Context for joining Behaviour Hubs
Rainhill High School is a large secondary school (11-18) serving students from a wide geographical area. The school is located within quintile 1 but serves students from quintile 3. The school intake comes from 40+ primary schools. The school PAN has increased significantly over the past 5 years 240 to 310 per year group) and this has brought about some significant capacity challenges; both physical and from a staffing perspective.
The 2023 Ofsted report indicated that Behaviour was good;
“Leaders have appropriate systems in place to support staff in managing pupils’ behaviour. This means that pupils’ learning is rarely disrupted by the behaviour of their peers.”
LA reviews indicate that behaviour, attendance and PD are strengths of the school
Behaviour challenges and goals
Our goal was to receive support to develop our school behaviour and culture. Various stakeholders, including Ofsted, had reported that this area of school was ‘good’ however, we wanted to improve in this area of school to allow us to match our vision ‘in pursuit of excellence’.
We wanted to create clear a calm and orderly school site, where learning is maximised through minimising disruption. The increased PAN has resulted in split break and lunch times, this has been accompanied by increased levels of disruptive behaviour and a general feeling that a reset was required.
The vision of the school and the core values (learn, think, contribute and care) were already present but they were not used effectively to promote the culture of the school. The aim was to utilise this as our starting point to create the school ethos that staff and students deserve, this would be evident in all relationships (staff/staff, student/staff, and student/student).
There was a general feeling, confirmed by staff and student voice, that rules were not clearly understood by all stakeholders. We wanted to create a school were students, teachers and parents/carers are clear about the behaviour expectations and the culture that we are trying to create. In turn, our aspiration was to ensure expectations and subsequent consequences are clearly known and understood.
All members of the Senior Leadership Team held the desire to create a working environment in which teachers can teach and learners can learn; a positive culture was obviously required to achieve this but there must also be clear systems in place to provide staff with the confidence that they will be supported.
We wanted to create a bespoke series of interventions that could be applied rapidly based upon the behaviour data that already existed. The aim was to reduce the frequency of events that disrupted teaching and learning.
We wanted to develop a high-profile rewards system where students that consistently behave and engage fully are championed and rewarded.
We wanted a culture where students are safe to learn, to want to learn and to be able to get on and learn, meaning teachers can teach. A school with excellent behaviour culture enables a focus to shift on great pedagogy and lesson content, which enables great progress for all students.
The prospect of introducing a whole school behaviour system whilst relaunching the school’s vision and core values can be daunting at the best of times, to do so with the increased PAN, shortly after the pandemic, created both challenges and opportunities.
The main challenges to the success of the project were:
- Not achieving ‘buy in’ from the staff body. Several staff voice exercises had indicated that staff were weary about the impact of behaviour on teaching and learning and the thought of another new initiative brought inherit risk factors.
- Selling the relaunch to the wider student and parent/carer body. Large changes to systems and procedures needed to be carefully planned and managed if they were to be successfully implemented.
- Capacity to deliver the planned actions. The pastoral and SLT team have faced continued capacity issues, both through absence and increased PAN, this obviously posed a risk to the success of the programme.
- Our ‘good’ Ofsted, whilst celebrated, did pose the risk of some stakeholders feeling that we are already good enough – leading them to question any change. This was identified as a potential risk factor and considered throughout the introduction of any new initiative.
Solutions to behaviour challenges
The Behaviour Hub programme provided myself and other senior colleagues the opportunity to access first class CPD, in addition to allowing access to other schools. Through a period of learning and self-reflection, we carefully planned our action plan to take account of our challenges whilst providing the maximum possibility of achieving the goals that we had set.
Creating a bespoke action plan and sharing this with the wider staff body was important to achieve buy in from the staff. We utilised whole staff voice activities, both quantitative and qualitative, to ensure that all colleagues were a part of the process; this was very much a ‘done with’ rather than ‘done to’ exercise.
Parents and students were consulted on their initial thoughts, and we referenced their viewpoint when constructing our new behaviour response. Visits to several high performing schools illustrated the importance of students knowing why they have to behave, rather than simply being told to behave, we planned opportunities carefully to incorporate this thinking.
We made the new Attitude to Learning (ATL) system very explicit. This was vital in both setting our expectations and achieving buy in. We recognised that parents and carers wanted to know how their children performed during the school day and students valued the opportunity to work towards constant recognition.
Access to colleagues from our lead school (St.Patricks) has proven to be extremely valuable to our improvement journey; the appropriate level of challenge and guidance has helped to ensure steady progress throughout the action plan period. Colleagues from the wider pastoral and SEND team have been able to access high quality CPD in addition to visiting several other schools, each visit has proved thought provoking and has helped to ensure that the wider staff body see themselves as a key part of the programme.
Impact on behaviour
Being a part of the Behaviour Hub has been instrumental in improving the behaviour and culture within our school. We are not complacent; we recognise that this is the start of the journey but there are distinct areas of success.
From working closely with our lead school and visiting multiple open/network days, we observed best practice in a number of areas and used this to develop systems and processes that are appropriate to our setting.
These included:
- The development of The Rainhill Standards – a clear set of non-negotiables that have helped to empower teachers and clarify expectations for students and parents/carers.
- The development of a clear ‘Behaviour Response’ pathway. Stakeholders are now clear on how poor behaviour will be responded to
- The rewards system has been relaunched and is now completely aligned to the new ATL system – students and parents/carers appreciate the link between attitude to learning in the classroom and rewards points.
- The development of a behaviour curriculum that is based around the core values of the school – this is an area that we recognise for further development.
- A targeted support programme for teachers, based upon the behaviour data provided by the ATL system.
- The development of a clear reporting system that aims to highlight successes whilst addressing poor behaviours through an agreed suite of interventions.
The data for suspensions has increased but remains below both local and national benchmarks, this is also the case for permanent exclusions. The number of suspensions has doubled, but current data (FFT Aspire) shows the figure for suspensions at 0.2% compared to 0.4% nationally. We have also seen a reduction in the % of suspensions for physical assaults from students, 30% in 2022/23 to 17% in 2023/24.
Successes include:
Staff Survey
96% of staff report that leaders are visible around the school site
20% increase in the shared understanding of ‘good’ behaviour (from 47% to 67%).
49% increase in staff feeling that students understand what will happen if they fail to meet the desired standards (from 32% to 81%)
21% increase in staff feeling that clear routines have helped to manage behaviour (58% to 79%)
79% of teachers feeling that rewards encourage positive behaviour across the school
85% of teachers feel that a whole school approach to behaviour has helped to encourage positive behaviour
Parent Survey (900 students represented)
87% of parents understand the ATL/behaviour system
83% reporting that their child is happy and safe at Rainhill High School
87% think that the school has high expectations of their child
Internal Data
The new detention system is effective in ensuring that there is a consistent approach to behaviour management. 100% of recorded disruptive behaviour now entails a sanction, this figure stood at 10% before we started on the Behaviour Hub programme. The next step is to reduce both the total number and number of repeat students.
ATL record – 80% reduction in callouts for students accessing the PSP interventions programme
Significantly more emphasis on rewards points (156604 vs 33541)
Next steps on your behaviour journey
- To eventually be a lead Behaviour Hub school, reflecting the fact that we are genuinely ‘In pursuit of excellence’.
- To continue the momentum, we have built and drive staff consistency so that all stakeholders are clear of the high standards that we expect of each other.
- To continue to offer and deliver high quality, personalised CPD for staff so that there is a continuity and consistency in the culture and standards.
- To increase the number and effectiveness of pastoral interventions on offer that reduce the incidence of disruptive behaviour.
- To reduce the numbers of those students in daily detentions – reflecting the fact that an increasing majority of students are demonstrating the core values of our school.