Context for joining Behaviour Hubs
Dereham Neatherd is a 1170 pupil secondary school in a large market town in Norfolk. The town has limited resources, and the nearest city is 15 miles away. Many of the pupils at the school have parents who attended the school and remain living in the local area. Neatherd is one of two secondary schools within Dereham, that has a 27% SEND cohort (higher than national average) and 23% are disadvantaged pupils. Neatherd has an on-site SRB for autism, most of these pupils work within the main setting of the school assisted by specialist staff.
Behaviour challenges and goals
Goals
- Create a policy where teachers are able to work with their pupils to improve their behaviours in their lessons, encouraging conversations regarding behaviours and next steps. Staff have had a system where all sanctions resulted in a detention or higher, but that these sanctions were all centralised and therefore teachers had no autonomy on the sanction, and carried out no restorative or supportive work with the pupil. The system also used a letter system C1, C2, C3. Staff used these terms throughout lessons but with little explanation of the behaviour
- Re-establish a clear set of sanctions for poor behaviour, thus reduce the numbers of detentions pupils were being required to attend (or not as the case may be)
- Increase the sense of belonging of our pupils to the school community by requiring teacher actions for behaviours
- Heads of Dept required to provide support to their dept members who were finding pupils challenging, so being aware of behaviour issues within subject areas rather than purely focussing on curriculum and learning
- We wanted to develop a high-profile rewards system where students that consistently behave and engage fully are championed and rewarded.
Challenges
- Staff liked the automated detention system, so suggesting that we return to a teacher-based action was met with some resistance. Staff are still often using detention as their choice of teacher consequence rather than other more instant options
- Heads of Dept were not used to being involved in behaviour issues within their depts and again were concerned by this expectation on their workload
- The management information system we had used was replaced in 2022-23 and staff were still getting to grips with this, so when the behaviour policy was changed again in Sept 2023 there were issues with the processing of the information
- Staff needed training on how to deal with a behaviour rather than relying on the Cs system previously in place. Many had only ever used such a system (25% of staff have only been working in the school for 2 years or less).
Solutions to behaviour challenges
On line meetings, resources and activities provided us with the confidence to move away from the Cs system and return to use of real words in our behaviour policy and system – reminder, warning, teacher consequence, removal.
School visits various Behaviour Hubs Lead School open days and networking events attended by all SLT throughout the programme showed how schools were carrying out restorative work with pupils – showing that sanction and support could both be possible within the system. Use of mentoring booklets exemplified from a visit to Ashmole school, now forming part of our supportive process for pupils displaying challenging behaviours.
Networking meetings allowed us to share our issues and realise we were not alone with these and that establishing a sense of belonging is crucial to move pupils forward –excellently shown by our visit to Keyham Lodge SEMH school.
Visit to and from our Behaviour Hubs Lead School (Cromer Academy) giving us a chance to see what works in their context and then visiting us with a critical but supportive eye on areas we might develop. The idea that what works in one context wont always work in another was always clear from our Lead School, so we were allowed to develop within our own context and values.
Evidence based research provided by the Behaviour Hubs programme was used to reinforce the choices we were making in the fundamental shift in the policy.
All of SLT were involved in training so the message was clear to all about the rationale for the changes rather than just left to one member of staff in SLT.
“Development of a behaviour policy where teachers hold pupils to account but also build positive relationships.”
Impact on behaviour
Message received from a parent:
Dear Mr Mallett,
I wanted to drop you a quick message to let you know that since we communicated last year, Joe’s experiences at Neatherd have consistently been on the up. He has been enjoying his classwork, the relationship he has with his teachers and really loving taking part in school sports. General school life is also good, he has a settled group of supportive friends, the peer group that were the cause of some stress for Joe last year have quietened down and there have been no more incidences. All in all Joe is enjoying his life. Saying that he turns 13 on Sunday so…
My younger son Tom started with you in September and has found the transition to high school exciting and he is full of himself! Doesn’t stop rabbiting on about classes, teachers and the mechanics of Neatherd school life – all very positive.
Thank you to you and your hard-working staff for all your effort and commitment, it is very much appreciated.
This email highlights the aim we had about shifting the emphasis from sanctioning pupils to building better relationships.
A behaviour working meeting was held in Nov-23, and when asked about the positives of the system staff stated that they did feel that the changes had improved relationships with pupils – overall 23 staff voluntarily attended and 100% agreed with this statement.
We have seen a small 2% improvement in how pupils perceive behaviour in school and a 2% decline in numbers of lessons disturbed by poor behaviour but we have seen an excellent 24% increase (from 70 to 94%) in pupils stating they are fully aware of the behaviour expectations we have of them, thus showing the daily announcements, form time programme and assembly programme are certainly allowing our messages to be heard by almost all pupils. In addition, an increase from 44% to 57% in pupils stating the rules we have are easy to follow. This reflects that many felt they were often sanctioned unfairly. We have also seen a 10% increase in pupils being positive about attending school and an increase from 58% to 65% feeling a sense of belonging.
Feedback from parents suggests they are happy with the change in approach as so many felt they were being sanctioned by the number of negative emails they received and detentions their children were being expected to attend.
Some staff feel they is currently a greater level of inconsistency in approach due to the ability of staff to select their own teacher consequence from a range of options rather than a straightforward one size fits all option. There has been an increase of 5% in staff feeling leaders take action to support and a senior staff visibility and support remains a highly rated aspect of the school.
There remains a significant gap between pupil perception of being rewarded and that of the staff, as staff feel pupils are rewarded well, whereas pupils do not feel this way.
Next steps on your behaviour journey
Create a behaviour working party to review the current rewards system and develop new rewards in line with our school values, the new rewards tariff and guidance shared with staff in January -24 INSET day. This will then be shared with pupils via the form time programme and assembly programme. Pupils have been surveyed regarding rewards to ensure their voice is heard in this.
Continue to embed and clarify the behaviour policy and its use with staff, for example creation of exemplification of how to deal with common behaviour issues in school to empower them to act and thus improve their confidence in the policy. This includes SLT who also lack confidence in some situations.
Adjust the sanctions tariff in line with other trust schools to ensure those with more serious behaviours are serving a higher-level sanction (as appropriate). Sanctions also need to be more consistently applied by all staff, and therefore the tariff being shared will assist with this.
Reduce options for teaching staff to select from as their sanction for a poor behaviour (suggested in a behaviour working party session) but continue to expect teacher autonomy in this to continue to build the relationships between staff and pupils.
Continued training for staff in managing behaviours using de-escalation techniques and re-emphasise some basic classroom routines such as entry and exit routines and expectation of silent working as well as Lemov techniques previously developed in school.