South African schools are constantly faced with evolving needs and challenges characterised by change. As in other countries, schools in South Africa encounter pressure to ‘produce more for less’ and at the same time to achieve certain goals and standards. Transforming schools into inviting institutions requires a paradigm shift among the prin cipals and staff. The International Alliance for Invitational Education views invitational education (IE) as a means of changing class rooms into inviting places and altering the climate at schools. I focus on the way in which a primary school in Gauteng province , which received the prestigious Invitational Education award for being inviting, succeeded in adhering to the assumptions of IE. In a qualitative investigation I explored the principal and educators’ perceptions of the way in which the school adhered to the four IE assumptions.