Context for joining Behaviour Hubs
Bugle School is part of the Aspire Academy Trust, a group of 36 primary schools in Cornwall. At the time of being accepted on the Behaviour Hubs programme, the school was graded as inadequate (May 2019). Since then, the school has been reinspected and was graded as good in all areas (July 2022).
Bugle is a single form entry primary school with a nursery. It feeds the Bugle, Roche and Penwithick catchment area. We currently have 183 pupils on roll.
Bugle is unique within Cornwall. It currently has 22% of pupils who speak English as a second language (Bulgarian, Romanian and Portuguese), 19% of the pupils are from the Gypsy, Roma Traveller community. 39% of pupils are pupil premium, 22% of pupils have SEND and 5.2% have an EHCP.
The school location deprivation indicator is in quintile 5, the most deprived of all schools (IDSR 2022). 94% of pupils are in the 0-30% most deprived areas of the UK.
Over the past 3 years exclusion rates have been high with roughly 10 pupils equating to all exclusions during this time. 4 of these pupils now access full time specialist provision with a further 3 children in the current Year 6 cohort.
Behaviour challenges and goals
Our aim was to develop a strong culture of behaviour within the school in which staff, pupils and parents understand the social norms that are expected of all of us. We want to establish clear values and systems that underpin this and highly effective relationships which ensure that all adults and children feel valued.
To support this, we wanted to create a behaviour curriculum that clearly outlines the expectations of adults and children so that classrooms, corridors, the playground and dinner halls are safe spaces in which children know the expectations. Coupled with this, it will ensure that behaviour is taught explicitly by the adults in the school creating clarity in understanding.
Our end goal is to ensure that every part of our school is calm and orderly so that pupils are able to learn and thrive. We want to develop pupils who have clarity in what is socially acceptable so that they are able to apply these skills in a range of circumstances outside of school and to allow them to develop into respectful, caring citizens. All staff are expected to build effective relationships so that they are able to adapt their strategies to manage a range of emotions and situations that might occur during the school day.
We hope that building this behaviour curriculum will ensure that staff inductions are highly effective and allow new staff members to have clarity in understanding what is expected of them and their pupils at every point in the school day.
The challenges were that staff might become complacent following the good judgement and not see the requirement for further improvement. High staff turnover with a number of fixed term staff leaving and 3 returning maternity leave staff meant further instability. Absence rates at the school remained high. This creates uncertainty for the adults and children in knowing who will be in school each day. A number of high profile, challenging pupils remained on roll within the school. Despite having EHCP’s and 1:1 support they continued to have a significant impact on the whole school.
Solutions to behaviour challenges
Exposure to high quality provision at Marine Academy (a Behaviour Hubs Lead School) ensured that leaders had real clarity over the changes that they wished to make. Regular visits to the school alongside visits to other settings (Broadclyst and St James) meant that leaders were able to draw on the experience of a range of leaders.
Ongoing support from the team at Marine has consisted of in school visits, leading training sessions for staff and just being at the end of the phone to answer questions. Exposure for leaders at all levels to high quality practice was also essential.
The resources and CPD events further supported every facet of our development of behaviour culture (rewards, SEND, attendance, alternative provision etc). These resources will also provide the school with a bank of ongoing CPD that will allow further development with new and existing staff.
Impact on behaviour
Being part of the Behaviour Hubs programme has supported the school in the first step of its journey to build a highly effective behaviour culture. The ongoing exposure to highly effective practice has ensured that we are able to witness this first hand whilst drawing on the experience of these leaders.
Ofsted said the following about behaviour in the school (July 2022)
Leaders have clear and consistent expectations for pupils’ behaviour. Most pupils behave well. Leaders provide help for a small number of pupils who struggle to manage their emotions. They make appropriate use of alternative provision for some pupils. This enables them to receive the support that they need to be successful.
Despite Ofsted recognising that the school works hard to ensure that pupils behave well, leaders recognise that more could be done to establish a long term culture of exemplary behaviour which allows all pupils to learn in disruption free classrooms. In addition, we wish to equip all adults with the skills to effectively manage the more high profile behaviours.
From working closely with our Behaviour Hubs Lead School and visiting multiple open days across the country, we observed some of the very best practice, amending and adjusting to our very own setting.
These included:
- Revisiting the core values of our school and ensure that these align with the mission statement. Making these central to every staff meeting, assembly and discussion with parents
- Developing a bespoke behaviour curriculum that clearly outlines at every interval throughout the day the expectations of the children and staff. This ensures that training is bespoke to these areas and that leaders have clarity over what we are monitoring and the support required
- Redevelopment of the schools positive rewards structure. This had become lost and the focus was to often on the redirection of poor behaviour as opposed to reinforcing the positive
- The development of a range of micro scripts throughout the day for staff to build consistency and confidence in our collective approach
- The purchasing of a data tracking system that allows leaders to monitor and closely track certain types of behaviours alongside the behaviours of individual children or year groups.
The school completed a number of internal survey’s to gauge staff and pupil perceptions regarding behaviour:
Behaviour in my classroom is (excellent, good, fair, poor, inadequate)
October 2022 – 40% – good or better, 30% fair
May 2023 – 75% Good, 12.5% fair
Behaviour of most pupils when moving around the school is (excellent, good, fair, poor, inadequate)
October 2022 – 40% good or better, 30% fair, 24% poor
May 2023 – 75% good, 18.8% fair
Behaviour of most pupils when in the playground is (excellent, good, fair, poor, inadequate)
May 2023 – 66.7% good, 26.7% fair, 6.7% poor
School’s core values on behaviour are clear:
October 2022 – 55% agree, 35% unsure
May 2023 – 81.3% agree, 12.5% unsure
I feel supported by the leaders in managing pupil behaviour
October 2022 – 30% agree, 40% neutral, 30% disagree
May 2023 – 64.3% agree, 28.6% neutral, 7.1% disagree
It is clear from the surveys that staff on the whole feel that the changes that have been made mean that they better understand the procedures and processes that are in place. They feel better able to manage behaviour without the requirements of a leader and the school is proactively moving forwards with creating a clear behaviour culture.
Following engagement in the Behaviour Hubs programme:
- 87.5% of staff now rate behaviour as better than acceptable compared to 40% in October
- 81% of staff feel the school’s core values on behaviour are clear (the remainder are unsure)
- The percentage of students who believe that it is “rare” or “never” that other pupils behave in a way that interrupts or stops teaching has increased by 16%
- Whilst exclusion levels have not yet decreased, from last year (17 in both years) all exclusions bar 2 can be attributed to 1 year group and 3 high profile pupils. There has been a reduction in physical violence towards staff. All incidents can be attributed to 1 year group and 1 individual pupil
- There is now a clear behaviour curriculum in place which forms part of all new staff inductions and is revisited every 6 weeks as part of the return from all holiday periods.
Next steps on your behaviour journey
- To continue to implement the behaviour curriculum with a focus on the playground and lunch hall
- To continue the momentum we have built and drive staff consistency with a specific focus on CPD for the TA’s
- To work with parents to implement facets of the schools behaviour policy at home to better support their behaviour at home
- To reduce the numbers of students who are excluded year on year.