JUNIOR SCHOOL WITH JUST UNDER 500 PUPILS
We were initially asked to provide 3 x 2 hours of training support to increase staff awareness of Restorative Approaches, from this we were then called in to create a bespoke project to work within the school embedding restorative approaches across the school with an aim to reduce behavioural incidents on the playground and in classrooms across the 4 year groups.
Prior to starting they were having a large number of lunchtime incidents, up to 30 a day, that then spilled into the classrooms after lunch and wrote off the afternoons learning. This was having a huge impact across the school and for the parents.
We provided training to the midday staff.
This also including on the playground support and shadowing to develop and imbed the approaches we aimed to use.We reviewed the behavioural policy for the school and developed a new approach from the top down.
We changed the class base behaviour management scheme and replaced it with an interactive modern system that involves the parent’s participation as well as the staff and pupils. This has been very popular across the school and has seen a huge improvement in classroom incidents and the general wellbeing of all the children. It had the biggest impact on the “good” children that were overlooked under the old system and could sit, on task, for days on end with little to no recognition for their efforts while other more challenging students may have sat on task for 10 mins and been rewarded with an increase on the chart scheme.We reviewed and changed the lunch time detention system.
Creating a system whereby staff had to become involved in restorative meetings following the issuing of a detention, this has reduced termly detentions from 152 in one term to 6. A huge decrease.
Their lunchtime incidents have decreased by 80% and the number of incidents requiring SLT intervention has also decreased by over 40%. The type of incidents is now much less severe than prior to the start of the project.
Pupils now feel 87% more confident in approaching lunchtime staff to ask for help, which was also a big area for our development.
100% of the staff now feel confident to be using the restorative approaches.
We have created and trained a team of peer mentors to carry on the amazing work after we leave. They are year 5 students and have taken the challenge very seriously committing their time and efforts to making sure the school is a happier and safer place to be.
The results have created a very different school in the space of less than one academic year. What was the most challenging class is now one of the best in the school with zero classroom incidents resulting in detention level outcomes now.
The project has been a huge success and we feel very fortunate to have been given the opportunity to be involved in this amazing transition.
