Context for joining Behaviour Hubs
Seer Green CE School is a one form entry primary school situated in a privileged area of South Bucks. The majority of our children come from professional and financially successful homes. Pupil mobility is fairly low, but where it happens, it is often driven by the selective secondary school system.
As a Church of England school our Christian ethos is extremely important to us and we strive to provide a happy and caring community in which each individual is valued and enabled to flourish. Our overarching biblical foundation is:
“I praise you because you made me in an amazing and wonderful way
(Psalm 139 v14, ICB)
We uphold this by creating a happy and caring community in which children develop a love of learning and where our core values of honesty, kindness and perseverance, as well as our school rules of Be Safe, Be Respectful and Be Responsible drive all we do.
Since completing the Behaviour Hubs programme attendance is now at 97% with persistent absence at 7%. 7% of our pupils are receiving external SEND support and 3% have EHCP’s. Whilst the majority of the school is White British, 7% of children are EAL.
There has been a well-established staff team for a number of years; all support staff have over 10 years of service; however, half of the teaching staff have been at the school for less than 2 years. The remainder of teachers have between 5 and 30 years.
Behaviour challenges and goals
Our goals were created around the six areas within the Behaviour Hubs model. There were:
Leadership and Management
- To develop a reliable system for recording and responding to behaviour, using an evidence-based approach to support such development
- To ensure that new expectations are clear and understood by all stakeholders
School Systems and Social Norms
- To agree and embed consistent systems and social norms across the school, both inside and outside the classroom
- To see a decrease in low-level disruption within the classroom
- Increased staff confidence when dealing with low and high-challenge behaviour across the whole school setting
- Less referrals to SLT (due to increased staff confidence)
- High-challenge behaviours receive more consistent and comprehensive action
Relationships
- Behaviour issues are dealt with consistently and kindly, children understand the expectations and feel supported to make better decisions in the future
- Staff understand how and why a restorative approach is most impactful, helping develop respectful relationships with positive long-term impact on behaviour, plus teaching and learning
- Improvement of staff wellbeing
Staff Induction and Development
- Existing staff are confident in the school’s expectations and the implementation of them
- New staff receive structured support to implement the school’s behaviour policy before they start at the school
- Regular discussions to review behaviour developments and staff confidence to help identify further CPD
Pupil Support
- All children can clearly articulate the school rules and what they look like in their class
- Children understand the school’s expectations and feel that they are achievable
- Children are clear and positive about the support available when making good choices becomes potentially difficult children are able to articulate the impact that bad choices have on others (wider picture)
The long-established members of LSA team were set in their ways and did not feel that they were responsible for behaviour. As a result, children were sent to the headteacher from the playground on average 3 times a week. Less than 40% of TAs felt confident to deal with misbehaviour in our baseline survey in September 2023.
Whilst there was little high-challenge behaviour in school, there was a feeling that the consistent low-level behaviours in the school were not being challenged, resulting in considerable lost learning time and a lower than desired level of respect shown towards each other and adults. 45% of teachers recorded that most lessons were impacted by misbehaviour in our baseline survey in September 2023.
There were different rules and rewards in each classroom, with each teacher having complete autonomy. There were no consistent rules or expectations for behaviour outside of the classroom. There was no clear direction for managing behaviour in the school’s Behaviour Policy. 67% of teachers and 50% of TAs responded that the teaching of routines was implemented to a small extent in our baseline survey in September 2023.
The initial audit, which was completed by all staff and recorded by different groups, showed that staff did not believe that leaders had an accurate view of behaviour. This was supported by a lack of tangible data, re: behavioural instances 2 cohorts were routinely behaving at a lower level than the remainder of the school and this was impacting the progress that the individuals were making in those particular classes – a small number of high-challenge pupils were influencing the general behaviours of the cohort, who’s own social norms were not at an expected level. Due to a lack of explicit behaviour management approaches in the behaviour policy, plus no method of recording poor behaviour, it was difficult to measure the true impact of behaviour, other than academic performance/progress.
Solutions to behaviour challenges
Throughout our participation in the Behaviour Hubs programme, the Headteacher and Deputy attended all of the virtual modules, giving them a secure, evidence-based foundation on which to plan and develop the school’s new approach to behaviour management. The Deputy Head took clear ownership for the implementation of the programme; he was able to discuss and share in detail where the school was at, the desired direction of travel, the progress currently made and the areas for continued development. Such feedback/discussions took place regularly – at least 2 each half-term; 1 sharing recorded data for behavioural instances. He was aided by the Headteacher, who had completed the programme with a previous school and had seen the benefits and positive impact that the programme had in another setting. Once accepted onto the programme, attending the sessions enabled the Deputy to better understand the rationale behind these early changes that the Headteacher had planned for and how to build on them.
The Audit tool was completed by leadership, teaching and support staff to give us a comparative baseline picture of where staff felt the school was at – perceptions in different teams, allowed us to adapt our approach to be most effective.
Visits to schools, especially our Lead School, Chepping View, helped raise expectations within the management team and provided a great example that the desired changes that we had planned were achievable. Jon Mason was a great source of support, always on-hand to offer guidance and rationale. Jon also helped with our staff ‘buy-in’ by accepting an invite to attend INSET where he shared his experiences of changing cultures in school, whilst also providing theory and evidence behind the behaviour management approaches which we were to adopt in our school.
Attending a number of networking meetings and open days provided access to a wide range of approaches in different contexts and provided the time to reflect on how some of these might be adapted to work at Seer Green. Listening to case studies presented by graduated schools particularly helped the Deputy understand how best to implement, evaluate and adapt our action plans, and importantly achieve stakeholder ‘buy-in.’
Once we had reviewed audit tools, surveys, and data we already had and attended the virtual sessions, we agreed the following areas to focus on:
- Review virtual sessions attended, crafting an action plan focusing on changing and embedding new social norms and routines in school
- Conduct a whole-school INSET day, dedicated to behaviour, where new rules, class systems and social norms would be collectively agreed upon, with clear expectations being set across the whole school. Provide our own evidence to support our approach, using Tom Bennet and Paul Dix as reference points
- Commence the term with explicit teaching of routines, reinforcing them in collective worship, with additional practical lessons on whole-school routines
- Utilised staff and LSA meetings to emphasise the importance of reteaching routines
- Senior leaders to consistently model positive praise to reinforce new systems and routines
- Introduce a new reward system for the children, using it to support achieving the desired behaviours in addition to regular positive feedback
- Provide additional training, supported by our Lead School, to develop the staff’s understanding of the changes and the skills required to implement the policy using positive praise
- Upskill the staff in the recording of consequence discussions after developing a new form to support both the staff and children in getting the most impact from these reflective/restorative discussions. This training was updated half termly in response to identified needs and half termly data
- Analysed newly collected data in detail, providing insights to staff, leading to quick implementation of agreed changes.
Impact on behaviour
Staff Feedback
- Staff survey results indicated a significant reduction in most lessons impacted by poor behaviour – from 40% to none
- Staff indicated that behaviour in school had not had a negative impact on their wellbeing an increase from 50%, with 10% indicating a small extent.
- 100% of staff indicated that recognising and rewarding behaviour formed part of our school’s approach to behaviour ‘to a great extent.’
- 90% of staff agreed that the new behaviour policy was applied fairly to all pupils (appropriate to the personal circumstances)
- 100% of staff agreed that pupils were clear on consequences should they not meet the expected standard of behaviour
- 90% of staff agreed that the new behaviour policy was easy for pupils to understand and follow
- 100% of staff agreed that teaching of generic routines and positive habits formed part of our behaviour approach ‘to a great extent.’
- 100% of staff agreed that setting a whole-school approach to behaviour formed part of our approach ‘to a great extent.’
- Increase in confidence among TAs in managing misbehaviour from 50% to 88%.
Children’s feedback
Feedback taken from a random sample of children, plus Sport, Eco and School Councils indicate that:
- 100% of children can say what the new school rules are
- 100% of children feel that the new school rules are easy to follow
- 100% of children understand why the school has high expectations of behaviour
- 90% of children felt that behaviour was good or better in our school.
Lead School visit feedback
‘Staff have clearly become empowered to understand and establish behaviour expectations and deal with unacceptable behaviour when poor choices are made by pupils and this has resulted in significantly less behaviour referrals to the senior team.’
This can only be the result of a committed staff who responded positively to carefully planned behaviour management CPD and coaching. Referrals to Senior Leadership Team (SLT) were almost eliminated and playground issues are now predominantly managed before children return to class.’
External evaluation from a Behaviour Hubs programme visit reported well-established routines and expectations, with children demonstrating respect and readiness for learning activities.
Data
Attendance has continued to improve and is now almost 97%.
Cohorts displaying lower behaviour showed a notable increase in children making more than expected progress or attaining higher levels in all core subjects combined:
- Y2 ‘at’ or ‘above’ exp 79% (was 67%)
- Y2 ‘above’ 10% (was 3%)
- Y5 ‘at’ or ‘above’ exp 87% (was 77%)
- Y5 ‘above’ 19% (was 3%).
Consequence Analysis:
- Number of children completing consequence/restorative conversations dropped from 32 to 26
- 26 of 213 pupils took part in consequence/restorative conversations
- 84% (22) of these pupils completed 3 or fewer reflections
- 38% (10) of these pupils complete just 1 reflection
- 19% (5) of where pupils are SEND or SEMH.
Next steps on your behaviour journey
- Continue explicit behaviour teaching at least once a term
- Develop CPD sessions based on feedback, focusing on enhancing respect between children and adults, ensuring a shared understanding of behaviour expectations
- Plan for re-visiting the Behaviour Policy and its implementation during September 2024 INSET – introducing/training new and returning members of staff, reinforcing the new approaches, celebrate the successes we achieved and communicate areas for development
- Step-up training for all staff, with regular revisits planned for staff to increase confidence, particularly for staff who have not had to action the restrictive physical interventions
- Continue to achieve marginal gains, re: attendance, continuing the positive upward trend in overall attendance
- Increase capacity within staffing structure for coaching conversations (add to SDP)
- Add ratio for praise and consequence (language) to lesson observation / learning walk forms.