What’s your school behaviour policy like?

[noblegiraffe]

My school has the old C1, C2, C3 and you’re out style of policy, but from reading threads on here, and from the news (Michaela, Great Yarmouth, Plymouth) there seem to be more and more schools heading down the really strict route.

Then you’ve got schools that aren’t the full Michaela, but much stricter than before where you’re booted out of a lesson for mucking around and put in isolation all day instead of lunchtime detentions and the like.

Is the trend towards being much stricter? What does your school do?

Paul Dix here too. My dept are planning for behaviour and not out comes. It's a nightmare. Every little issue is now a debate. Answering back has reached epidemic proportions. Wish nobody had ever read that book!

That book is nonsense and he's a fraud. It's actually appalling the influence he's managed to exert in schools.

I went to a silent corridor school yesterday. I thought it would be ominous and full of senior leaders stalking corridors and barking. It wasn't. The kids (and satff) were just silent. The knock on impact on entry into the classroom and exit - and behaviour within - was astonishing. One could argue the students were too compliant and passive and that it could be a strain saying quiet for so long but as a day out it was bliss.

Our policy is fine, but needs to be consistently applied.
We can remove students from class and any removal leads to leadership sanction.
Too many behaviour issues or a serious one leads to isolation.

The problem I find is that some staff can't be bothered to follow the behaviour policy so students try it on. It's a good school with good behaviour but it would be a lot better if all staff followed the policy.

We have a few who complain about behaviour but then don't use the policy and complain nobody is doing anything (because they seem to think it's MLT/SLT's job to sort behaviour). We also have a few who take the 'aww bless. how about we have a chat because I'm sure you didn't mean it'.

My beef is the constant shifting goalposts in my school of what constitutes 'serious'. As we have begun to have bigger behavioural issues ' serious' has shifted to accommodate this. 10 years ago soemone saying ' no' to a teacher constitued defiance! We have moved so far that now someone can f and blind all they like and - unless it is directly said AT a teacher- it is not considerd all that massive a deal.

I am actaully sitting here at break now lsitening to them turning the air blue outside my room... and , no, I am not going out to deal with it because I would get a mouthful.

maisy and anyone else who has this 'remove' thing... who removes them, how do they know , and where to?

At one school I worked in each classroom had a phone or a walkie talkie and we could radio to duty staff. We had a team of behaviour staff (all non teaching) and 2 members of staff on duty to come round and collect students when they needed removing.

At another they had a button on the desktop and/or you could send a message to reception on SIMS.

At my current school we tell the students to go to a certain place and they take themselves there. We have a duty rota of leaders if we need assistance then we can send a message. To be honest most know that not turning up where they should will make everything 10 times worse so 99% of the time there's no issues.

I left a school that tried to implement restorative practice without training anyone in what restorative practice is or how it should work. It translated to a wishy washy inconsistent approach and the kids had no idea where the boundaries might be so went wild. It let everyone down.

I’ve come somewhere where behaviour is a bit of a slog all the time. There are four chances in the classroom before removal so low level disruption is a lot higher than the C1-3 system: kids have an extra opportunity to disrupt and see it as a green light to get to a C3 before becoming preternaturally silent and well behaved. I tend to rattle through the first three pretty quickly!

I think the problem is a lot of pastoral managers/learning managers just aren’t paid well enough for what they do so there tends to be a high turnover which means challenging children don’t get consistency of support and relationships. Behaviour is so fundamental to everything that goes on in a school, it should be prioritised. I think if any policy is firmly and consistently applied with back up from SLT then it will work.

Ten years in, I am really sick of behaviour management. I’d like to go and work in a sixth form college. I could happily never teach Key Stage Three again in my life!

The problem with restorative justice is that it has to be done properly and consistently for it to work.

Otherwise it fast becomes have a hot chocolate with a soft senior leader, get the victim and perpetrator together, perpetrator chats shit for a bit and lies about being sorry, victim is expected to share how they feel (which is stupid given the situation), soft senior leader decides it's been a great chat and it will never happen again... ubtil 3 days later when the same child has had another 3 restorative chats and by week 4 soft SLT have decided that really the perpetrator is more of a victim than anyone else.

I actually like RJ when done well as part of a good behaviour framework but it's regularly done badly.

All things we do not have maisy !

SLT go out of their way not to help us out.

Interestingly relevant. I think SLTs need to accept this connection!

bennewmark.wordpress.com/2018/11/14/perfect-behaviour-improves-test-scores/

Piggywaspushed
It comes from SLT.
They set the agenda which is why I get irritated when staff complain that SLT 'do nothing about behaviour' when the reality is some staff don't bother following procedure.

The school where behaviour was the worst was when the head and half of slt spent lots of times in offices leaving over stretched pastoral staff to struggle.

our pastoral staff also don't help out (much), if I am honest!

Does anyone work in a school where Paul Dix has improved behaviour?

Who is Paul Dix and what is he responsible for? I haven’t heard of him!

Paul Dix is a consultant (I believe) who proposed a set way of managing behavoour which is often translated as 'if a child misbehaves then it's really the teacher's fault. If a teacher wants even the most basic expectations met then they have to earn the right to have basic expectations met by students.'

It proposes scripted behaviour management (r.g. Charlie you have chosen to tell Tim to fuck off and stop being a fucking paedo. That was a poor choice. I would like you to make better choices so we can all learn. Please make a better choicr)

Some principles are good e.g. avoid escalation, build positive relationships (but you get them in any decent policy).

Many of those who buy into Dix theory are also the ones frothing about how mean and nasty it is to dare to use detentions or isolation. They're the types who are comparing silent working in a classroom with booths to solitary confinement and human rights abuses. They're often the types who think a repeatedly violent child should be kept in schools at all costs because they're the victim really and the other children should learn to cope better with child's outbursts.

Thanks! I looked at his twitter with the #banthebooths, #hotchocfri and videos of children getting hugs and high fives as they enter the classroom (it was a cute video, but wouldn’t translate so well to Year 10 ). I’m familiar with the ideas.

Not familiar with Dix but it is really important that those in education understand the roots of poor behaviour. Isolation can be traumatising for some children. Often there is a really good reason why a child repeatedly misbehaves and a shift in perspective can change things for everyone.

The consequences of not doing so can be horrendous. Of course the biggest problem is funding so the weight of this specialised work falls to overworked and unpaid teachers who don’t have the correct training. It’s no wonder teachers feel resentful.

MissMalice
Some behaviour has deeper roots.
Some behaviour is to do with SEND.
Some behaviour is kids being kids and pushing against boundaries.
Some behaviour is kids who've never been told no and have been pandered to.

Isolation as 'traumatising' sounds straight out of a Dix book.
Isolation is a classroom where students work in silence. Theres often some dividers to stop the same messing around that caused issues and to enable students to focus on their work.
Anyone who wants to argue that expecting teens to be in a silent classroom is essentially a human rights abuse (as some types do) can get their arse into schools with challenging behaviour and walk the walk because the vast majority of the people spouting such nonsense are consultants and people who hardly teach.

Often there is a really good reason why a child repeatedly misbehaves

Yes, most commonly because they’ve been allowed to get away with it.

I genuinely have not encountered a student traumatised by isolation. Bored, yes. If we do understand the roots of misbehaviour (say, for example, really poor parenting , lack of sleep, constant X boxing, unmedicated ADHD which are all pretty common) what are schools supposed to do next with that information?

But regardless of extremes, the issue is a culure of poor behaviour can propagate in schools if unchecked so students with no issues begin to become distracted, might mickey mouse defiance or answering back, might laugh at the poor behaviour of others. Dix really does not address these things . Bill Rogers is a bit better on the mob mentality thing but still lives in a bygone world where students come over when you call them and listen to you when you talk to them. And, in corridors, we don't know who students are and any underlying issues.

A small example: today, two year 9s were blocking the corridor , having a chat. When I pointed out they were in the way and could they knidly walk and talk, the girl began to launch into a load of backchat. This has become typical. They really automatically do not look at adults (or nay otehr people!) with any sense of boundaries of behaviour. Not sure who or what to blame really for that kind of casual defiance.

Perhaps you don’t know what trauma looks like all the time. Sometimes trauma even looks like the quiet kid who gets on with everything without being asked.

It’s not just that isolation traumatises but also that the child’s behaviour is a result of trauma that’s happened elsewhere than then is perpetuated by being labelled as bad (when really, they’re struggling).

Clearly there are some posters here with strong views that they don’t want to have challenged and I’m not really interested in an argument. Teachers are landed with a job they aren’t equipped to deal with - I acknowledged that in my last post. The government needs to provide specialists to help those whose behaviours are continually disruptive.

What I would like is for teachers - those on the front line - to understand better what’s behind the behaviours so that they can respond in a way that doesn’t continue the trauma. It’s not about pandering to or pussyfooting around - that’s equally as damaging.

There are an awful lot of kids who are not traumatised who nonetheless piss about in lessons.

I saw Tom Bennett on twitter talking about how schools need to stop referring to isolation rooms and start calling them removal rooms instead. Isolation sounds like they’re being chucked in a cell when mostly they’re stuck in a room with other kids, given some work to do and talked to by an adult about their behaviour.

Charlie you have chosen to tell Tim to fuck off and stop being a fucking paedo. That was a poor choice. I would like you to make better choices so we can all learn.

I read the book. What I found interesting that Paul Dix talks about having these scripted conversations while delivering a sanction. Somehow that message seems to have got lost and the conversations are the sanction.

I’ve attached a page with his suggested script - it’s very clear that there is a consequence for the poor behaviour within the script.

malice , it is frankly a bit patronising to suggest a teacher can't recognise trauma. I certainly have worked with some very damaged children, for whom isolation was not the right step and was rarely, therefore, taken. But they are alread traumatised. Isolation (which often involves rather nice pastoral staff chatting to them!) does not cause the trauma.

And most students who misbehave do not do it because of a deepseated trauma,especially the type of stuff I was describing.

I have noted a trend towards not believing educational professionals when they objectively describe a decline in behaviour standards across a student population.