Context for joining Behaviour Hubs
We have 662 pupils on roll, and a breakfast club and an after-school club operating on the site. Our school has a nursery that admits three-year-olds, and does not use any alternative provision.
Villiers Primary school is situated in the southeast of Wolverhampton City, and serves an area in which many families face challenging circumstances. Due to the deprivation within the area, attainment when they first start nursery is well below average. Due to the popularity of the school, the PAN (Published Admissions Number) increased to 75 in 1999, 80 in 2012 and 90 for the reception intake in 2020. Numbers in year groups have begun to grow, with most of key stage 2 now being 90 or more.
A large amount of the school’s budget has been spent on building work in order for the school to be able to accommodate the growing numbers of pupils. The building has been adapted to create 5 additional teaching rooms to cater for pupils as they move up through the year groups. A large sum has also been spent on creating a new library for the children to enjoy, a new EYFS playground and additional outdoor gym equipment. CIF bids have also meant that both the heating and roof could be updated. Despite the additional rooms, the building is stretched to capacity and space can be a limiting factor for school improvement.
Behaviour challenges and goals
- Staff CPD on high expectations
- SLT to be around school and model and reinforce high expectations
- Coaching and mentoring systems in place for new staff
- To ensure that staff were consistent with following the behaviour policy
- To ensure that the restorative approach was followed through
- Time management to ensure that all staff were inducted fully into the school ethos and systems
Solutions to behaviour challenges
Open Day/Networking events
- Dunstall Hill Primary School – open day/networking (our Behaviour Hubs Lead School)
- Alston Primary School – open day
- St Market Bosworth – networking event
- Perryfields Primary PRU – open day
Consistent Behaviour Approach – Restorative Practice
Convincing some staff to follow the restorative approach consistently initially proved difficult. Some staff found it difficult to fit in the restorative conversations with the children as most are in the classroom by themselves. We looked at where this could happen in the school day so that the staff were having the restorative conversations rather than SLT taking the children and having them.
Behaviour Hubs programme visits supported us with this as going and visiting other schools, who also followed the restorative approach, as it allowed us to look at other ways of applying the approach in school. We left school open days with new ideas that were then shared with staff via staff meetings. For example, raffle tickets for house points, behaviour curriculum (learning powers), adverse childhood experiences training, individual reward charts – from this we developed a new TIER system of support for any children falling outside of the behaviour policy. We also came away with whole school ideas such as having a ‘secret behaviour’ – the children really loved this as it was a big secret across school and they really wanted to please.
Some things that the programme really helped us with was our own self-confidence that we are following the right approach and that restorative practice is the right way to move for us and our circumstances. It has allowed us to share good practice and insights across our trust schools and to support them with developing behavioural approaches in their own school.
Training internal
Training that has been delivered this year to staff has included:
- ‘Behaviour mantras and chanting’
- ‘Behaviour – secret behaviour’
- ‘Behaviour training – consistency’
- ‘Behaviour – learning powers’
- ‘Behaviour curriculum – listen, learn, lead, look after’
- Mark Finnis ‘Restorative approach’ training whole school
- ACEs training from Debbie Lamb (Anchored Schools)
- Childhood Trauma whole school training from Jo Freeman (SEND/behaviour governor).
Lead School support
Dunstall Hill walk around helped us to train up our school council badge holders. At Dunstall Hill we were able to talk to their school council pupils, who were very articulate and spoke well about the school rules and routines. Following this we then spent some time on pupil voice to see what our children said about our rules and ethos. Most pupils were very positive, however when we dug a little deeper we realised that a lot of children couldn’t full explain what it meant to listen, learn, lead and look after. This is where we have now targeted our efforts for September, to ensure that our behaviour curriculum is clear and that all children know the key words that link into the listen, learn, lead and look after.
School induction
Our third challenge has proven more difficult this year when it has come to new children being inducted into school. Our office manager completes all of the induction forms and follows our induction processes admin wise with parents and children, however we have struggled to set aside the time for our FLO to do home visits and for one set person to meet the child, tour them around school and go through our ethos. This is something we need to tighten up on next year, as having an SLT member meet with any new children coming to our school and go through the behaviour policy and our expectations would really help.
We are going to choose a set member from our family liaison team who will do the home visits when we induct new children, and we will organise a time during or after school for an SLT member to meet with the new children and parents prior to them starting at the school.
“The training this year has allowed me to take control in my classroom and I have felt supported with developing routines and structure in my classroom.“
Impact on behaviour
The Molineux, English Hubs Specialist (Mel Glazzard) and Outreach support workers have all commented on the high standards of behaviour in school since our training.
We have been used within our trust as behaviour support for other leads.
Pre- training reflection data: 122 reflections
Post-training reflection data: 45 reflections
Pupil Voice June 2023:
‘When children sometimes disrupt the lessons, the teacher always deals with it and they stop.’
‘If children do silly things they get a warning, a yellow card, a red card and then timeout.’
‘When I experienced bullying in the past it was dealt with really well and it hasn’t happened since.’
‘We learn to understand and respect other people’s feelings and beliefs.’
Staff voice June 2023:
‘I feel like our behaviour policy is good and I know how to use it.’
‘The training this year has allowed me to take control in my classroom and I have felt supported with developing routines and structure in my classroom.’
Next steps on your behaviour journey
To develop the behaviour curriculum further and to roll out the new superhero learning powers (designed and created by the children and staff). We will be continuing to develop our behaviour policy further by branching off from our ‘listen, learn, lead and look after’.
Our rules will be developed further to include ‘learning powers’ which will be specific behaviours such as; resilience, collaboration, independence. Each of our school rules will have two of these underlining behaviours, which we will expect from children. Other routines and general school rules like walking on the left, pencil positions, lining up silently and walking around school in an orderly manner will continue to be taught and modelled to the children.
To develop further the induction of new pupils to ensure home visits happen and the behaviour policy is clearly shared with both parents and pupils when they first join the school. From September we will choose a designated family liaison officer who will organise a home visit with any new children. SLT will then organise a pupil and parent visit into school prior to the child starting at Villiers. This will allow us to go through our expectations and ethos in school but will also allow us to start building relationships with the family.