The hidden curriculum at work in schools
Updated: Sep 5
I recently helped my grandmother move into an aged care home. Although she is receiving good care and is already familiar with some of the other residents, she feels unsure and anxious. This made me reflect on the first day of school and the unspoken cultures we encounter.
Every organisation operates on two distinct levels: formal roles and responsibilities, and hidden norms and values. In education, this is known as the hidden curriculum, and it includes the unwritten rules, tacit social codes, and unspoken institutional expectations that determine success.
First coined by Philip Jackson in Life in Classrooms, the hidden curriculum encompasses everything students learn outside the official lessons. When school leaders leave these norms unstated, equity suffers. Research highlighted by Cornell shows that unwritten rules disproportionately penalise first-generation, low-income, and marginalised students who lack access to generational "insider knowledge." Crucial skills, such as knowing how to self-advocate, decode a teacher's implicit expectations, or leverage additional support, become invisible barriers to belonging and success.
In response, studies surrounding the Transparent Teaching and Learning (TILT) framework demonstrate that explicitly demystifying assignment rubrics and unwritten academic goals drastically improves student retention and performance across all demographics. Furthermore, empirical research in BMC Medical Education emphasises that a student's capacity to decode these implicit institutional signals directly shapes their future adaptability in high-pressure environments.
Similarly, we need to explicitly address this hidden layer when we look at onboarding teachers and professional staff in schools. Navigating a new work environment mirrors the social and psychological friction of students in an unfamiliar classroom. A new employee must look beyond HR handbooks and formal improvement measures to decipher unwritten communication channels, informal influencers, and unspoken hierarchical expectations. High performance for students and staff relies far less on static knowledge and far more on mastering implicit cultural cues. When schools fail to make these hidden systems explicit during onboarding, we inadvertently burden new teachers and leaders with spending their energy figuring it out rather than producing efficient and innovative work from the first day.
As educational leaders, our mandate is clear: by making the invisible rules of academic and social success explicit within our school culture, we improve outcomes. So, here are some strategies to do just that:
Publish a "How We Work Here" Playbook: Move beyond formal policy manuals by explicitly documenting daily operational norms. Clarify practical expectations such as communication boundaries (e.g., non-urgent email etiquette vs. urgent calls), meeting protocols, and how decision-making authority is distributed so staff never have to guess.
Audit Unwritten Rules Regularly: Conduct pulse checks with new staff 90 days into their roles by asking: "What is one unwritten rule or norm you had to figure out on your own?" Use those responses to refine onboarding materials and eliminate hidden social barriers.
Define "Success Beyond the Rubric": During one-on-ones and evaluations, explicitly articulate the invisible habits that drive team health, such as cross-departmental collaboration, constructive conflict, and workload boundary-setting, so team members clearly understand what management values and rewards.
Standardise Upward Feedback & Self-Advocacy: Explicitly teach staff how to raise concerns, ask for resource re-allocation, or appeal a decision. Leaders should actively model this by publicly highlighting instances where staff feedback directly changed an administrative direction.
How does your school help new students and staff decode the hidden curriculum? I’d love to hear your approaches in the comments, or feel free to reach out to discuss how we can partner to make your school culture more explicit and inclusive.
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