Implementing VBE in Your School

Teachers consistently described a strong sense of psychological safety within the school. They felt comfortable expressing their views openly, without fear of judgement, and experienced mutual respect in their day-to-day interactions. Communication was open and reciprocal, with staff feeling heard and included in decision-making. Relationships were characterised by trust and equality, with little sense of hierarchy between colleagues.

Many teachers spoke of the staff team not just as close-knit, but as a true “work family.” Colleagues were also friends, and the school was more than just a place of employment — it was a meaningful part of their social lives and personal identity. Professional boundaries were respected, but the warmth and camaraderie extended well beyond the job description.

Staff described a harmonious working environment, free from serious conflict or tension. Even in difficult circumstances — such as budget cuts — they remained optimistic and deeply committed to the school. Several said they would rather make personal sacrifices than leave the community they felt so attached to. This spirit of mutual care and loyalty was widely attributed to the school’s values-based ethos, which they saw as a key factor in both staff wellbeing and the healthy integration of work and personal life.

The positive staff culture described in this study stands in stark contrast to the realities reported in many mainstream schools. According to the Teacher Wellbeing Index (Savill-Smith & Scanlan, 2022), 59% of school staff feel they work in an environment marked by negative team dynamics, and 78% report struggles with their mental health. Against this backdrop, the school in this study stands out as a rare example of a workplace built on trust, emotional safety, and mutual support.

These findings echo a wider body of research highlighting the importance of stable, trusting relationships in shaping teachers’ professional experiences (Coban et al., 2020; Rashad, 2016; Kars & Inandi, 2018). They also reinforce Eldor and Shoshani’s (2016) view that a sense of security and psychological comfort is essential for teachers to thrive and fulfil their potential.

This school’s strong focus on teamwork, open communication, and collective belonging reflects a deeper vision of education — not only as an academic endeavour, but as a social and emotional space. Here, values are not just taught — they are lived daily, shaping the culture from within (Husu & Tirri, 2007).

Many participants spoke of the school as a place with a truly special vibe — warm, kind, and felt in every part of daily life. It was often described as a big family or a close-knit community, where everyone felt valued, cared for, listened to, and treated fairly. For many, the school was far more than just a place to study or work; it was a genuinely comforting, safe, and joyful space — somewhere they wanted to return to each day.

This atmosphere didn’t emerge by chance. It reflected the headteacher’s intentional effort to create not only a strong learning environment, but also a deep sense of belonging — a place that felt like home.

Staff felt this atmosphere just as strongly. Several teachers affectionately described the school as their safe haven especially during personally difficult times. Relationships between adults and children were built on kindness, honesty, respect, love, and gratitude — qualities that, in many people’s view, formed the foundation of the school’s overall climate. Children often shared that teachers here didn’t shout — instead, they encouraged, reassured, and helped them believe in themselves. All of this contributed to a calm, respectful, and emotionally safe environment where everyone could thrive.

The distinctive atmosphere found in VBE schools closely aligns with findings from research on school climate and values-based education. Rudasill et al. (2017) emphasise that school climate is fundamentally relational — shaped by the perceptions, interactions, and shared values of pupils, teachers, and leaders.

Galvez-Nieto et al. (2022) also highlight the connection between school climate and the internalisation of values, arguing that a positive emotional environment not only reflects shared values but actively reinforces them. In this school, the calm, respectful, and welcoming atmosphere became a living expression of its values-based culture.

Hawkes (2018) distinguishes VBE from other approaches noting that educators “live and breathe” the values — not just promoting them, but embodying them through their daily actions. Similarly, Knight et al. (2022) found that VBE helps cultivate a harmonious environment, supporting the view that such a school climate doesn’t happen by chance — it is the result of intentional leadership and relationships rooted in shared values.

This suggests that a warm and respectful atmosphere in VBE schools is not simply the outcome of good intentions or a unique mix of personalities, but a systemic result of a values-driven approach embedded across the school.

Teachers often observed children independently applying the values they had learned — during sports events, school trips, or when resolving conflicts with their peers. In these moments, pupils drew on different values to handle real-life challenges on their own.

Some teachers noted that these values became just as important for them as for the pupils, describing their own process of internalising them alongside the children. Similar examples were given in relation to parents and siblings: in some cases, children influenced their parents to adopt a values-based approach to parenting, and in others, this approach spread to other children in the family.

Children frequently spoke about using values in the future, with many believing they would follow them instinctively or recall them at the right moment. There were also accounts of former pupils continuing to live by these values after leaving the school. Most children recognised that values would be important in adult life, and some expressed a desire to choose careers centred on serving others — such as teaching or charitable work.

Parents also emphasised the importance of values in preparing for adulthood. They noted that values were already helping their children navigate everyday situations at home and agreed that they should be instilled from the earliest age.

These findings align with literature recognising the long-term influence of instilling values. Hawkes (2013) emphasises that values-based education (VBE) requires not only declaring values but also living them consistently in daily practice — a principle reflected in how teachers, pupils, and even parents internalised and enacted the school’s values in everyday life. Similarly, Rokeach (1973) defines values as deeply personal principles and guiding standards that shape behaviour and decision-making, supporting the idea that values learned in school can endure well into adulthood.

Noddings (1992) notes that not all children come from supportive and nurturing home environments, making schools essential spaces for moral formation — a view echoed by study participants, with staff speaking of addressing a “values gap” and parents highlighting that values “shape a child’s outlook for life.”

Santos et al. (2020) also argue that educators should promote values as a foundation for developing a complete and noble character, while Tom (1980) describes teaching as a fundamentally “moral craft” — a perspective that resonates with the role of teachers in transmitting values both explicitly and implicitly. Together, these perspectives help explain how the school’s values culture influenced not only children’s current behaviour but also their long-term life orientation, family relationships, aspirations, and identity beyond the school gates.

Teachers, parents, and governors noted VBE’s unifying role in bringing together people of different nationalities, cultures, and religions around shared positive human values. This was seen as especially valuable in today’s increasingly diverse school communities, where a values-based ethos creates common ground and a solid foundation for the peaceful coexistence of different ideas, approaches, beliefs, and worldviews.

With school communities becoming ever more diverse — and with numerous classifications of values existing worldwide (Hofstede, 2011; Rawls, 2020; Schwartz, 2012; Rokeach, 1989; Inglehart, 2019) — VBE’s approach, which allows each school to determine its own set of values, provides essential flexibility, sensitivity, and respect for the local context, while maintaining the key principle that values must be positive and human (Hawkes, 2013).

The values-based approach underscores the importance of the very concept of values and dispels the notion of a values-free or values-neutral school as a fiction (Sahin, 2018; Snik & Jong, 2002). At the same time, it avoids becoming entangled in debates over which values — and whose values — should be taught (Han, 2022; Leung, 2019; Wike, 2011), by placing that decision in the hands of school communities — a feature recognised as one of the hallmarks of effective values education (Adams, 1997; Noddings, 2003; Wysong, 1994).

Since many world religions recognise shared positive values — such as kindness, love, respect, care, and courage, found for example in the Bible, the Holy Quran, the Torah, and other religious texts — and many non-religious communities uphold the same principles, VBE’s role as a unifying foundation for bringing together people from different cultural and philosophical backgrounds becomes clear.

Despite their young age, some children understood VBE as a coherent system — a kind of moral framework. They recognised the role of values in how the world operates, reflected on the link between values and their own life aspirations, and observed that some of their peers struggled with behaviour — which they associated with not having the same values framework in place.

Some children also noticed how the presence or absence of values shaped relationships within their own families. The findings of this study confirm that VBE can serve as a systematic foundation, guiding not only behaviour but also the broader personal development of everyone in the school community. Hawkes (2013) describes VBE as a consciously lived ethos, integrated into the relationships, practices, and culture of the school — a view echoed by participants in this study, who regarded values as foundational rather than supplementary.

Metcalfe et al. (2024) similarly highlight the importance of explicit moral frameworks that enable teachers to act as agents of character formation — a role reflected in the views of staff in this study.

Other scholars emphasise essential dimensions of such a framework: Noddings (2002) argued that moral education should focus on care and the whole-child approach; Sahin (2018) advocated for dialogue-based, culturally sensitive methods that allow schools to co-create values reflecting their specific context; and Obiagu (2023) framed moral education as a way of fostering justice and inclusion, particularly in diverse communities. These perspectives resonate with how participants in this study described VBE — not as a list of values, but as a shared system of meaning that shapes thinking, actions, relationships, and school life.

The findings show that the positive impact of VBE can be achieved within a regular state or private school, without the need for large-scale national reforms — though additional support, recognition, and funding would be beneficial. In this study, the essence of VBE lay not in national programmes or documentation, but in the values rooted in the hearts and minds of staff and children, and in the actions those values guided.

The research suggests that values-based education offers a distinctive model of child development, integrating emotional, moral, and behavioural growth through the consistent, daily practice of shared values. In this context, Hawkes (2013) noted that values must be consciously lived in order to have a real impact — a point reflected in the way children in this study used them to navigate social situations, resolve conflicts, and reflect on their own behaviour.

Narvaez (2016) similarly emphasised that moral development is not merely a cognitive process but is embodied and relational, formed through repeated exposure to emotionally supportive and value-rich environments. Rokeach (1973) described values as internal motivators, which was evident in this study when children applied them spontaneously without prompting — for example, when one pupil spoke about being respectful to nature. Veugelers (2007) also highlighted the importance of dialogue and reflection in moral growth, and in this school, values were openly discussed and became a natural part of all interactions.

The developmental basis of this approach is further supported by Engelmann and Tomasello’s (2019) findings that young children possess early intuitions about fairness, as well as by Kohlberg’s (1976) theory of the interdependence between moral and cognitive development, in which each is a prerequisite for the other.

As noted above, the school welcomed pupils with a wide range of backgrounds and needs — from different socio-economic backgrounds, special educational needs, behavioural challenges, or a history of exclusion from other schools. Teachers shared numerous examples of how the VBE approach had a deep and lasting impact on such children, helping them find stability, a sense of belonging, and opportunities for growth.

The decision to admit and support these pupils often came from the headteacher, whose strong commitment to VBE values was reflected in her inclusive philosophy of “supporting every child.” Despite the additional challenges these pupils could present, the school consistently upheld this principle. Governors also noted that the VBE approach seemed especially effective in more challenging year groups, where positive relationships and shared values played a central role.

This study found that inclusion was practised through consciously lived values, embedded in daily decisions and relationships. Middleton (2019) described such inclusion as an act of compassion, grounded in teachers’ moral responsibility and care for the most vulnerable learners. Horgan (2009) showed how disadvantage can shape the school experience, with children from low-income families often more focused on survival than learning.

According to participants and observations, this school appeared to challenge that pattern by creating safety, belonging, and motivation through its values ethos. Williams (2019) similarly stressed the importance of consistent, respectful, and caring relationships when working with children facing adversity. These findings suggest that VBE can play a key role in supporting inclusion for pupils with complex needs.