Context for joining Behaviour Hubs
Eckington School, situated in Derbyshire, is a comprehensive secondary educational school catering to students aged 11-18, spanning both secondary and sixth form phases. There are currently 1240 students on role. The school serves the population from the surrounding environment.
Demographically, Eckington School reflects the varied composition of its local community, encompassing students from diverse cultural, socio-economic, and academic backgrounds. The institution prides itself on delivering a comprehensive and balanced curriculum tailored to meet the individual needs and aspirations of its student body.
The school was graded ‘Inadequate’ by Ofsted in June 2022 and since then has undergone a series of changes in leadership. The school has joined the Chorus Trust in April 2023 and appointed a new permanent Headteacher at that time. New in post, the Headteacher recruited a new senior team, appointing 2 external Deputy Headteachers a business manager and 4 new Assistant Headteachers internally from the school.
The school was already signed up to the Behaviour Hubs programme which was continued by the new senior leadership team.
The school launched a new behaviour system for all aspects of the school. Focussing on in class back-up systems, out of lesson commendations and corrections alongside the use of removal rooms and an isolation room.
The relaunch had a focus on personal development, and stakeholder engagement, to develop and cultivate well-rounded individuals equipped with the requisite skills and values for success in contemporary society. The school aims to foster an environment conducive to holistic growth and achievement.
In summary, Eckington School has been on a period of rapid transformation both in terms of leadership and practice in all areas of the school.
Behaviour challenges and goals
The goals across the year were to:
- Develop a new approach to managing in and out of lesson behaviours in school.
- To ensure that there was effective CPD in place for staff, clear communication to students and parents and the policy was understood comprehensively by all.
- To launch the new systems
- To evaluate the effectiveness of the new systems and ensure the process remained dynamic.
Implementing changes at Eckington School has encountered several significant challenges. Firstly, the introduction of new systems by a newly appointed senior leadership team in September 2023 faced resistance from some stakeholders who were reluctant for change.
Additionally, overcoming the pre-existing negative impressions and relationships some students held toward the school posed a formidable obstacle.
Moreover, an inadequate Ofsted report, utilised by certain parents to fuel complaints, further complicated efforts to instigate positive transformations.
Concurrently, families who had lost trust in the school’s ability to address concerns exacerbated the situation, hindering collaborative efforts towards improvement.
Furthermore, the issue of student safety within the school environment added another layer of complexity, demanding urgent attention and comprehensive measures to restore confidence and ensure a secure learning atmosphere.
Addressing these multifaceted challenges requires a concerted and strategic approach, fostering open communication, rebuilding trust, and implementing effective interventions to facilitate meaningful and sustainable change within Eckington School
Solutions to behaviour challenges
At Eckington School, we accessed high-quality training through the Behaviour Hub, with a particular focus on creating the norms in a school, routines and structures.
The behaviour hubs open days allowed the new Headteacher and Pastoral Deputy Headteacher the opportunity to reflect and develop behaviour management systems they had previously used into a model that was fit for purpose at Eckington School.
The open days allowed the opportunity to highlight good practice and discuss ways in which that could be implemented into Eckington School.
As a senior leadership team, we embarked on extensive research, including visits to other schools, where we found inspiration in the practices including to The Duston Academy, Mercia School, and Bedford Free School. Behaviour Hubs has allowed us to reflect on the benefit on this invaluable CPD and senior colleagues are continuing to go and visit other schools outside of the behaviour hubs programme to further this research.
The close work with our lead school helped support Eckington to develop at a significant rate. The lead school offered an initial visit to the school in the summer term of 2023 before the Pastoral deputy headteacher was in post This allowed an opportunity to benchmark where the school was at, set some success criteria and develop an action plan. The regular follow up discussions have allowed this to continue and adapt plans accordingly. The regular catch-up meetings between the link school and the pastoral deputy headteacher have proved invaluable supervision to see areas for improvements and strengths.
The lead school completed an audit visit in October 2023 which allowed a real opportunity to evaluate the launch of The Eckington Way, the launch of the new behaviour systems. During this visit the student voice feedback noted they felt the school was “safer, calmer and we are learning more.
To gauge staff perceptions on behaviour within the school, we conducted a comprehensive staff survey, revealing negative feedback and a lack of consensus.
We have continued to run our behaviour working group to gauge further staff feedback.
We have held reset mornings after each holiday. These have included briefings to staff and an assembly from the Headteacher and Deputy Headteacher to all students.
Weekly behaviour emails reminding staff of the key foci have aimed to improve consistency.
Impact on behaviour
There has been a reduction in Fixed Term Suspensions. The table below shows the data for HT1, HT2 HT3 from 2022/23 compared with 2023/24. In all areas there has been a significant reduction.
| 2022 /2023 | 2023/2024 | Reduction | |
| Term 1 – Suspensions | 279 | 128 | 151 |
| Term 1 – days lost | 653.5 | 218.5 | 435 |
| Spring 1 – Suspensions | 89 | 24 | 65 |
| Spring 1 – days lost | 200 | 26 | 174 |
| Total so far (suspensions) | 368 | 152 | 216 |
| Total so far (days) | 853.5 | 244.5 | 609 |
Current Suspension rate:
Whilst still above national the suspension rate in 2022/2023 was 46.8 this has been reduced to 12 this academic year to date.
| Current rate (Y7-Y13) |
Current rate (Y7-Y11) |
2022-23 rate | National rate (2020-21) |
|
| Suspension rate* | 12 | 12 | 46.8 | 8.58 |
Students with repeat suspensions:
Most pleasing here is that the new Year 7 cohort have had no repeat suspensions. The Year 9 cohort, which stands out, can be accounted for by 2 students who have been permanently excluded and one student who has moved out of area.
| Y7 | Y8 | Y9 | Y10 | Y11 | All | |
| All | 0 | 9 | 12 | 7 | 8 | 36 |
| Boys | 0 | 6 | 8 | 4 | 5 | 23 |
| Girls | 0 | 3 | 4 | 3 | 3 | 13 |
The Trust completed an Enquiry Visit to the School and highlighted the following areas of strength.
5 positives findings of the EV to focus on:
- Impactful new leaders have developed a vision that is based on research and there is clarity in approach. There has been CPD for staff to provide common language when challenging children that is based around positive behaviour management. Reminders and corrections are starting to have impact. Systems have choice built into them and there are opportunities for children to make a choice to stop issues escalating.
- Dual coding, excellent signage, planners, and simplified systems support children in understanding the new Eckington Way, this is generally understood by most children. However, there is more embedding to do to ensure there is a depth to understanding. Staff are positive about leaders, the support they provide and the intended approach.
- The reminder, warning and remove system is being successfully implemented. The same day detentions to ensure immediacy and certainty of consequence are giving staff confidence and providing clarity for children and families. The system is graduated and builds up to internal seclusion and fixed term exclusion this creates clear boundaries and outlines behaviour that is unacceptable. This has helped build staff confidence in the systems, which has been support by excellent communication by leaders on decision making.
- Increasingly positive interactions between staff and children are evidenced by the data on commendations and achievement points. The reweighting of the achievement points and behaviour points has supported children in having the opportunity to earn points back more swiftly than previously, and this leads to less escalation. The overwhelming majority of corrections in planners are written in the agreed, positively framed, manner.
- The children are positive about school and the changes that have been implemented, this included most of the children who have had sanctions put in place. The movement around school was ordered and relatively swift, with reminders given by staff when needed. The children spoken to feel safe in school and so do staff.
Next steps on your behaviour journey
The Trust Enquiry Visit found the following areas for improvement:
Key findings of the EV to consider:
- There is opportunity for positive reinforcement to be developed further. There is currently inconsistent use of the commendations with children feeling staff can often not give any out. There is also more clarity needed on how achievement points and then ATL will build positive learning behaviours. Children feel teachers do not use positive reinforcement well enough in lessons to provide children with historic issues with a fresh start in lessons. How all the systems for positive reinforcement work together needs to be considered so systems are clear to staff and children in a way that makes rewards achievable.
- There is an issue with children not engaging in lessons and there should be work on teaching and learning to make learning more enticing through lesson structure, activities, scaffolding and challenge. For some children they are disengaged with learning which results in them not being in regular lessons, this can take the form of being in AST, timing out, visiting the toilet, lesson removal, detention and internal seclusion. What this provision looks like needs to be refined to ensure these vulnerable children can learn either in the classroom or in other provision.
- Leaders will need to consider which elements of school they wish to tighten further or revisit to ensure they remain tight and which elements of school could be looser. For instance, some elements of the behaviour systems introduced (including punctuality), and the logistics implemented by the Heads of Year, could be more consistent with QA and coaching for staff needing it. Conversely, there is opportunity to loosen provision at lunch time to allow multiyear group events or activities with more equipment for the children to play with. Another area to potentially loosen would be the application of behaviour systems for children in the sixth form including whether they always need to be in school during directed study and whether they could have access to more toilets for instance.
Next Steps for Enhancing Eckington School’s Behaviour Systems:
- Enhance consistency in classroom expectations and the use of positive language and framing to foster a conducive learning environment.
- Ensure rewards are consistently applied to reinforce positive behaviour across all classrooms and student interactions.
- Implement strategies to promote respectful and courteous communication between students and staff members.
- Develop initiatives to reduce the incidence of verbal abuse towards staff, aiming for a decrease in suspension rates associated with such incidents.
- Provide ongoing training and support for Pastoral Support Assistants to equip them with effective skills for de-escalating and resolving challenging parent meetings, ultimately fostering stronger parent-school partnerships.
- Focus on further reducing bullying incidents through targeted interventions and awareness-raising initiatives.
Actions to Achieve These Objectives:
- Further develop and utilise the intervention planning grid within referral panels to streamline support processes for students displaying challenging behaviour.
- Develop a comprehensive rewards strategy to recognise and reinforce positive behaviors consistently across the school community.
- Conduct a review of the uniform policy to ensure it aligns with the school’s values and contributes to a positive school culture.
- Evaluate the feasibility and implementation plans for establishing an in-school Engagement Hub to provide additional support for students facing behavioural challenges.
- Convene the behaviour working group to collaboratively develop and implement next steps for improving behaviour management practices.
- Conduct a thorough review of the launch and effectiveness of the new behaviour systems, with the aim of refreshing and enhancing them for the upcoming academic year in September 2024.
- Ensure completion of the behaviour hub’s program to maximise the benefits of the training and resources provided.