Context for joining Behaviour Hubs
The Park Community School has 1450 students on roll. It serves a wide geographical area that has both an urban area, with pockets of deprivation, and a rural, coastal dimension and catchment. Our student population is predominantly white British.
The school had its last Ofsted in January 2023 where it received a grading of “Requires Improvement”. A key element of the inspection judgment came via issues with behaviour and internal truancy.
Behaviour challenges and goals
In recent years, the school faced a challenge with a high number of suspensions. This case study explores the school’s journey in working with the Behaviour Hubs Programme to implement positive behaviour strategies and provisions, resulting in a significant reduction in suspensions.
Senior Leaders, of the school and Trust, identified Behaviour as our key priority following learning walks, staff and student voice.
- Ensure that all staff recognise their role in supporting improved behaviour outcomes.
- Ensure that there is absolute clarity of behaviour expectations for all stakeholders.
- Develop a focus on positive relationships between staff and students, including a relational approach and focus on ‘Connect before Correct’.
- Develop a CPD/Coaching programme to give staff the opportunity to deliberately practice routines so that a consistent teaching and learning approach supports improved behaviour outcomes.
- Develop a revised behaviour policy, alongside supporting provision, systems and routines
Challenges:
- High suspension rates, impacting student learning and overall school climate.
- Inconsistent behaviour management approaches across staff.
- Limited CPD/Coaching resources for staff development in behaviour management.
The school has experienced many years of change that includes a significant change in leadership over a number of years, for example, four different Head teachers in recent years.
The impact of this fluctuation in leadership was a reduction in effective classroom-based behaviour management and created a system that failed to address the recurrent and escalating behaviours leading to whole school disruption, particularly through internal truancy. This negative behaviour was exacerbated due to the impact of Covid-19 and lockdowns.
Another challenge was the structure of the Pastoral team, which had transitioned between teacher-led Heads of House, to nonteaching Heads of Year. This meant that there were too many inconsistencies in approach, poor communication and multiple ineffective strategies and systems being used.
There was also inadequate supportive provision in place within the school to support a reduction in suspendable behaviour.
Solutions to behaviour challenges
Recognising the need for change, we joined the Behaviour Hubs Programme in 2023. Through the program, the school received valuable support, including:
- Needs assessment: Identification of key areas for improvement through collaboration with Behaviour Hub staff and the creation of an action plan.
- Mentorship: Dedicated Behaviour Hub mentor provided ongoing guidance and support to the school leadership team and through valuable visits helped fine tune our approach.
- Training: Access to visits to other school and comprehensive training programs for staff on positive behaviour strategies, de-escalation techniques, and building positive relationships with students.
Implemented Strategies:
Following the Behaviour Hubs guidance, we implemented several key strategies:
- Developing a Whole-School Behaviour Policy: A clear and consistent behaviour policy was established, outlining expectations and consequences.
- Positive Reinforcement: Emphasis on recognizing and praising positive behaviour to build student motivation and self-esteem.
- Consistent Expectation: Implementation of consistent expectations across classrooms to address low-level disruptions and encourage students to engage and focus in lessons more effectively.
- Strengthening Communication: Improved communication between staff, students, and parents to address behavioural concerns proactively.
- Staff Collaboration: Fostering collaboration among staff to ensure consistent implementation of behaviour strategies.
Information Gathering
- Consultation process – discussions and anonymous questionnaire to staff and students, analysing the problem and proposed solutions.
- Analysis of issues and planning to address them, using examples and ideas from Behaviour Hub lead school.
Application
- Mentoring and coaching from our Lead school and mentor helped to develop routines and expectations of staff.
- The Lead school guided us to focus on a small number of key changes at a time, ensuring these were embedded before moving on to other changes and the next stages of our action plan instead of trying to change everything all at once.
- Visits to our Lead school, and other schools within the Ted Wragg Trust, prompted us to focus our actions on setting the culture through the tutor and assembly programme.
- The observations of practices made during these school visits were supported through virtual modules and suggested reading.
- The virtual modules offered practical guidance of how to deliver CPD, as well as implement and monitor the changes across the Academy, ensuring consistency in approach.
Some of the key steps in our success were:
- Creating clear expectations, for example, a clear “3-2-1- Thank You” routine which also staff to use to ensure full attention from students supported by CPD and coaching delivered via Step Reducing low level disruption.
- Development of a procedure document to support the behaviour policy that included approaches to conversations.
- Deliberate practice of expectations and approaches in classrooms via staff meetings focussed on our consistent core expectations for all classrooms.
- An explicit ‘Dynamic Doorway’ greeting process and retrieval practice based ‘Do Now’ as our most important actions to support staff’s first interaction with students. Helping them ‘Connect’ effectively.
- Use of Class Charts to record and communicate key behavioural events, provisions, and outcomes.
- Development of a new Behaviour policy ensuring consistency within classrooms across the Academy.
- Reorganisation of the Pastoral team. The movement to non-teaching Heads of Year and additional supportive provisions to increase time for student/parent facing staff. All staff receive regular CPD for all of the positions, so they know what each role involves and how best to support each other.
- Weekly CPD focusing on SEND/Behaviour and Teaching and Learning routines, how to implement them, feeding back to staff both development points and successes drawn from an extensive quality assurance routine, led by all members of SLT.
Impact on behaviour
Impact:
Since joining the Behaviour Hubs Programme, we have witnessed a significant decrease in suspensions. Here are some quantifiable results):
- 45% reduction in suspensions year on year (458 to 251 for September- March 2023-24 compared to September to March 2022-23).
- 5% reduction in Permanent Exclusions year on year (8 to 1 for September- March 2023 2023-24 compared to September- March 2023 2022-23).
- Improved student attendance (0.5% increase in Overall Attendance year on year).
- More positive school climate reported by visitors, staff, students, and parents via survey data and forums.
Conclusion:
The Park School’s success story demonstrates the positive impact of the Behaviour Hubs Programme. By focusing on a collaborative and positive approach to behaviour management, the school has created a supportive learning environment for all students. Their commitment to ongoing staff development and evidence-based practices has resulted in a significant reduction in suspensions and a more positive school culture.
Additional Notes:
Behaviour Hub survey data showed clear improvements in behaviour over the project:
92% of staff now say that the school is calm and orderly, which is an increase of 12%
97% of staff indicated My School has been a safe environment for pupils most or every day, an increase of 12%.
65% of staff responded Pupils have been respectful to school staff most or every day, this has increased from 45%.
When asked how confident do you feel in managing behaviour the response very confident has increased from 25% to 32%. Not very confident has reduced from 20% to 6%.
When asked how confident do you feel in supporting pupils in how to behave better the responses for very confident have increased from 30% to 45%.
A significant majority of students now believe that behaviour in school is very good or excellent.
- The number of students who reported that disruption rarely or never occurs in lessons has increased since the beginning of the project.
- Students’ understanding of clarity of behaviour expectations has increased.
- Staff now feel they have better clarity of the behaviour rules and process.
- The percentage of staff that now strongly agree that there is a clear vision of expected good behaviour in school, has increased
- Staff and students now agree that routines are easy to follow.
- Internal data indicates a reduction in detentions, time out rooms, isolations and suspensions.
- Suspension from school has also reduced significantly with a 45% reduction year on year.
- PEX reduced from 8 to 1, year on year. 87.5% reduction.
Next steps on your behaviour journey
- Continue to reduce the incidents of suspendable behaviour by focusing on the journey from the classroom for students whose behaviour is an issue.
- Development of Behaviour CPD model that ensures consistency for all staff through Step Lab.
- Establish a Behaviour Team of teachers to support coaching.
- Develop cultural onboarding for staff/students/parents as part of their induction.
- Create and update a Behaviour Guide- to ensure consistent application of the Behaviour Policy through shared procedures and approaches.
- Continue to engage with Behaviour Hub networking, CPD and open day events.