Context for joining Behaviour Hubs
Oxley Park Academy is a primary school teaching reception through to Year 6 with over 650 pupils based in the Milton Keynes area. The school has been split over two campuses for the past five years, where (generally) one class is taught in one campus, and two classes are taught in the other campus.
Over the last four years, the school has had a leadership change which has seen a plethora of changes to the school’s behaviour policy as well as the implementation of new systems. Oxley Park Academy was rated as ‘Requires Improvement’ following an Ofsted inspection in June 2018.
Behaviour challenges and goals
Although a change in leadership had introduced new behaviour policies, implementing these effectively and consistently had proved challenging. Oxley Park wanted to increase the consistency of staff embedding these policies across the school, and set out to achieve the following:
- Embed a consistent approach to behaviour policy and create systems that work across both campuses of the school;
- Ensure that all staff members are confident in behaviour management by embedding a strong behaviour and expectations CPD for support staff;
- Raise the expectations of learning positive behaviours within the school.
Solutions to behaviour challenges
To address the issues that had been diagnosed by both Oxley Park and its Lead school, the following solutions were developed and implemented during their time on the programme:
- Carried out ‘Routines and expectations’ training for all teaching staff to embed a consistent approach, delivered through a series of training videos;
- Introduced ‘FAB Habits’ – a series of positive behaviours which encapsulate the improved culture and ethos of the school – to communicate expectations to pupils. These cover attitude, manners, presentation, appearance, and walking;
- Increased training for lunchtime staff, since positive behaviour during lunchtime had been identified as inconsistent;
- Improved the school’s knowledge and implementation of KS1 behaviour approaches to increase consistency across year groups (the two behaviour leads at Oxley Park were both upper KS2-based previously);
- Behaviour monitoring meetings were set up for pupils exhibiting more regular or very poor behaviour, which involved behaviour leads as well as SENCO staff and other support staff where relevant.
“Pupils simply love their school. They really look forward to their lessons and live up to leaders’ high expectations.”
Impact on behaviour
The outcome of Oxley Park’s journey on the Behaviour Hubs journey has been significant. Staff receive regular and high-quality training which enables them to confidently teach as well as safeguard pupils. Pupils proudly share their achievements based around the ‘FAB Habit’ structure with family and carers at the end of each term.
Oxley Park received an Ofsted inspection in April 2022 towards the end of their time on the Behaviour Hubs programme – and the feedback they received is testament to the school’s hard work and dedication to creating an effective behaviour culture.
The school was rated ‘Good’ overall with ‘Outstanding’ behaviour and attitudes.
An excerpt from the Ofsted report can be found below.
“Pupils simply love their school. They really look forward to their lessons and live up to leaders’ high expectations. Pupils behave exceptionally well in class and around school. They are highly motivated in lessons and demonstrate positive attitudes to their work. When moving around the school and in the playground, pupils consistently show great self-discipline. Leaders’ work to bring about significant improvement at this school has been highly successful.”
Next steps on your behaviour journey
Oxley Park Academy understands that their behaviour journey is ongoing, and the school has the following plans to ensure that their progress remains embedded going forward:
- Embedding the ‘FAB’ culture with new staff;
- Standards and Culture INSET day to be delivered to all staff;
- Ongoing training for lunchtime and support staff;
- Creating and implementing a whole school PSHE-based Transition Unit for every year group (to be taught every afternoon in the first week of September as an introduction to, or refresher of, school-wide behaviour expectations);
- A curriculum of weekly whole-school behaviour focuses embedded throughout the school.