To be able to harness a trust- based school culture and move away from one that is mired in fear, we first need to understand clearly what each looks like. The key driver in any school is how the staff feel about themselves and one another and this is affected by the cultural climate.

Staff culture, fear and trust do not have a language that is commonly used in schools. We all can feel when we are not ok or indeed when we feel happy in a school, however understanding why and being able to discuss it is tricky.

Hence to get a sense of where your school might be on the spectrum of fear to trust, some indicators of how people behave, linked to the fight, flight and freeze responses to fear are a helpful starting point. Click here to download the indicators of fear-based school cultures to see where your schools lies.