What good schools try to cultivate early, and what shows up in the workplace later – an educator’s reflection

At a retreat I led recently for mothers, aunties, sisters and pastors, many of whom had moved to the UK from Nigeria in recent years, one theme kept resurfacing as we talked about supporting children through school. It wasn’t only about timelines or exam boards. It was also about culture and the quiet adjustment of moving between two ways of understanding what a good education and a good upbringing actually look like.

Two ways of doing things

Many parents in the room grew up with parents and teachers who were really strict, especially in Nigeria. A culture where children did not question adults. Respect for elders and for authority was simply how things worked, and it produced a great deal of what those parents carry with them now: discipline, resilience, and a strong work ethic.

UK culture often looks different. Children are encouraged to ask questions. The national curriculum encourages an inquiry-based approach, and pupils are encouraged to think critically and challenge concepts rather than simply absorb them passively. Creativity is prized. Confidence and speaking up are valued. Emotional wellbeing is treated as sitting alongside academic achievement, not separate from it. I recognise that not all schools encourage these approaches, with many placing a greater emphasis on academic achievement and grades. However, that is a discussion for another time.

Neither approach is inherently wrong; they simply encourage different strengths and ways of thinking. One may place greater emphasis on discipline, respect, and responsibility, while the other may foster confidence, curiosity, and independent thinking. Many parents and educators are now raising and teaching children who need both the discipline and respect instilled at home and the confidence and curiosity encouraged by nurturing schools in the UK.

Holding on to the best of where you come from while learning to navigate where you are now is the real work. Yet, this tension is not always openly discussed.

A tension that follows into adulthood

This tension does not stay in the classroom. Even as adults, I have heard Nigerian-born professionals say that some of their colleagues born in the diaspora do not hold as many qualifications as they do, yet are outspoken, confident, and able to build rapport easily and, as a result, have accessed certain rooms and opportunities that have felt harder to reach.

This is not to say Nigerian-born adults have not accessed those same tables. Many have gone on to receive multiple promotions after entering the UK, US, UAE and even Canada, carried there by ability, grit, competence, work ethic and sheer determination to go for it. That story deserves just as much airtime as the other one.

But it is worth naming the pattern, because the same confidence and willingness to speak up that some good UK schools cultivate in children early on is often the very thing that opens doors later in adult life. If that is true, then encouraging children to ask questions, voice their opinions, and speak with confidence in the classroom is not a departure from who we are. It may be one of the most practical gifts we can give them for the rooms they will walk into as adults.

There are other layers to this conversation worth exploring another time – confidence is not the same as competence, and the workplace dynamics here are more complicated than any one explanation can capture. But it felt important to name it here, in the same breath as the conversation about school, because the two are more connected than we often admit.