ABSTRACT
Creating an ethos within the school community where ‘we’, ‘us’ and ‘our’ are key shared principles is at the heart of an empowered school.
(Hargreaves and Hopkins, 1991)
One of the most powerful messages to emerge from the literature on school improvement is the importance of a school’s culture in promoting or hindering change. Despite widespread agreement within the research fraternity that school culture is the deciding factor when it comes to a school’s capacity to improve, real understanding of what culture really looks like still seems to elude us. Bush (1998) had already described culture as ‘elusive’ and ‘a shadowy concept’, yet, like others before him, Geoff Hampton was faced with the dilemma of having to audit Northicote’s culture and subsequently manage it.
