me what my year group's culture was, I probably would have said something vague about high expectations and positive relationships.

Which sounds good but means almost nothing.

Culture isn't a set of rules.

Rules can be written in an afternoon.

Culture is something harder to see and harder to build — it's the shared understanding of how we do things here .

It's what students do when no one's watching.

It's the tone of your year group's corridor at 8:45am.

It's whether students feel they belong here or feel like they're just getting through the day.

It doesn't build itself.

Left alone, the culture of a year group will be shaped by whoever's the loudest voice, the lowest expectations, and the path of least resistance.

Which is rarely what any of us want.

As a Head of Year, you are one of the people most responsible for shaping that culture.

Not the only one — tutors, teachers, SLT all play a part.

But you set the tone more than you probably realise.

Why reacting to behaviour all day doesn't move anything When I first started, a lot of my time went on responding.

Student misbehaves.

Someone calls me.