Context for joining Behaviour Hubs
Calthorpe Park is a large 11-16 grant-maintained school in Hampshire. The school is academically very successful and was judged as Good by Ofsted in 2022 in all areas. Since 2021 the school has seen enormous change including expansion, a new headteacher and a new senior leadership team. The demographic has been traditionally very high with small pockets of deprivation, however, with our growing roll this is shifting.
In 2023 staff morale around student behaviour was low with some staff choosing to leave
Behaviour challenges and goals
- To create a disruption free learning environment in classrooms where students can learn, and teachers can teach
- To ensure students school and all lessons on time
- Students are calm and safe during social time
- Create an increased sense of belonging for our hardest to reach students and parents to reduce internal truancy and improve parental engagement
- To increase visibility and usability of behaviour data for staff to enable them to identify patterns and support individual students more effectively.
- To gain staff trust by introducing whole systems of support which would improve behaviour.
Introducing rapid change successfully; shifting culture within the staff to create a more whole school approach to behaviour and lesson routines.
Ensuring consistency across a large staff body to ensure that students experience feels fair Bringing our parents and local community on board with changes which might be perceived as very strict rather than high standards.
Solutions to behaviour challenges
We used the Behaviour Hubs resources to audit how staff and students felt about the current behaviour and systems to support it. We were privileged to visit some outstanding Behaviour Hub Lead School Open Days to understand how schools with the same aspirations as ourselves had developed whole school systems to achieve them.
We had already introduced a ‘Disruption Free Learning’ initiative which needed embedding and refining with help from Tom Bellwood and Chris May at Challney Boys. We then identified a number of further strategies which we have launched here at CPS including a late to school (using the model from Challney Boys) and a late to lesson initiative. We have used the mentoring from Chris May to shape this journey and ensure that, despite the hugely busy nature of a large school, we didn’t lose sight of our strategic ambitions. The virtual training sessions, particularly those which focussed on change management and how to sustain new initiatives were invaluable at helping us to effectively launch and embed our new systems.
Impact on behaviour
DFL has become established and refined. The procedures around it are now part of the school’s culture. Staff report significant increases in the standard of lesson behaviour and that the system is easy to follow and supportive. At its launch, students received on average 6.51 referrals per head of the student body per day. This has reduced to 0.19 referrals per day. Despite a very wary and sometimes negative response initially from parents we have now had a number of enquiries from neighbouring schools to come and see it in action due to the positive feedback we have received in the locality regarding it. This system has highlighted some undiagnosed needs which had been hidden previously. We have also used one of our support days from Challney Boys to look at strengthening the interventions we use to support students who are repeatedly referred.
The late to school initiative has been essential in creating a calm and orderly start to the day. In the first week there were on average161 students late per day. This week this has reduced on average to 18. (A decrease of approximately 450%).
The late to lessons initiative has had a transformative effect on the school site during lessons, something that was commented on by Chris May on his follow up visit as markedly different from the audit visit.
We have launched a parenting course ‘Time out for Parents’ which has run twice and been heavily oversubscribed. (48 participants so far and another course booked for Autumn 2024). A number of hard to reach parents have engaged with this and it has been a huge success.
A member of staff and selected students have co-constructed a farm project which is coming to fruition this term. This has been a huge success with some students however some have disengaged. This will be consolidated in to an internal provision in 2024-5
Next steps on your behaviour journey
The new systems need constant input and effort to ensure that they don’t decline. As a school we have a new set of values and vision which will need embedding to endure a lasting culture shift to new social norms.
The focus for next year will be improving the quality of tutoring and securing the Calthorpe Character Education Programme, introducing some changes that we feel will improve it following its introduction this year.
Further work to support students who internally truant, focused on their curriculum, how staff welcome them into their learning and what they are given to do when they do attend class to ensure immediate success.
Fully establishing the new routines and practises around social time begun this year