Lessons from our Culture & Climate survey

Ask anyone what makes a school truly exceptional, and they’ll often point to its culture or climate. Yet, while these concepts are frequently celebrated, their exact contributions - to the success of both school and, more importantly, pupils — are less commonly understood. At Lift Schools, we aim to better understand this dynamic so that we can more effectively support our pupils.

We piloted our Culture & Climate survey last year and rolled it out in January across 57 schools, including our special schools. Participation was strong, with 96% of teachers (around 1,700) and 86% of pupils (21,000) in Years 5 to 13 taking part. We used questions from the Student Resilience Survey and the University of Chicago Consortium on School Research’s Cultivate survey, but we mainly used the 5Essentials survey, also created by the Consortium, because it is backed by more than 25 years of research into the ‘essential’ culture and climate conditions that truly drive school improvement. 

Johanna Klinsky, Director of Strategic Improvement at Lift Schools, talks about the roll out of the Culture & Climate survey across the trust.

Read: The KS3 'cliff edge' report

The survey positions a school’s culture and climate as the ‘upstream’ driver for a range of pupil ‘downstream’ outcomes including their attainment and well-being. Typically, schools spend a lot of energy focusing on attendance and behaviour; however, focusing on culture and climate allows schools to intervene much earlier, working on the root causes for attendance and behaviour.

Image caption: A school’s culture and climate is the foundation for children and young people’s success. It impacts their academic outcomes as well as their well-being. Focusing on ‘upstream’ climate factors provides schools with the opportunity to look more deeply at the root causes of their ‘downstream’ data including attendance, behaviour, destinations and exam results.

The 5Essentials survey offers schools insights into their organisational strengths and areas for growth across five key factors for improvement. We adapted the language and added a ‘sixth essential’ about school organisation to reflect the English context. These include: 

• effective leaders

• collaborative teachers

• ambitious teaching

• supportive environment

• involved families

• well-organised schools

  
  

Research from Chicago indicates that schools strong in at least three of the five original school improvement factors were ten times more likely to demonstrate substantial gains in student learning compared to schools that were weak in three or more of those essential areas.

For students, survey questions covered themes like: 

• relationships with staff - pupils have a trusting relationship with an adult in the school;

• teacher-student trust - pupils and teachers share a high level of mutual trust and respect;

• supportive teaching - the breadth and quality of the teacher’s support for learning; and

• sense of belonging - the feeling of being respected and valued in the classroom.

  
  

Teachers provided feedback on: 

• their commitment to the school and their level of collaboration with colleagues;

• the effectiveness of school policies regarding workload and behaviour;

• how well the school engages with families and the wider community; and

• the level of trust, communication and development they have from the senior leadership team.

The survey results were captured and presented in a custom-built dashboard, making the data more digestible and actionable. The survey, originally developed by analysing successful schools in Chicago, is highly predictive of school improvement there. However, its predictive power in other locations is less understood. While we anticipated the data would offer valuable insights for individual principals, we were unsure what to expect at a network level; we certainly hadn't anticipated uncovering a network-wide trend that mirrored a broader national problem.

The survey results were more insightful than we imagined, and they're already reshaping our work with schools and students. We've observed the rise of two main areas of network insights among students and principals.

1. Pupil insights

The most intriguing and surprising insights came from our pupils. The data revealed a significant drop in positive responses from key stage 3 pupils concerning their relationships with teachers, staff and peers, their feeling of support in learning and their sense of belonging.

Our data shows students' sense of belonging is at its highest, 84% positive responses, in Year 6 and much lower, 62%, in Year 7 and even lower in Year 9 at 58%. There are more positive responses in Year 12 and Year 13, at 78% and 79%. This pattern was observed with supportive teaching: 88% positive responses in Year 6; 66% in Year 7; and 61% in Year 9. Again, there are more positive responses in both key stage 4 and key stage 5. The data is notably worse for pupil premium, SEND and especially for girls, and it resonates with parallel research such as ImpactED’s TEP survey, the TIMSS study and FFT education datalab. 

Image caption: Our Culture and Climate Survey data shows students in Years 7 to 9 feel less positive about important aspects of school, from rigour and relationships to the support they receive and their sense of belonging, reflecting a national trend of KS3 disengagement.

It’s important to understand this data in the context of child development as early adolescence (KS3) is a time of tremendous change for our pupils which affects them throughout the rest of their lives. The need to belong is important at any stage of life, but it is particularly important during adolescence when the brain is undergoing a ‘second window’ of plasticity. During this time, adolescents are hypersensitive to social exclusion and more vulnerable to developing issues related to mental health. It is a time of increased risk and increased opportunity. Understanding this can help us to better shape their learning environment to better meet their needs.

These findings are prompting us to think differently about how adolescents experience education. Observations detailed in our recent The KS3 ‘cliff edge’ report suggest that too many students are "voting with their feet because school does not feel designed for them." The report highlights that "chronic absenteeism is the visible symptom of a deeper crisis," asserting that "England's schools don't just face an attendance problem, they face an engagement problem." Consequently, it calls for engagement to become a system priority, insisting that "attendance will not recover until students experience connection, purpose, and success at school."

The KS3 'cliff edge' report was published in November 2025 by Lift Schools in response to findings from our Culture & Climate survey. You can read the full report here

We don't yet have a magic solution to this challenge, and we recognise that the best approach will differ for each school, but addressing it remains a top priority for the trust. We have already begun exploring our response by reviewing pupil data with our principals at last summer's conference. Building on this work, and as announced in the The KS3 ‘cliff edge’ report, we will launch a KS3 Commission in January of next year. This crucial piece of work will test our data and hypotheses, guiding the necessary changes needed to achieve this vision.

Read: Tes opinion editorial: Curriculum fuels pupil engagement

Read: Schools Week opinion editorial: student engagement  

We truly believe that we can and must do better for our KS3 pupils. I believe the first lesson our Culture & Climate survey has taught us is the importance of truly listening to our teachers and pupils.

2. Principal insights

For principals, the survey data makes the invisible school climate factors more visible, helping them to understand what’s working well and helps them to get ‘under the skin’ of challenges that may be blocking improvement efforts. As one of our regional education directors said, “My principals can’t stop talking about their results. It threads through everything we do.” 

Our 57 schools are spread across the UK, so while challenges may be similar, they are unique to the context of each school and principals are working through the data in their own way. One common effect from the data seems to be that our principals and senior leadership team communicate and act with greater clarity, alignment and consistency within their schools. As one principal said, “people's perception is their lived reality and as a principal I have a duty to listen, reflect and make change for the better.” 

Conclusion

The insights we gained from listening to our teachers and students were incredibly powerful in shaping our current discussion and determining our next steps. We're now preparing to run the second round of the survey and launch the commission to ensure we keep learning and improve outcomes for our early secondary students.

We look forward to sharing our journey with you. 

Further references: Ref: Blakemore, S. (2018). Inventing Ourselves: The Secret Life of the Teenage Brain. Public Affairs; Search Institute. (2023, Nov).

Farrington, C.A., Roderick, M., Allensworth, E., Nagaoka, J., Keyes, T.S., Johnson, D.W., & Beechum, N.O. (2012). Teaching adolescents to become learners. The role of noncognitive factors in shaping school performance: A critical literature review. Chicago: University of Chicago Consortium on Chicago School Research.

Nagaoka, J., Farrington, C. A., Ehrlich, S. B., & Heath, R. D. (2015). Foundations for young adult success: A developmental framework. University of Chicago Consortium on Chicago School Research.

Paunesku, D., & Farrington, C. A. (2020). Measure Learning Environments, Not Just Students, to Support Learning and Development. Teachers College Record, 122(14), 1-26.

The questions in the Lift Schools Culture & Climate survey were adapted from the Chicago 5 Essentials and Cultivate surveys:University of Chicago. 2024. 5Essentials® Survey. Chicago, IL:University of Chicago Consortium on School Research; Universityof Chicago. 2022-2023. Cultivate® Survey. Chicago, IL: University ofChicago Consortium on School Research.

With additional questions from the Student Resilience Survey:

Lereya, S.T. et al. (2016). The student resilience survey:psychometric validation and associations with mental health.Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Mental Health, 10 (44).

Sun, J. & Stewart, D. (2007). Development of population-basedresilience measures in the primary school setting. HealthEducation, 7 (6).