There are many ways to communicate your school values. Working with hundreds of schools each year, it’s clear to us that school values have a profound impact on pupils, teachers, parents and the wider community. Your values matter.
Here are some ideas of how to communicate your school values in unique, meaningful and memorable ways.
Picture your school’s brand. Perhaps you immediately imagine the school’s colours, logo and uniform?
But your brand, your school’s identity, is about so much more. It’s a reflection of who you are at your core – a sense of familiarity that shows your beliefs and ethos. Your school values form an integral part of your brand and identity. And they set the standard for what’s expected of everyone who attends.
Everything you offer as a school, from your behaviour policy to your curriculum, should be rooted in your values. They’re the answer to the question of what makes your school truly special – the very bones of your brand.
It’s no mean feat to ensure everyone in your school community knows about, understands and reflects your values. In fact, it’s one of the biggest challenges schools aim to overcome when they approach us to discuss Wall Art.
Downside Primary School took a novel approach to communicating their values. They encouraged pupils to draw a picture to represent each of their school values. It is clear from the range of unique pictures that each value means something different to each child.
Our design team then transformed some of the children’s beautiful pictures into icons. Each value now has an icon to illustrate what it means. This is useful as a visual reference for everyone. But it’s particularly helpful for children with learning challenges, and for visual learners. It’s an innovative and effective way to communicate the school’s values to everyone who enters the building.
Communicate your school values using displays in key areas of the school. For example, the reception area, school hall, canteen or playground. These areas tend to have high footfall, so your values will be seen by pupils, parents, teachers, Ofsted inspectors and other visitors.
It’s also useful to display your values prominently when you host events like Open Days. Your values will show prospective families what you stand for as a school. And they will help set expectations for the behaviours and mindsets you wish for every member of the school community. It’s also important to incorporate your values into everyday conversation – refer to them in assemblies, lessons and staff training days.
I was a teacher prior to joining Promote Your School. The school I taught at used their values as the basis of a new, refined curriculum offering, to nurture the children in our care.
Our values were part of who we were, and we promoted them as widely as we could. We felt this was a huge element of our success as a school – something to be proudly celebrated. We also used our values to create a conversation with parents, helping promote our school to encourage others to join the school community.”
Temporary values displays can be useful to communicate your school values at last minute events. But they tend to need regular updating and can suffer from wear and tear after short-term use.
We often visit schools who use notice boards and printed posters to showcase their values. This can add colour and interest to the walls and is a great way to grab attention. But, creating and maintaining these displays often takes up a lot of teachers’ time. They’re simply not built to last.
Premium Wall Art by Promote Your school is a long-lasting and maintenance-free solution. We’ll design your Values Wall Art bespoke to your unique requirements. We’re also able to run design workshops with your pupils if you’d like to get them involved in the process. Or we can work closely with a key person, or people, to bring your project to life.
All we need from you is a goal and a designated wall space. We’ll do the rest.
We’ll visit your school to understand your goals, explain our process and provide you with a no-obligation quote.