It is true that most successful schools have clearly defined values but why does it make such a difference which ones you choose and do you need to restate the values of your country or just assume them?
Values are what underpin everything that occurs in a community, in this case a school. They should trump all other considerations and form the moral compass that guides the community. If ‘Equality’ is one of your school values then you would expect all aspects of school policy to be underpinned by the need for equality, students treating others unfairly should expect to be corrected and so on.
If a school in France left out ‘Equality’ then teachers could simply cite the national three values of Liberté, égalité, fraternité so perhaps schools in France tend to leave this one out of the list because it is assumed. Similarly religious schools may fail to state some of their values because they are assumed from the religious teaching that they identify with.

In fact, if there were not an underpinning set of values for a society then any school would place this as a much higher priority to get right because they would no longer be safe to assume that all parents and students had the same expectations of their community. In reality, the diversity of our country and the range of influences on the web means, I would argue, that it is more important than ever to set the values of the school and have them agreed and explained, even if we believe they are generally accepted community values already.
Which values to choose?
This is a chicken and egg situation. Do you survey the whole of your community and find the three most commonly agreed values or do you decide on the values you feel are important and then over time you will attract parents, students and staff who agree with you and wish to sign up to these?
I have brought together some common examples here which all suggest quite a bit of variation both in actual values and in the methods used to arrive at them. The Wordle approach is common, in which you bring together everyone’s views in one document then paste it into http://www.wordle.com and get an image in which the most commonly written words appear larger. Also common is the inclusion of faith based values. Some values are really personal skills such as resilience. Whichever method is chosen the key thing is that the Head is committed to embedding them in ALL aspects of the school The logical starting point is the Head of the school because it would be hard to imagine a school operating within a set of values if the Head did not live by them.
My favourites are probably those that reduce the number of values and then describe them in ways that the students will understand such as the following example.
