“Happy schools are all alike; every unhappy school is unhappy in its own way."

That’s what I think Tolstoy might have said – had he been an educational researcher in the 21st century.  

The happiest of schools tend to have boundaries that make children feel secure, and provide consistent expectations with rewards, as well as sanctions. These are applied fairly across the board and are used in the same way at the end of the summer term as they were at the beginning of September – and the September before that…

Unhappy schools have a bewildering mish-mash of punishments and merits inconsistently applied, poorly enforced and doomed to fail after the first flush of the return to school.

Students, like old lags in prison, are adept at recognising what they can and can’t get away with remarkably swiftly and, after a brief pause in chair-hurling to assess the new regime, will go to it with renewed vigour once they work out that the latest edict on behaviour points isn’t going to be applied.

A rising number of unhappy schools choose to use cruel and unusual punishments to stamp out poor behaviour, giving them codenames that have the ring of a Cold War tactic dreamed up at CIA headquarters.

Teachers in happy schools willingly help out at events after school, take the initiative to set up the debating society, and ensure the students get to visit museums and exhibitions to enhance their learning.

The secret of happiness?

In unhappy schools, teachers will resentfully shoulder their break duties and view with horror the idea of sitting on a coach with 50 screaming Year 9s, stuck on the motorway en route to a school visit.

Other unhappy schools will adopt a military-style, parade-ground attitude to muster the troops, leading them two-by-two into the jaws of a joyless cultural experience, with no talking on the bus.

In a happy school, people will behave tomorrow as they did yesterday, and communicate with you about what you’re doing and how you’re doing it. They ask where you’re heading, and about what help and support you might need to get there. Your successes are noted and celebrated. There is an acknowledgement that failures are multifaceted, but they can also be learning opportunities.

The headteacher of a happy school is always around, walking down the corridors, on bus duty at the end of the day; knows every child’s name; and chats to members of staff. They have authority and gravitas, but they also have a sense of humour (and a walk-on part in the staff panto every year).

At the unhappy school, you never know how you’re doing until you’re hauled over the coals for it: you own every failure and your successes are compulsorily purchased for the head of department’s glory. Your against-the-odds transformation of some four-grade students into a hattrick of sevens on results day goes into the local paper with a picture of the head gurning in the middle of them.

Meetings about things that involve you go on without you; meetings that eat into your time and serve no discernible purpose will earn you a scolding from your head of faculty if you body-swerve just one of them. All kinds and colours of material will hit the fan for a range of undisclosed reasons – like living in an unhappy family, you never know where you are with some of its key members.

The head is either a distant, authoritarian figure with issues of their own to deal with or a would-be best mate who says “my door is always open – as long as you don’t bring me any problems”.

So how does it feel to be working in a happy school? Well, teaching load can still be a problem, as can funding cuts. There isn't any less marking, and term-time is still a blur of parents’ evenings and assessment deadlines. But the support and appreciation is there from the parents, as well as senior leaders.

Parents are grateful for the education and the wider fulfilment of potential that their child is receiving, rather than resentful and critical. Systems are in place to facilitate a positive learning experience: staff and students have their voices heard. There is that elusive spirit of collaboration that unhappy schools always talk about, but can never magic up – a collegiate feel and a pride in belonging.  

At unhappy schools, this pride is either entirely lacking or manifests itself as hubris: "We’re the best and we don’t need to listen to anybody else…"

Students from happy schools are also the same in some very important respects – they’re confident but kind, considerate yet assertive, hopeful but hardworking.

Students from unhappy schools, however, turn out in a variety of ways: entitled yet insecure under all the bluster, ambitious but confused about expectations in the real world, apathetic and cowed by the bullying of peers or staff.  

It can take years to get over the experience, just like being a child in one of Tolstoy’s unhappy families.

Cathy Brownjohn is a sociology teacher in Bedfordshire