Violence and bullying amongst youth have aroused political concern in Finland and in Europe (Cornell et al., 2020; Smith, 2016; Williams et al., 2018) to the extent that in Finland Prime Minister Sanna Marin´s government (Valtioneuvosto, 2019) has stipulated measures to prevent violence and bullying to develop a better safety culture in schools. (Bradshaw et al., 2014; Vallinkoski & Koirikivi, 2020). According to the Finnish Basic Education Act, responsibility within the schoolday falls unequivocally on the teachers and principals (Basic Education Act, 628/1998).

Researchers see safety culture as a part of an organization´s culture that relates to knowledge, skills and attitudes concerning safety (Biggs et al., 2013;Teperi et al.; 2018;Waitinen, 2011).  Earlier studies have shown that the safety guidelines laid down at macro level are better implemented at micro level if the management of meso level actors - are active and visible (Bellibas & Liu, 2018; Zohar, 2002). A positive safety culture can result in improved workplace wellbeing and safety. A precondition for effective safety culture is that the organization shares the actions and documents with each other (Teperi et al., 2018, 2021.)

Although organizational safety culture has been widely researched within industrial organizations, there are very few studies regarding the safety culture of schools. The role of schools is multidimensional as schools need to provide a curriculum-based safety education for pupils. Secondly, in schools, the age distribution is heterogeneous including adults who are responsible for a group of young children (Somerkoski & Lindfors, 2018). Moreover, an analysis of the organization’s safety culture is not unambiguous; safety is often non-visible until it is lost (Hollnagel, 2017).

The study aims to establish an applicable method to assess an organization´s safety culture by making safety culture topics visible and reachable for every school. As part of the ONNI – Success in School Safety -project 2022–2023 on comprehensive school safety, the project researchers have created a pilot model, Systemic assessment model for safety and security culture in schools (SAMS). In order to answer the research question How to evaluate safety culture in Finnish comprehensive schools by applying the SAMS model?we analysed the semi-structured focus group interview data using theory-driven content analysis.

Further on, we implemented the model by grouping the topics to describe the most common features of a school's security culture (e.g. Vallinkoski & Koirikivi, 2020; Smith, 2016)  These topics were safety management, documents, responsibilities, the detection of safety deviations, the processing of safety deviations, practical training, safety competence, resources, the prevention of bullying and harassment, the prevention of violence and crimes, cooperation with stakeholders, and participation. We assessed each of these topics by implementing and applying the Hudson (2007) safety ladder model by grouping each of the topics into five levels: vulnerable, reactive, normative, proactive and resilient.

At the vulnerable level of safety culture, deviations cannot be anticipated, but if they occur, they will be managed on a case-by-case basis. The security culture is dominated by randomness and situationality. At the reactive safety culture level, hazard situations are addressed after they occur. The requirements of normative safety culture level are based on the contents on the normative documents such as the curriculum or legislation. In the hazard situation, the regulations described in these documents are implemented. At the proactive safety culture level, school staff has identified human-induced near-miss and risky situations and there is a clear concept of how to handle the deviations.  Finally, at the resilient safety culture level, the safety aspect is linked to all decision-making as a whole. By systematic action, deviations can be managed together. students, staff, and stakeholders are involved in the promotion of safety.

Data (n=10) for this research were collected from the staff of ten Finnish comprehensive education schools. We invited the participants for a voluntary focus group interview during the autumn term of 2022. The focus groups comprised the safety group members of each school, usually 4 – 6 employees, a few pupils, and a representative of parents. The themes for these separate interviews arose from the above-mentioned 12 topics that describe the safe and secure learning environment. During the interview, while one of the researchers was interviewing the group with a set of carefully written questions, the other researcher took care of the technical issues, such as recording. In the preliminary analysis of the transcribed interviews, we found 497 (n=497) text passages that contained safety or security contents. We call these text passages meaning units. Further on, we used NVivo-programme for qualitative data analysis to develop a list of initial codes and to organize these into a coding tree. Each meaning unit was analysed separately and connected into one or more of five main categories. In this process, two additional codes were added: wishful thinking (describing safety culture in some other place) or the future) and safety planning (describing safety actions in the future) These two groups were left out from the analysis.

Based on the preliminary data, it seems that the reactive level is dominating the safety culture talk in the schools as 43% (n=214) of the meaning units analysed were placed on a vulnerable or a reactive level. Our second finding is that the school staff considers safety culture as an invisible phenomenon, hidden among all manner of other work accomplished at school. We found this normative level in 41 % (n=205) of the cases. Schools comply with the safety aspects of the curriculum and legislation but the approach is still more reactive than proactive. In particular, it seems that the manner in which the school staff handles and monitors safety deviations, reflects the safety culture. To reach the proactive level, schools must systematically identify the risks and utilize the information on the near-miss cases for preventive actions. This happened very seldom in the schools that participated in this study, as only 13% (n=64) of the safety talk was at a proactive level. Furthermore, participation and communality represent the resilient level of safety culture where security is a priority in all school activities proactively. However, only 3 % of the meaning units were consistent with the resilient level of safety culture. Most of school´s safety lies on headmaster´s shoulders. Their professional work is two-fold – they have to work with the safety-related resources provided by the higher management and on the other hand, they lead an everyday safety culture for all the actors. Finally, here the group participating in the focus group interviews was not homogenous and individual differences may be significant. These differences could have been examined in an individual or a micro level study. Regardless, a meso level safety culture represents quite well the general safety culture that comprises a group of individuals wo work and interact together in schools.

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