Context for joining Behaviour Hubs
The Cowplain School is an 11-16 Comprehensive School with 962 students, 32 with EHCPs and 116 on the SEN register. We received an outcome of ‘good’ following our last Ofsted inspection held in 2018.
Behaviour challenges and goals
- To increase the capacity within our pastoral team to enable us to better meet the needs of our students, with a specific focus on reducing incidents of poor behaviour, improving attendance and rewarding those getting it right
- Ensuring our ‘Learning room’ was run with consistently high standards, requiring additional staffing to collect and settle students being removed from lessons
- To identify groups of students with poor attendance and use additional staffing to implement strategies to support them with improving their attendance
- Finding the required budget and personnel to increase our capacity.
Solutions to behaviour challenges
We joined the Behaviour Hubs programme in September 2022 as a core school working with Worthing school as our Lead School. After our initial visit to each other’s schools, and attendance at the virtual modules, we understood that we needed to find a way to increase the capacity within our pastoral team in order to keep up with the needs of our students.
Following our visit to Glenmore and Winton Academy in October 2022, and then to Worthing High School in November 2022, the decision was made to employ some more people to increase the size of our pastoral team. We had 5 heads of year and decided to create the role of Assistant Head of Year. We were inspired by the size and structure of the pastoral team at Worthing High and felt empowered to make some big changes having seen the structure at Worthing. We had 2 behaviour support workers whose roles could be updated, and so needed to employ 3 additional staff. This took 4 months to do properly, and required careful consideration of the role, advertising, and word of mouth. By April 2023 we had a full team of 5 HOYs and 5 AHOYs.
Increasing the capacity required that the teams were line managed carefully, with weekly meetings and clear sets of minutes ensuring teams are working consistently and effectively. The core priorities of this line management was to:
- Share best practice between the team members, raising standards for students
- Ensure consistency through the year groups
- Provide high quality CPD with a direct impact on student wellbeing
- Give opportunities for collaboration and discussion between our team of AHOYs, with a focus on continuous improvement.
New staff required training programmes and support to learn the role. All staff within the pastoral team underwent safeguarding training to ensure they could support our most vulnerable students. The teams each have regular supervision to support them with their mental health.
We are grateful for the expertise shared through the Behavior Hubs programme, and advice and guidance given to us by Worthing High School.
Impact on behaviour
From April 2023, each Head of Year had their own Assistant Head of Year. This has freed up HOY’s to concentrate more on being strategic, creating ‘Individual Support Plans’ for those students who are needing greater support to engage in their education, and having more parent meetings to agree acceptable behavior contracts. Since expanding of our pastoral team, over 40 ISPs have been written for our high-profile students across the school.
We are using our AHOYs to review and improve the rewards and praise used within each year group, with some year groups having weekly certificates for top students and others using stickers and a trophy.
Our AHOYs are also overseeing the attendance for their year group, working with specific groups of students and families to support them with attending better. It is too early to have specific data to demonstrate the impact, but we are rolling out a strategy known as ‘Milestones’ which highlights to students their attendance over time if they continue to miss particular days, and gives them specific targets to aim for.
Heads of year are very clear that this increase in capacity has enabled them to become more strategic and pro-active, intervening with individuals before behavior escalates and suspensions are required. We are confident this will be reflected in the data, by the end of the year.
Quote from a head of year:
“The students have been allowed more time and support. They are being cared for in the right way and we have been able to tackle more issues.”
Next steps on your behaviour journey
- Develop strategy and consistency with monitoring and supporting those with poor attendance within year groups
- Ongoing review of the impact of our Learning room (internal inclusion provision) and the early interventions in place
- Seek further strategies to further embed a ‘team spirit’ within the pastoral team.