UTC Warrington

Phase/Provision: Secondary

Theme: Leadership and Management

Context for joining Behaviour Hubs

UTC Warrington is a purpose-built technical college for 14-19 year olds. The college opened in central Warrington in September 2016. 

Our key focus is to support young people prepare for the world of work, develop technical skills and to find meaningful careers. This includes apprenticeships, university, or employment. Partner organisations such as Sellafield Ltd and Manchester Metropolitan University worked together to create the UTC. The result is students have the opportunity to forge valuable relationships and experiences within the STEM industry in the North West and beyond. 

UTCW’s primary focus is to prepare students for a high-quality career within science, technology, and engineering. Students study academic and technical subjects through a range of GCSE and post-16 qualifications. We also offer students the opportunity to focus on developing their practical skills and to work directly with the region’s employers.  

Our dedicated personal development programme encourages students to challenge themselves by using their skills in Listening, Speaking, Problem Solving, Creativity, Staying Positive, Aiming High, Leadership and Teamwork in all aspects of their UTC career. 

Since it was opened in 2016 the UTC gets roughly a third of students wanting to be engineers. The rest of the cohort choose us as they want a fresh start, and have behaviour/attendance issues. 

Behaviour challenges and goals

The goals were: 

  1. To empower staff to take control of behaviour 
  2. To have form tutors and middle leaders be more involved with behaviour
  3. For having clear and consistent expectations of staff and students and that these become the norm in and around the building
  4. Building better relationships between students and staff
  5. Improve staff induction
  6. Develop a system to support students with complex behavioural needs.
  7. To implement a consistent routine to the start of lessons. We wanted students and staff to all follow the same plan that was easy to follow and removed any ambiguity

The challenges were:  

  1. Finding time to think about the implementation and also creating the minute-by-minute plans
  2. Ensuring it was implemented effectively and in a timely manner
  3. Getting staff and student buy-in
  4. Training staff
  5. Creating a training document that removes all ambiguity to enable consistency by all staff
  6. Dealing with students/staff not complying.

Solutions to behaviour challenges

  • Dedicated an inset day for SLT on the new process so they can work through this. Then the following inset day for all staff. Here all staff worked through the process together to ensure they all bought into the process and could see how it worked
  • Created a weekly slot every Thursday to discuss behaviour and the new processes. Also, an open forum for staff to share good practice or ask for advice
  • Created a bi-weekly CPD slot on Mondays for further support on what a good ‘do now’/starter activity looks like. How to narrate the positives, consistent approaches etc
  • Both of these training slots have also been used to talk about the least invasive behaviour management strategies when dealing with students who do not comply. A temperature check board has been created to see what departments need the most support. We launched it and pushed it every day for the first term. It is mentioned every week in assembly and is on posters around the building
  • A minute-by-minute plan was created and is shared with staff every few weeks to ensure the team remains consistent. Videos taken with staff of their entries so they can see how it works and how they can improve
  • We put various managers on mentoring training to ensure staff are getting the right type of mentoring. A mentoring tracker has also been set up to see the data and the progress each person is making
  • Going to various networking events/virtual modules has enabled us to see all of the above active ingredients are vital to something being successful.  

Impact on behaviour

  1. To empower staff to take control of their behaviour

Four more staff have moved up into the fairly confident option when looking at the new staff survey data. There are more consistent answers when we do the weekly behaviour CPD sessions. This will consist of behaviour scenarios where staff give their feedback on what to do in those situations. You can now see the use of scripts used more when walking around the building.

  1. To have form tutors and middle leaders be more involved with behaviour

Tutors were able to develop relationships with students and parents more effectively after the training was given. Tutors were successful in running behaviour reports and understanding what their data represented. This helped contribute to the fantastic outcome of a reduction of over 70% for students being removed at the start of a lesson (target was 15%). 

Sadly, we have had to change this to allow for out morning programme to be fully delivered within the time scales. Behaviour is now picked up at classroom teacher level first, then onto their head of department. 

There is a more consistent approach to the hierarchy now that HODs are involved. Staff used to go straight to the principal if there was a behaviour incident. Now it is managed at department level, then SLT and onto the principal. This has allowed HODs to be part of the behaviour and also take more ownership. HODs are proud when their behaviour incidents have reduced and are actively participating, sharing strategies they are using. This is a welcome change to the previous way of HODs would respond when discussing behaviour.  

  1. For having clear and consistent expectations of staff and students and that these become the norm in and around the building

This has been a great success. The vast majority of students/classes consistently come in silence and complete the task in silence. The use of ‘resets’ have now reduced students being removed, at the start of the lesson, by over 70%. The reset allows the students to get it right before the behaviour policy is used. Due to the success of this process, we have now started using this for every assembly where students now enter in silence successfully.

There has been an increase in staff stating that less lessons are being interrupted by student behaviour when completing the staff survey. This was originally 3 most, 5 some, 2 rarely, and is now now it is 2 most, 1 some, 6 rarely.

  1. Building better relationships between students and staff

There has been a 12% reduction in incidents where a student is angry at a member of staff for receiving a sanction. Staff are becoming more consistent with narrating the positive and using this to address poor behaviour rather than confrontational. Suspensions have not yet made the targeted reduction but suspensions for verbal abuse to staff are down by 28%.  

  1. Improve staff induction

Recent new staff feedback has been positive on the new staff handbook. They are able to quote the behaviour policy and the expectations of staff, students and parents. This has helped empower them to know what to apply and when to apply it. 

  1. Develop a system to support students with complex behavioural needs

We have had better responses from parents when their child has been suspended/sanctioned. This is due to communication only going through select members of staff. The old system used to have anyone, who was free, deal with the issue. This is also the same for meetings. This has created a 300% increase in parents emailing us stating that they value our support package, when in the past, we had negative responses or none at all.

Additional: 

Following engagement in the Behaviour Hubs programme:  

  • 91% of teachers now rate behaviour as better than acceptable
  • There was a 67% improvement in the number of teachers that believe staff apply our behaviour curriculum
  • 84% of teachers now think there is a culture of recognising and celebrating positive behaviour, this improved by 31% over the duration of the programme
  • We now have a ratio of 9 positive behaviour events to every negative event. Staff are encouraged to actively give out positives when students walk in and during the lesson.

Next steps on your behaviour journey

  • To create a quality assurance plan to ensure these processes remain consistently good. Work with the 5% of students who are still struggling to get it right 100% of the time.
  • A review in Summer term is needed. This is to assess the data and decide what improvements need to be made
  • The staff handbook needs scripts adding. These also need overcommunicating to all staff throughout CPD
  • Two staff need to be part of sessions with the students with complex behavioural needs. This allows there to be a consistent approach if one member is absent or out of the building.