Longbenton High School

Context for joining Behaviour Hubs

Longbenton High School is a highly aspirational, truly comprehensive 11-18 secondary school of around 1,000 students in North Tyneside. We serve a community that sees both affluence and deprivation (around 35% SEND and 30% PP); our ambition is to level the playing field by unlocking the potential of all children and removing barriers to aspiration. Our purpose as a school is to increase opportunities and improve outcomes for all, based on principles of social mobility, belonging and inclusion. A new headteacher from 2020 and reshaped leadership team from 2022 set about making changes to school culture and behaviour and reward systems in order to make this ambition a reality.

Our most recent Ofsted inspection in 2022, when we moved from RI to Good, illustrates how rapidly we have changed and improved in the last few years. We are a growing school: we have shifted historic admissions patterns and are now heavily oversubscribed; we have become a school of first choice for many parents including those outside of our catchment area.

The Behaviour Hubs programme provided the opportunity to rationalise the work we had implemented since 2020 but also to ensure that our overarching goal – to build a school culture with meaning, purpose and belonging – was met.

Behaviour challenges and goals

Students:

• Students behave with consistently high levels of respect for others
• They play a highly positive role in creating a school environment in which commonalities are identified and celebrated, difference is valued and nurtured, and bullying, harassment and violence are never tolerated
• Students make a highly positive, tangible contribution to the life of the school and the wider community
• Students have high attendance; they come to school on time and are punctual to lessons.

Staff:

• Staff and students maintain an ordered environment
• High demands and expectations for student behaviour; rules are clear and applied consistently across the school
• Capacity to respond early is increased; proactive pastoral work rather than response to crisis
• There is an improvement in the shared understanding by staff of what is meant by ‘good behaviour’
• Staff better understand triggers, are trained to use the ‘invisible ladder’ of consequences and there is an improvement in staff confidence and resilience to deal with SEMH
• The school consistently promotes the extensive personal development of pupils
• The school goes beyond the expected, so that pupils have access to a wide, rich set of experiences. Opportunities for pupils to develop their talents and interests are of exceptional quality.

Community:

• Meaningful and strong relationships and engagement with parents, families and the community
• Trust, respect and understanding in both directions between school and community
• Communication and support for families struggling with PDB is improved
• Increased motivation and engagement; reduction in internal truancy rates.

SIP visit – “The student panel was very positive about the staff who are involved with pastoral work and how the school is developing their approach and strategies to tackle this different behaviour trend. Students felt that teachers had adapted well to the increase in challenging behaviour in the classroom.”

• An increase in suspensions and rates of permanent exclusion following Covid disruption (our school faced more disruption with the highest rates of Covid in the 21-22 academic year)
• A corresponding increase in low level persistent disruptive behaviour and internal truancy (which account for 40% of behaviour incidents across the school).

Developing a consistent approach to how staff dealt with challenging behaviour (this was highlighted in our 2022 Ofsted report); ensuring routines for staff were explicit and simplified:

• Improving reporting systems from pastoral leadership to senior leadership and building an effective pastoral leadership team
• SEND staffing changes to provide more effective support for SEMH students and increased SEND need
• Ensuring all staff were upskilled in the use of inclusive practices and reasonable adjustments to support students with SEMH
• Establishment of new student voice and leadership systems and improving the balance between rewards and sanctions to improve a significant minority with a student feeling of disconnection / lack of buy in or belonging
• Improving break and lunchtime behaviour, the use of outside space and transition between lessons
• Improving communication protocols with parents so that they understood our systems more effectively and shared greater responsibility for improving their child’s behaviour.

Solutions to behaviour challenges

• We launched a revised vision for Culture for Learning and CPD to all staff. This started with a review of current practice and what staff felt needed to improve. PACE was eventually identified as a tool to support the CPD which was delivered by a local educational psychologist
• New student voice and student leadership systems were developed to improve student voice/buy in; we developed and rebranded our house captain ‘team’ and relaunched the student council
• We implemented an effective tiered intervention system to improve inclusion and early intervention and track / tackle non-academic barriers to learning especially attendance
• Communication protocols with parents were developed which included a more formalised/systematic reintegration meeting system and processes regarding the follow up to fixed term suspensions
• New use of data analysis around behaviour, punctuality and attendance issues was introduced using Class Charts
• Evolution of the isolation / internal exclusion system to be more reflective and supportive, allowing students to understand their behaviour choices and make improvements
• Establishment of structure and systems for a new internal SEMH base to support those with EBSNA or disengaged from education; also, the redevelopment of SEND spaces to support different needs in KS3 and KS4
• Development of a system to prepare students for learning each day. This needed to be in a positive format to catch students doing the right things and demonstrating the KIDMAP values – ‘HERO’ (here; equipped; ready to learn; on time)
• Increase in staffing capacity within the pastoral and SEND team to support students inside and outside of the classroom; we introduced non-teaching pastoral managers and two non-teaching Deputy SENCO posts
• A behaviour working party was created to identify strategies that could be implemented to improve behaviour for learning
• We visited multiple schools within the programme and, after each visit, adapted our action plan where appropriate to consider the ways in which the good practice seen could be used in our school. We also gained significant ideas from the Hub Networking sessions and the Open Days

The following were key changes that we made throughout the Behaviour Hubs programme:

Line-ups

One of the first changes we made was to introduce line-ups at the end of KS3 (Y7/8) break and lunch. During the first Behaviour Hubs Open Day that we attended at Sedgefield Community College, they demonstrated how powerful Class Charts can be in analysing data and using this data to inform change.

We made adjustments to Class Charts, and it identified that after break and lunch Year 7 and Year 8 lessons had significantly more consequences and internal truancy/lates. We trialled line-ups initially to regulate students and ensure a calm orderly start to lessons. This has had a significant impact on reducing consequences after break and lunch. It has also allowed us to reinforce messages to Year 7 and Year 8 collectively once students are stood in silence. They are collected by their class teacher, and this has improved the transition at these two key lesson changeover points.

Sharing data

Again, at the Sedgefield Open Day they emphasised data sharing with staff so that they can see what has happened over the course of the day/week, allowing leaders to intervene early if needed. We developed a staff bulletin which goes out every Monday morning; the data represents the previous week. It shows both negative and positive behaviour which has been given by curriculum areas. Also in the bulletin are reminders about key behaviour focus for the week/fortnight. For example, it might be a reminder about our mobile phone policy and how staff should implement it. This has helped with consistency.

HERO

During the second Open Day at our Behaviour Hubs Lead School (Carmel College) we were introduced to a new initiative that they had just launched called PREP (Prey, Registration, Expectation and Prepared). PREP was checked every morning during registration and ensured that all students left registration with the correct uniform, equipment, and attitude to have a positive day. This was taken back to the behaviour working party in school and we developed our own brand linked to current issues we had which included uniform, equipment, and punctuality. We launched HERO in September 2023 and made changes so that there were two tutor contact points in the day (start and end). The first 15 minutes of the day with tutors is check in and HERO. HERO stands for Here (Attendance), Equipment (pen and pencil), Ready (students walk into class and start the ‘do it now’ task on the board) and On time (Punctuality). If students achieve HERO for every lesson then they can get up to 6 praise points a day.

We also introduced a HERO box for tutors. This included a tie, pens and pencils which tutors can loan students for the day. We have seen a significant improvement in uniform, punctuality, and equipment across the school with the large majority of students. Feedback from student voice has been very positive as all students who do the right thing every day are now being rewarded.

RESET (P4L)

One of the most significant changes we have made is our internal isolation room. Our data showed that the large majority of students who attended isolation were repeat offenders. The students found the work hard to access as they didn’t have the numeracy, literacy or prior knowledge to complete the work. The staff who supervised these students were the ones who had surplus time on their timetable and were not necessarily invested in the students for the period of time they were in the room.

Having visited the P4L room at Carmel College during a network meeting and observed resources and how they were used, we created our own RESET hub. The idea of RESET is to isolate students who have repeatedly failed to follow the school rules or a serious incident. This room is managed by Pastoral Managers who are invested in their year groups and have background knowledge; Thrive and PACE skills; and mental health and SEMH expertise. We adapted the timetable to include literacy skills, reflection booklets (based on the reason they were placed in RESET), English and Maths (IXL), communication skills and problem solving, resilience and emotional intelligence. This bespoke curriculum linked to KIDMAP (Kindness, Integrity, Determination, Manners, Ambition and Positivity) is starting to have impact in that we have seen repeat offences decrease.

Staffing – Pastoral Managers and SEND

We quickly realised that to have a significant impact on behaviour we needed to increase capacity within the pastoral and SEND teams. At Longbenton High School we have teacher Raising Standards Leaders (RSLs) who manage the year group. To support this, the non-teaching Pastoral Manager role was created with the aim of managing the day to day provision of a robust and supportive pastoral system supporting student welfare and behaviour; dealing with problems arising from the day-to-day behaviour and welfare issues. We also added an AHT/SENCO to our SLT team and added two non-teaching Deputy SENCOs to our staff structure to support the increase in non-diagnosed SEND and complex cases we had been seeing since 2020.

Impact on behaviour

We have been on a learning journey whilst on the Behaviour Hubs programme. The biggest impact we have seen is through increasing expectations of students, by holding them to account when they have made mistakes and rewarding them at every opportunity.

Our most recent SIP visit report stated: “Pupils are well behaved. This is the case in classrooms and around the school. The majority of pupils are friendly and polite to visitors. There was occasional lack of focus in lessons, but again, the vast majority of pupils were engaged in their learning and working well on the tasks in hand. This aligns to the school’s own self-evaluation that behaviour and attitudes are good.”

• Overall attendance has improved by 1% and PA reduced by 4%. We are currently just below national averages for attendance
• Opportunities (warnings) in the classroom have reduced by 25%. For Opportunity 1 vs Opportunity 2: on 3 out of 5 occasions, warning 1 was sufficient as a de-escalation strategy
• Internal suspensions have reduced by 46% during the academic year from Term 1 to Term 2
• Suspensions have reduced by 32.8% during the academic year from Term 1 to Term 2. There is a 8% reduction in the student population involved in suspensions from 20.9% to 12.9%
• Internal trackers show there has been a 34% reduction in the number of reflections over the academic year from Term 1 to Term 2
• Students’ understanding of clarity of behaviour expectations has increased by 23%
• Staff and students now agree that routines are easy to follow
• Praise points across the school have increased 8 fold in comparison to the previous academic year due to the introduction of HERO points and a new rewards system
• The current Year 7 cohort have made a fantastic start to the academic year and already show the values and expectations that we have at LHS. This is due to enhanced transition and effective support and training during the first 3-4 weeks of their time at LHS. Routines have been practised numerous times for the first time rather than just explained once.

Next steps on your behaviour journey

As a school we are going to continue working with the same Behaviour Hubs model:

• Action planning, reviewing, linking with multiple other schools to share and adapt good practice
• Enabling the pastoral staff to run a greater number of positive interventions
• Continue to embed the sanctions and rewards system
• Focus on attendance and punctuality improvement strategies through the Attendance Hubs programme which we joined in 2023
• Develop a school within the school model to support EBSNA, SEMH and Alternative Provision
• More professional development for Pastoral Managers and Raising Standards Leaders according to need
• Continue to improve systems to tackle internal truancy effectively and monitor the use of corridor passes
• Continue to reduce the number of suspension incidents
• Develop a strategy to reduce reflection incidents for highly vulnerable students
• Develop cultural onboarding for staff as part of their induction
• Continue to engage with Behaviour Hubs networking, CPD and Open Day events.