Context for joining Behaviour Hubs
Stobhillgate First School is a small first school of around 150 pupils, located in the market town of Morpeth, Northumberland. Despite Morpeth being an affluent area, the school is located in a deprived pocket of Morpeth and the children that attend come from a wide range of economically diverse backgrounds. This includes a number of children who come from low-income families, generational unemployment, social services and Early Help involvement.
Our challenge is to ensure we provide equality of opportunity for all children by ensuring those from low starting points are provided with the best possible support and interventions to enable them to succeed, whilst also providing an aspirational challenge for pupils who come to school more socially and academically ready.
In the Stobhill Ward:
- 72.1% of children living in poverty in Stobhill are from working families
- 74% privately owned homes, 15% social rented and 9% private rented
- There is a new build development in the area which should ultimately increase pupil numbers. This year the birth rate for 0-1-year-olds more than doubled in the catchment area from, 30 to 64.
The schools defining principles of excellence, inspiration, collaboration and empathy are at the heart of everything we do. At Stobhillgate First School, we are passionate about developing the whole child and nurturing a love for learning. Our pupils flourish socially and academically.
We are a small school with a big heart and our pupils, staff and families are important parts of our ‘Stobhillgate family.’
Behaviour challenges and goals
We needed to create a new behaviour policy that:
- Was age appropriate (nursery to year 4)
- Simple to understand for all stakeholders
- Placed a greater focus on positive praise rather than overly complicated sanctions
- Gave staff the required structures/training to teach behaviour.
The behaviour of children at Stobhillgate has never been a concern. However, we felt that it could be even better. Therefore, one of our main challenges was outlining the need for change. Over the last 4 years the school has undergone rapid significant changes in all areas (staffing, curriculum, organisations etc.). It was important that this was not viewed as unnecessary change and that all stakeholders saw the clear benefits. This ‘buy-in’ would be essential to ensure the policy achieve our aspirational objectives.
Solutions to behaviour challenges
In order to achieve this we completed the following actions:
- Accessed high quality training via the Behaviour Hubs programme and disseminated this to staff. We particularly focussed on the research of Tom Bennett in which he emphasied of the importance of ‘teaching behaviour’
- We conducted a staff survey to find out what they felt about behaviour in school. This gave mixed pictures and highlighted a lack of typicality
- As a senior Leadership team we conducted a wide range of research, involving visits to other schools. The work of Dixon Academy particularly resonated and we decided that micro-scripts would play a central role in our new behaviour policy
- We used these finding to create our new behaviour policy, which included an attached detailed list of micro-scripts (moving around school, coming into assembly, going from the carpet to the table etc.)
- We then carried out a rigorous quality assurance process in which a range of stakeholders took time to challenge the new policy. This included staff, SLT and the school improvement partner
- The policy was then shared with staff during a training day. This allowed for the philosophy behind the policy to be explained
- The policy was then launched in school. The Head teacher led a whole school assembly in which the policy was explained
- Each week the school focussed on a new micro-script. This allowed the pupils to be taught the new behavioural skill and to perfect it over the week. It also allowed the policy to remain high profile throughout school.
Impact on behaviour
The new behaviour policy has had a wide range of positive outcomes:
- All pupils in school can now articulate the 2 school rules (work hard and be kind)
- There is a now a systematic approach for the management of behaviour throughout school. Individual classes/teachers are not using their own approaches
- Staff survey indicates that staff claim behaviour has improved on a whole school level as a result of the new policy
- The new policy has removed the need for golden time and as a result given staff one more hour for curriculum delivery
- Pupils are very passionate about the new rewards, particularly the introduction of ‘class champion’. This reward has also been very well received by parents/carers and has provided a natural tool to discuss positive behaviour.
Next steps on your behaviour journey
Our next steps are to continue using the new policy until the end of the Summer term (July 2022) and then conduct a second round of consultations prior to making adaptions for a September 2022 relaunch. We believe our behaviour policy should never to static but should rather flex to the needs of our children currently in our care.
We also plan to work with our Trust SEND Leader to consider how the policy can be adapted for children with particular needs.
We also intend to use signage throughout school to promote our schools values, to enable them to become ever present and very much part of our school narrative.