Highley Community Primary School

Context for joining Behaviour Hubs

The school sits in the locality of Highley, a former mining community, approximately halfway between Bridgnorth and Kidderminster. Despite being a rural locality, geographically Highley is isolated and is a fairly closed, ‘linear’ community.  In a recent Joint Strategic Needs Assessment of different stakeholders, Highley sat 18^th of 18 areas of Shropshire when looking at life expectancy and susceptibility to the cost-of-living crisis.  The survey also found that the community has poor access to health services and poor transport links which are also unreliable.

The community has a significantly higher % of households in the lower income bands (up to £30k) and there is a higher than average % of the village population with mental problems.

Highley Community Primary School is the only school in the locality, therefore 98% of our children attend from within the village itself and 95% of the children coming from a White British background. The locality is diverse with pockets of high deprivation reflective of a significant amount of social housing, despite being recorded as low deprivation in the school’s IDSR (this is masked by encompassing a much larger and affluent, rural area).

Notably, during the pandemic, parents and families did not cope well with the ‘virtual world’.  Available activities and support for young people, together with a lack of role models has reduced which has led to a rise in anti-social behaviour in the community. Contextual safeguarding issues have become more pervasive e.g. substance misuse and domestic violence. The number of children defined as ‘disadvantaged’ also rose significantly during the pandemic, rising from 17.4% in Autumn 2019 to 28% in Summer 2023, a 60% increase.  A growing number of families (and staff) rely on the Highley Community Project (food bank).

Behaviour challenges and goals

Over the 3-year period described above, there had also been an increase in the number of individuals presenting with extremely challenging behaviour. High-profile incidents had become more common, displayed by children who had not previously displayed any traits.  Following the pandemic, there was reduced support/back-up from parents when reinforcing expectations and inconsistency addressing poor behaviour School have also faced numerous challenges such as inconsistency in addressing poor behaviour and a lack of support/back-up from parents when reinforcing expectations.

School employs the ‘Good to be Green’ whole-school approach to behaviour, which had been well-established and embedded in its first inception some 6/7 years ago. Whilst the emphasis on children being able to ‘turn their behaviour around’ had worked well up until now, there was a need to freshen up our approach as staff recognise that this system does not work for all pupils.

Our goal through Behaviour Hubs was to better establish a culture of positive behaviour within our school as frequent high-profile behaviour was in danger of changing the behaviour culture across the wider school. Building upon our existing ethos of nurture and already strong relationships with children and families, we wanted to be more successful in managing the most challenging children and creating a behaviour curriculum with a focus on routines, consistency and developing appropriate rewards and sanctions.

Our hope was that joining Behaviour Hubs would additionally be a proactive vehicle to re-launch and re-vamp our Good To Be Green system so that we could implement positive behavioural culture change. Our ultimate aim was to create a school culture and atmosphere that was calm, purposeful and predictable for pupils (which for us has become even more important due to the chaotic and dramatic home lives of our families compounded by the covid pandemic).

Solutions to behaviour challenges

Learning behaviour in lessons was generally calm and orderly. However, times of transition, including unstructured periods (particularly after break and lunchtimes) were proving increasingly difficult with children struggling to follow instructions; some children did not feel the need to be in the classroom and believed engaging with their learning to be something they could opt out of.

As referenced above, there was an increase of children showing very high-profile behaviour and struggling to regulate. We also found that parents had become disengaged through the pandemic; this extended to supporting school in managing presenting behaviours. We needed to address the needs of the small percentage of pupils with the most challenging behaviours who were contributing towards a growing toxic behaviour culture.

Separately, although the behaviour policy and Good To Be Green (GTBG) system was an established system in the school, effectively implementing it as a system was inconsistent. GTBG is an effective way of promoting positive behaviour, rewarding those pupils who consistently behave positively. However, a number of staff focused too much on the punitive downward direction of GTBG (e.g. yellow and red cards) rather than using it to encourage children to ‘turn it around’ and get back on track.

We set out to implement our GTBG system and updated behaviour policy effectively and consistently through:

• Create systems that work across school which are manageable.
• Ensure that all staff, including lunchtime carers, have a consistent approach to employing the behaviour policy and use consistent predictable language with learners.
• CPD for all staff around positive behaviour management to raise expectations of learning positive behaviours within the school.

Visiting schools as part of the programme has supported us to reaffirm our approach to behaviour; we have been able to take ideas from every school we have had the opportunity to visit; whether this has been a primary, secondary or specialist setting.

The Behaviour Hubs programme paired us with Dunstall Hill Primary School as a lead school. This was an ideal match for us as a school as the lead school also utilises the GTBG system, which allowed us to immediately observe best practice. The staff leading on Behaviour Hubs from Dunstall Hill gave us fantastic support for how to best implement changes, always being on-hand for advice, recommendations and resources. Working with the team at Dunstall, we were empowered to strengthen our existing approach, and quickly realised we did not need to drastically change it.

Several of our staff visited school open days, hub networking days and CPD events through virtual modules – all supporting us working towards reestablishing a positive behaviour culture and strengthening systems and norms. A visit to an open day at a specialist setting was particularly memorable and staff left brimming with how to make approaches applicable in our own school.

Through the programme, staff from our lead school visited us and worked with the whole staff group to deliver CPD centred on emotion coaching. This was particularly beneficial in supporting staff to respond to those children who struggle to regulate and do not always respond to the GTBG system.

Impact on behaviour

From working closely with our lead school and visiting multiple open days across the region, we observed some of the very best practise, amending and adjusting to our very own setting.

These included:

• Changes to routines entering and leaving coming into assembly
• Routines for lining at the end of breaktime and lunchtime
• Shared, consistent language predictable for the children e.g. ‘this is a friendly reminder’ which has built increased confidence in staff managing behaviour
• Use of micro-scripts to support children to regulate (including introduction of a calm space in school to support children to do this independently)
• Review and introduction of a strengthened behaviour policy, including both a downward and upward trajectory
• Introduction of a ‘stop n think’ card as further stage before giving a ‘yellow card’
• System of rewards introduced to give more profile to those children who remain ‘green’. This includes weekly class raffles, whole-school golden time and the introduction of ‘gold’ and ‘platinum’ cards to recognise excellence
• Launch of lunchtime provisions to provide designated ‘calm’ spaces for those pupils who can struggle in the bustling lunchtime environment
• Formation of a pastoral ‘umbrella’ team of staff including a pastoral assistant, family support worker, behaviour support TA and Assistant Head for Inclusion
• Use of our safeguarding recording system (CPOMS) to log behavioural incidents to enable greater tracking and analysis of behaviour trends

The survey at the end of the project highlighted significant improvements:

 

In your view, has pupil understanding of the rules and consequences of not following them changed in the past 12 months
Worsened			Same			Improved	Don’t know	N/A
			11%	11%	33%	44%

 

 

In your view, has misbehaviour in and around school changed in the past 12 months
Worsened			Same			Improved	Don’t know	N/A
			22%	44%	33%

 

In your view, has teaching / learning time lost to misbehaviour changed in the past 12 months
Worsened			Same			Improved	Don’t know	N/A
		22%	11%	22%	44%

 

In your view, has clarity of the behaviour rules and processes changed in the past 12 months
Worsened			Same			Improved	Don’t know	N/A
				33%	22%	44%

 

In your view, has consistency in how and when behaviour rules and processes are applied changed in the past 12 months
Worsened			Same			Improved	Don’t know	N/A
			22%	22%	22%	33%

 

In your view, has your confidence in how well behaviour is managed at our school changed in the past 12 months
Worsened			Same			Improved	Don’t know	N/A
			22%	33%	11%	33%

In our Ofsted inspection in March 2024, the impact of recent work to strengthen approaches to behaviour was noted:

‘The school has recently adopted a new approach to managing pupils’ behaviour.’

‘Pupils understand what is expected of them and they appreciate the many ways to earn rewards.’

‘Pupils feel that behaviour in school is generally good and are certain that adults sort out any problems quickly.’

‘Pupils behave well across the school. Lessons are calm and those who need additional support to manage their emotions are supported very well.’

The school…are continuing to embed new approaches to improve behaviour even further.

 

Next steps on your behaviour journey

• To continue to offer and deliver high quality, personalised CPD for staff (particularly lunchtime and support staff), such as ongoing awareness of different areas of SEND e.g. sensory awareness
• Ensuring a ‘behaviour reset’ is built into the PSHE curriculum across the school at the beginning of every term (e.g. as an introduction to, or refresher of, school-wide behaviour expectations)
• To introduce zones of regulation as a self-regulation tool to help children to identify and use strategies to achieve self-control and emotional regulation