Context for joining Behaviour Hubs
Ursuline College is a non-selective secondary school, one of five secondaries in the Kent Catholic Schools Partnership (KCSP) MAT. The school is in a period of continual growth, having expanded over the last 5 years by over 25% to a roll of approximately 980 students.
Whilst attracting students from a relatively wide geographic area, most of our students live in Thanet which, in the index of Multiple Deprivation (IMD2019), was ranked as the most deprived local authority in Kent. Our number of students eligible for Pupil Premium has grown from 24.6% in 2019 to 30. 7% in 2023. As more local families have been subjected to financial deprivation.
As an inclusive school, we welcome children from all backgrounds and nationalities. Approximately 14% of our student population speak a first language other than English (most of whom are Eastern European) and approximately 10% of our students have special educational needs (inc EHCVP and SEND support).
The current headteacher was appointed in 2021 and has been part of the senior leadership team since 2018.
Ursuline College was last inspected by Ofsted in 2022 and the following recommendations were made:
- Leaders need to review and implement attendance strategies that wil have the most impact, so that attendance rates for all are swiftly improved.
- Governors and senior leaders need to continue with their plans to develop leadership capacity, so that there is a coherent approach to SEND provision, which is of a consistently high quality.
Joining Behaviour Hubs was a proactive step from school leaders to implement a positive and autonomous behaviour culture for all stakeholders.
Behaviour challenges and goals
Do Something…. Get Moving …..Risk New Things……Stick With It – Our foundress, St Agnes Merici
Through encouragement, responsibility, and self-discipline, we enable each individual to grow spiritually and intellectually, in an understanding that better never stops and in order to make unique and positive contribution to society. The schools core values are:
- Respecting each other – Respect for ourselves, our environment and those around us.
- Helping each other – supporting and being compassionate for others.
- Bearing with each other – Showing kindness for all in our community.
Prior to joining the programme, we had already reviewed our behaviour policy and processes that were overly reliant on middle and senior leaders to ensure effectiveness. Historically, the focus was on sanctions and what behaviours determined these, meaning staff were overly fixated on delivering consequences to students. These were often sanctions implemented by staff but executed by senior leaders. Staff dealt with all behavior management in a “black and white” without making any reasonable adjustments when appropriate. The behavoiur management processes in place meant staff and students had no opportunity to build relationships that inevitably improve behaviour, and trust. Whilst there was consistency in individual teacher’s classrooms there were often inconsistency across different classrooms, meaning students often didn’t know what to expect and couldn’t therefore build any self-regulating techniques.
Our goal was to develop a culture at Ursuline College that created fair and reasonable consistency in a calm and dignified environment where staff/student relationships were at the heart of improving behaviour and subsequently how it was managed by staff. We wanted staff to engage actively with the students in all aspects of their behavoiour, including beyond the classroom. It was key that every member of staff a student encountered had the same expectations both in class and around the school.
Our rewards system, in counter to the sanctions systems, was overused and thus undervalued. We wanted to implement a more concise rewards system that held more value to students and enabled the students that always behaved well to be fairly and regularly reconised, but that all students were able to be rewarded and experience positive feedback where before they may not have had none.
Our school site is particularly difficult to manage and presents many challenges in terms of creating effective duty rotas that ensure enough staff are available to support routines and procedures for behaviour in unstructured time. The site also presents challenges in transition time between lessons which enables students to engage in poor behaviour and also presents challenges for punctuality. Constantly reviewing staff rotas and improving coverage was key but more importantly it was essential we had a simple set of expectations that all stakeholders could understand, and teachers had the confidence to implement.
In terms of staffing, the majority recognised a need for change and improvement. This was readily welcomed, however some staff lacked confidence and training in being able to uphold some of the behavour management strategies in the classroom. We recognised that as a school, over a significant period, we had invested in many aspects of school improvement but never in behaviour CPD. Both for staff and students. We ensured that we made frequent reference and adjustments to the behavoiur systems, listening to staff and sharing simple strategies and solutions. Student engagement was good, with many students welcoming fairness, consistency and improvements to the systems and processes, however there was some parentela resistance. Frequent communication to all stakeholders has been a vital element to ensuring clarity in expectations for all.
Solutions to behaviour challenges
At the start of 2022 we introduced an additional role to the Pastoral teams to increase capacity and ensure we had adequate staffing in support roles to support with the new behaviour culture. There are four Houses with an Assistant Head overseeing all aspects of the House with the House Manager and House Support officer overseeing the day-to-day pastoral care, behaviour and attendance of the House.
We implemented the new Behaviour Culture Policy from September and didn’t phase it in gradually as we were already aware of areas of improvement and gaps in practice. Since the implementation we have reviewed aspects that have not worked effectively and made adjustments in response to staff suggestions and to the monitoring visits/meetings with our partner school Worthing High.
Other changes that were implemented over the course of the year on the programme included:
- Moving to the use of EduLink for improved communication between school and home and to enable a more efficient ‘call out’ system for staff
- Launch of the consequence card and the rewards system that sits alongside this
- Redesign of the Reflection space to create a better work focused environment
- Reviewed criteria for referral to the Reflection space
- Implementation of a Prefect system and College Leadership Team in Year 11 to promote student leadership
- Offer ‘unconditional’ excursions for all year groups across the academic year that enabled relationship building
- Refocusing the ‘call out’ system enabling support for students to remain in the classroom so they can engage with their learning
- Monitoring of ‘call outs’ by Pastoral team for further interventions and incentives to reduce persistent offenders and monitor trends
- Support for Curriculum areas with significantly higher usage of processes and systems for rewards and behaviour
- Placed Behaviour on the CPD calendar termly, including whole staff CPD with Tom Bennett
- Smaller/shorter consequences that are manageable for staff and students and that encourage relationship building
Removed prescriptive descriptors that linked specific behaviours to expected consequences at teacher level
- Reduced the number of full-time referrals to off-site provisions and refocused the criteria for referrals
- Introduced a 6-week Social Learning programme for an identified group of boys in Year 8 with SEN and/or identified behaviour needs
The Behaviour culture for Ursuline College has shifted significantly in a short space of time and all stakeholders have seen the positive improvements in behaviour across the school. Across three inspections, 2 Ofsted and 1 CSI, behaviour has been noted as being ‘Good’ with a ‘calm and safe’ atmosphere in classrooms and around the school site. The support offered by our Lead School, Worthing High, has been notably instrumental in allowing us to confidently implement process and systems we have seen during visits to the school. Working with Worthing High has given us a unique point of comparison, allowing us to reflect on our limitations, in terms of resources and the environment/site our students are educated in, meaning we have closely reviewed and adjusted our provisions to meet the needs of our staff and students.
Working alongside Worthing High, and additionally, the virtual training modules on the Behaviour Hub programme have given key staff the opportunity to stop and reflect on what processes need to be in place or replaced. The SEN session has been key as prior to beginning on the programme we had a significant number of SEN students with ineffective in-class support, in terms of teachers managing behaviour. Withing the leadership team, staff have been allocated sessions based on their areas of responsibility alongside the lead for behaviour for each module. This has allowed for developed discussion and subsequent review of process or CPD identification.
Impact on behaviour
Much of the new Behaviour Culture is about embedding long-term strategies that will have more impact over time, but we have seen some positive shift quite quickly in some areas. This is evident in the reduction of fixed term suspensions, reduction in behaviour points issued and the reduction in the number of C2 call outs since we introduced them.
The impact of the Consequence Card has been significant in raising the number of positive interactions with students and staff and ensuring that there is a significant focus on the rewards strategy that has been reviewed in tandem with the Behaviour policy. We now have termly rewards for both staff and students to acknowledge positive signings of Consequence Cards. In a recent staff survey, 95% of staff said that they understand how, when and why to use Consequence Cards to improve positive behaviour and relationships in school.
The number of behaviour points issued in the first four half terms, in comparison to last academic year, has reduced by 25% across all year groups with the most significant impact seen in Year 10. The reduction has been noted in monitoring of teaching and learning, as a results of ‘increased consistency amongst teaching staff and expectations of behaviour across the school’.
For Year 10, in terms 1 and 2 there was an 18% reduction in behaviour points issued and in term 3, 50% less, increasing to 56% less in term 4 compared to last year. This year group have been a real focus for staff based on data from the previous academic year showing that this cohort were the most challenging in terms of general defiance and lack of regard for school systems and procedures. The data this year shows Year 10 are the year group responding most positively to the new Behaviour culture and the positive relationships staff are actively trying to build within this cohort. In a recent student survey, responses from Year 10, show that over three quarters of students can articulate that they regularly witness calmer, more productive and more consistently managed lessons compared to the last academic year. The term-on-term reduction in behaviour points being issued are, according to internal monitoring data, because there is a notable shift in staff autonomy for behaviour.
The C2 callout in Terms 1 and 2 were approximately 1200 in each term, with students in two Houses making up over half of those callouts. By Term 3, the callouts reduced to 500 in total, a 59% reduction, with just one House having significant ongoing concerns. This has allowed us to introduce further interventions and support and make more strategic decisions about Houses and student allocations.
Detentions have reduced by 63% across KS3 with the preference being shorter more impactful consequences which focus on building or mending relationships and engagement. House Teams have also been intervening weekly with all students who receive a C2 callout, and we are just starting to see the impact of this with a further 9% reduction in C2 callouts over the three weeks this has currently been happening for.
In the previous academic year 2022/23, we made 159 fixed term suspensions with the maximum number of days for a single suspension being 15. This year we have already been contacted by Kent County Council to congratulate us on reducing the number of fixed term suspensions across terms 1 to 3 for 2023/24. We are the only school in the local area who have achieved this. To date, we have had a 15% reduction of fixed term suspensions in comparison to this time last year and the length of the suspension is a maximum of 3 days (10 days previous year). The length of fixed term suspensions has reduced from 5 days maximum in Term 1 and 2, to 2 days in Terms 3 and 4. As a result of this, we have reduced the number of long-term referrals to the Pupil Referral Unit, particularly in KS4 opting for short 6-week respite placements with a 100% success rate in planned transition to return to mainstream. We have only made one KS4 referral for a long-term placement. We have made no permanent exclusions, nor have we in previous years, and to date this year, we are yet to make any referrals to alternate provision with ‘at risk of PEX’ as the reason which would lead to a long-term fixed alternative provision.
Our Reflection room has been repurposed and we have seen a significant reduction of usage for escalated consequences. The provision is principally used for C3 with it being only occasionally used for a full day consequence. The provision is managed by the Senior Leadership Team and the efficiency of the running of the space is constantly being reviewed. Work is provided for students so there is no loss of learning time and students have engaged well with this consequence and recognise its purpose to support them in resetting for the remainder of their day.
A recent staff wellbeing survey conducted by the Trust put our school above average (compared to the other 36 schools in the Trust) in all categories. All staff took part in the survey. Notable strengths: 97% enjoy working in the school; 95% feel well supported by leaders and managers; 95% say staff are respectful, professional and supportive of each other; 93% say the school is well led and managed. This data is important as it shows that staff have come on the journey with us and feel supported in doing so.
Our recent student survey of 701 students noted that 75% of staff apply the school rules consistently with 79% of students viewing behaviour of other pupils in the lesson as good most of the time.
Our recently published CSI Report stated that there is ‘a relentless focus on pastoral care to support learning through a comprehensive house system’ which supports our focus this year on improved relationships, and mutual respect, support and understanding.
The continued support from Worthing High has allowed us to share concerns and ideas and take advice on making adaptations as necessary to our procedures and approaches, and has been invaluable in enabling the efficacy of the work we have been doing to improve behaviour, and sustain improvement at Ursuline College.
Next steps on your behaviour journey
We have ensured staff have a shared vision of behaviour and attitudes and our next steps are to embed the behaviour culture at Ursuline College and in doing so, improve consistency of application across the school. To do this, our aims will be:
- A culture of consistently high expectations of student behaviour and attitudes that results in positive relationships between all stakeholders
- Sanctions are used consistently and appropriately for all
Continued embedding of the high-quality pastoral support we have been recognised for as a school to enable all students to fully access effective learning to ensure successful outcomes