Holly Primary School

Phase/Provision: Primary

Theme: Systems and Social Norms

Context for joining Behaviour Hubs

At Holly we have an enthusiastic and highly creative staff that fully embraces new technology and learning. Since Nov 2021 our school has been supporting another LA school in the development of its curriculum and leadership capacity. This is the fourth time in a number of years in which we have supported a different school.

Our school population catchment is 50% manual, 29% clerical and 21% professional; 56% of families have both parents in employment. This often requires them to work on a shift pattern which is disruptive to traditional family life. There are almost a quarter of children in school living with single parents or in a re-formed family. This priority area focused us on reducing low level disruption to learning across the school.

The school catchment area has experienced severe economic problems as a result of the decline of the area’s traditional coal mining and textile industries. Generally, there is a substantial rate of unemployment and overall skill levels and education attainment levels are low. Mansfield is the 25th (of 326) most deprived District in England as defined by the Index of Multiple Deprivation and the health of people is generally significantly worse than the national average. 11% of adults in the ward have higher education experience.

Behaviour challenges and goals

We needed to revise our whole school behaviour to ensure it was simple and consistent across all school of all of our staff and children. Our aims were to make this:

  • Simple
  • Consistent
  • Positive
  • Highly visual across the school
  • Important to all stakeholders.

Because of the changing dynamics of our catchment, we needed to refresh our behaviour policy and systems to reflect the needs of the children entering the school. This would also help us maintain our high expectations of children and staff.

Solutions to behaviour challenges

Holly has a dynamic and forward-thinking team in place who are driving the school forward towards its vision. We continue to be a school with an ambitious and successful culture based on a vibrant and stimulating curriculum that aims to ensure our children make good progress at the very least. Safeguarding firmly lies at the heart of what we do. We develop talented and motivated staff to deliver quality first teaching.

  • We prioritised the Behaviour Hubs training as essential. Senior leaders attended these events and quality time was prioritised to disseminate findings and developments back to all staff. This information was a key part of the school improvement plan and was consistently discussed as staff meetings and morning briefings. We were very clear the mantra that our curriculum delivery and outcomes were intrinsic to our positive behaviour policy and systems.
  • The initial Staff survey data indicated that consistency of the implementation of the behaviour curriculum was key. We used this information as a focus in the Behaviour Hubs programme to visit other like-minded schools and formed a network of support schools to share ideas across. We also entered a formal collaboration with another Behaviour Hubs Core School (Woods Foundation). This enabled two leadership teams across two different schools to self-evaluate and critically challenge each other throughout the process.
  • Visiting other Behaviour Hubs Lead Schools enabled our Senior leadership the opportunity to view best practice across different local authorities. This was extremely beneficial and enabled us to proactively be outward facing and open to new ideas.
  • For our Behaviour policy we firmly believed that an engaging and enriched curriculum enables excellent behaviour. The Behaviour Hubs programme enabled to use to formulate our vision deeper (encourage good behaviour and respect for others, secure an acceptable standard of behaviour for all pupils, promote self-discipline, prevent all forms of bullying, ensure that pupils complete tasks reasonably assigned to them, further develop positive learning behaviours). The materials from the Behaviour Hubs Programme gave us excellent tools and information to work alongside our staff to achieve this. This included sharing our policy with all stakeholders, redrafting it and then implementing over a trial period.
  • At the initial stage of the project, staff recorded the number of low-level incidents to help us collate data. At the beginning these percentages increased but over time normalised and then decreased as the project became more embedded across the school. Suspension data is at an all-time low.

Impact on behaviour

Being part of the Behaviour Hubs programme has enabled us to refresh our behaviour vision and expectations.

  • In the most recent Ofsted Inspection report (July 2023)  the following was written about the school – “Holly Primary School is a welcoming and enjoyable place to learn. The ‘Holly values’ are at the heart of this school. Pupils are happy, proud and committed to their learning. They live up to teachers’ high expectations of their learning and behaviour. Pupils try their best in lessons and achieve well…… Pupils behave well during lessons, around school and at playtimes. They strive to earn awards in the ‘shining star’ assembly. Pupils value the house points they receive for trying their best.”
  • We now have a much clearer, simplified behaviour system that has reduced low level disruption across the school. Behaviour management has risen as a priority to the heart of what we do daily. Children are highly motivated to achieve well, and we have strong positive feedback in parental and staff surveys.
  • Our weekly whole school assemblies are very popular amongst our parent group and children. The behaviour house point system is updated each week and shared across the community. This enables to the school to continue to form a positive parental relationship. These celebrations are mirrored within each classroom to create a common sense of pride, achievement and belonging.
  • Our whole school attendance has improved. The Behaviour Hubs programme has positively impacted on the community. Children want to be in school more and therefore their attendance has improved.
  • The initial staff questionnaire demonstrated a 70% confidence in the behaviour policy in the school, by the time the final staff survey was completed this had increased to 95%.
  • Leaders are empowered with a sense of pride surrounding the school. The profile of consistent positive praise has been improved/raised and the shared responsibility has followed.

Next steps on your behaviour journey

  • We will develop our behaviour curriculum so staff, children and all stakeholders can identify specifically when we teach key element of behaviour as part of our day-to-day high quality curriculum.
  • We are very interested in becoming a beacon school, alongside involvement in the Behaviour Hubs programme as a Lead School. We feel that that our behaviour structures and systems are at a point where we are now able to lead others. Our model curriculum promotes success and the next step is to proactively share this with other schools and showcase this on our school website.