The Culture of Schools and the Problem of Change was the first book I read when I was moving professionally from health to education. Written by Seymour B Sarason from Yale, it outlined his experiences of so-called educational innovations. The original book is old enough to be considered a ‘classic’, but Sarason kept writing into his 80s and his core assumptions did not change much.

Sarason’s starting point was that schools, and school systems, are subcultures of our society.