Context for joining Behaviour Hubs
Moulton School and Science College is a popular and successful school serving Moulton and the surrounding villages to the north of Northampton. With 1400+ students, including 195 in the Sixth Form, the school is well placed to ensure continued success for each Moulton student, and for the local community which it serves.
Graded ‘Good’ by Ofsted in 2023, the school has a tradition of strong academic achievement, set within a context of care and support for each individual, and for the development of the whole child. It is this holistic approach to education, which creates a very special atmosphere and culture within the school, and ensures the school’s continued popularity within the local area.
At the heart of our ethos is the concept of an extended family, primarily founded in the House structure and designed to draw students from a variety of backgrounds and communities together.
We are constantly striving to be better. As such, we wanted to address some of the emerging issues that were presenting challenging behaviours and particularly increased suspensions and Permanent Exclusions across our Key Stage 3 cohort:
- Persistent low-level defiance
- Truancy
- Students out of lessons using medical or toilet facilities
- Self-harm
The current Headteacher has been in post since January 2020. The School is not part of a MAT.
Behaviour challenges and goals
Our decision to join the Behaviour Hubs programme was focused on:
- Taking the opportunity to visit outstanding schools who wanted to share best practice; and
- Understanding the potential solutions for students who continue to present challenging behaviours
We wanted to break a perpetual negative cycle of sanctions in favour of a more creative approach to ensure success both within and outside the classroom.
We also hoped to evaluate the ways in which our school-led interventions were having an impact on resolving SEMH issues to enable all pupils’ to access their full curriculum. Moreover, a key driver was the way in which alternative provision could be targeted more effectively. Alternative Provision across the county is a significant barrier (and cost) when considering the best ways to meet pupils’ needs.
This has involved the following:
- Strategic overview of SLT and capacity within roles
- Revised systems and procedures based on knowledge gained throughout the programme which allow:
- pupils to manage and change their behaviours effectively, and to develop behaviour self-regulation and access their learning successfully
- staff to develop a positive approach to language and managing challenging behaviours
- Working with staff to understand their perceptions of behaviour and ways to ensure consistency of approach
Joining the Behaviour Hubs programme afforded the Leadership Team the opportunity for high-quality reflection time, to visit schools that had tackled some of these challenges successfully, and to consider solutions at Moulton.
Solutions to behaviour challenges
There was a number of areas identified in the initial action plan that we wanted to address. These included:
Strategic Capacity and Staffing
- Recruitment of Deputy Headteacher – Pastoral
- Additional TLRs (Wellbeing, EDI and Anti bullying)
- Recruitment of Behaviour Mentor
Parental Engagement and Communication
- Improving parental engagement via letters and other forums including social media
- Additional Information Evenings and Tutor Evenings
- Improving communication to parents around expectations and rewards
- Improving the Transition process and communication with Primary Schools
Training
- Whole Staff INSET
- NPQs for SLT and Middle Leaders
- Training for Pastoral Leaders
- Workshops for teachers and support staff to target specific behaviours
Policies and Procedures
- New Positive Behaviour Policy
- Understanding job roles across B&A, Inclusion and Safeguarding
- Approach to QA including external reviews, learning walks, and department led audits
- Use of data and tracking of targeted intervention
- Ensuring data is accessible to pastoral team, middle leaders and teachers
The Senior Leadership Team (particularly DHT and AHTs for Behaviour and Attitudes, Inclusion, and Safeguarding and Attendance) have worked together to implement the necessary changes needed to improve the learning culture across the organisation.
Working collaboratively alongside the Behaviour Hubs programme has helped senior leaders gain an insight into the available solutions to some of the issues Moulton School was experiencing. Most notably, the ability to network, view and share best practice across a number of educational settings.
We have made considerable progress in developing new strategies to meet the needs of those pupils who were demonstrating highly challenging behaviours. We have also developed and honed the targeted interventions we offer to ensure that all reasonable adjustments are made to support students’ needs.
Impact on behaviour
As our expectations and procedures have been clarified (and raised) we have seen the number of sanctions and suspensions rise. There has been a ‘spike’ in Year 8 which is vastly different to the patterns of poor behaviour we have seen across other year groups. We have also seen an increase in multiple suspensions for a small number of children in Years 8 and 9. Since participating in the programme staff have reported increased clarity around what MSSC mean by, “good behaviour”.1
Senior Leaders have worked hard with Pastoral teams to ensure all reasonable adjustments have been implemented to decrease truancy and defiance. Support for SEND, those students with EHCPs, and mental health and anxiety has been a focus of this work along with the use of appropriate AP, the use of EHAs, and close positive engagement with pupil voice and parents.
A large pastoral team provides many layers of intervention and support to ensure our young people have access to the best care and guidance:
- Senior Pastoral Leadership x 4
- Pastoral Team x 10
- Hub x 3
- Medical Officer x 1
- Attendance Officers x 2
- School Counsellor and Commander Joes x 2
- SEN support
- Safeguarding Team x 2 D-DSLs
Together clear impact of the work of the above team, deploying a more coordinated approach, can be seen. Staff report greater clarity amongst students of the consequences of poor behaviour. A recent external review of Behaviour noted that these strategies have made clear improvements in the culture of behaviours seen across the school. Inspectors reported:
- Pupils said they felt safe everywhere in the school
- Pupils noted the importance of their Life Skills lessons when learning about positive behaviours
- No low-level disruption was seen in lessons
- Social times were orderly and there was lots of evidence of cooperative play and structure (for example queueing up for food independently.)
As a consequence of the increased capacity in our leadership team, new initiatives such as our ‘Golden Tickets’ have ensured that the positive elements of our behaviour policy have been increased at the same time as we have increased expectations. We have also been able to increase our quality assurance and learning walks around the school owing to the increase in capacity. This has led to an increase in leadership’s ability to be responsive to emerging issues or concerns. School staff report greater visibility of senior staff around the school with the number of negative responses to that question halving as a result of the changes made.
Next steps on your behaviour journey
Having completed the Behaviour Hubs programme, Moulton School plans to continue our journey by:
- Re-writing Positive Behaviour Policy and T&L Policy ready for relaunch in September
- Improving our attendance strategy
- Reducing persistent absenteeism
- Developing the REWARDS system further and providing greater visibility for students to get ‘caught’ doing the right things
- Continuing to develop the interventions available to the academy
- Launch of new onsite facility
- Complete in-depth data reviews and analysis to inform best practice
- Monitor and review the implementation of new behaviour expectations