Our Relationships and Behaviour Policy is central to our ethos. It is driven by our school values of Connection, Courage, Imagination and Care and incorporates trauma informed principles and practices alongside clear and robust support and a culture of positive reinforcement and recognition.
You can read the full policy here.
Connection
Our value of Connection drives us to ensure that every member of our school community feels they belong and are known and understood. We endeavour to understand the emotional root of each individual’s behaviour to enable us to connect effectively with the individual, family and extended community to make our school the special place it is.
We invest in relationships and this is key to enabling children to feel safe enough to embrace and discuss their emotions that may underline unsafe or disruptive behaviour.
Courage
Our value of Courage drives us to lean into the unknown to support each child with issues around behaviour with sensitivity and a curiosity to ask, listen and understand each individual and their behaviour. We foster a classroom culture which encourages children to do the same and to share their own behaviour story with confidence. We do not ‘shy away’ from difficult conversations, challenging unsafe behaviours with consistency and establishing the cause of such behaviours before addressing them robustly when necessary.
Imagination
Our value of Imagination encourages us to ‘think freely’ and we coach children to gain insight into and knowledge about their behaviour. We are committed to continuous reflection and evaluation in order to imagine an improved response to behaviours and use this to deepen our understanding and inform a stronger future for the school community.
We also use the language of imagination to support coaching conversations with children, eg “Imagine if you had reacted more safely - what would this have looked like?” in order to help them to identify improved responses and develop practical strategies for supporting positive behaviour.
Care
Our value of Care begins with kindness. As adults and children we remember that in our expressions and behaviours we must always be kind, and we couple this with a commitment to empowering others. Children and adults are expected to care about their impact on the people around them and aim high in their interactions and relationships.
School staff adjust expectations around vulnerable children to correspond with their developmental capabilities and experience of traumatic stress.
In practical terms, there are three key elements at play to promote and maintain positive behaviour:
1. Clear expectations
2. Recognition and reward
3. Escalating support
Clear Expectations
We promote and continually reference three clear expectations:
Aim High
Be Kind
Behave Safely
These are intentionally easy to understand and remember, and this clarity provides the children with a positive, achieveable and consistent frame of reference.
Recognition and Reward
Our recognition and reward system is built around our values. Expectations are by their definition expected, so we are careful to ensure we are rewarding children when they exceed those expectations in some way. The children can receive individual recognition in the form of stickers (there are four different designs available, each featuring one of our value logos) and individual 'Southville Stars' certificates which are harder to achieve and presented in Celebration Assemblies.
In addition, each class is able to collect magnetic tokens against each of our four values for collaborative excellent behaviour. When all twenty tokens have been won, the class receives a whole class reward (and a glittery curtain on the door for the day!).
Escalating Support
No one can maintain all three of these expectations without the occasional slip, and we do not expect our children to be any different. What we do expect to see however is a desire to reflect and learn from mistakes and the Relationships and Behaviour Policy has clear and robust escalating steps that we take to ensure this results in improvement.
The support begins with the relationship with the adult and a conversation to identify the reason for the behaviour. If a pattern develops, we will schedule more frequent check-ins, usually with the phase leader. Unsafe behaviour is immediately referred to the headteacher or the deputy head and a stage one, two or three Safe Behaviour Plan is put into place dependent on the level of support required.
We have a parallel Management of Bullying system which also involves an escalating three stage response.