Good behaviour policy in your comprehensive school?

[Smartieshavetheanswer]

If it's effective, please would
You mind telling me what it is? We have no real policy and our on-call system (1 teacher with a walker talkie removes pupil to place elsewhere) is ineffective as there are too many pupils asked to be removed due to disruptive behaviour - and often have to stay in the lesson as no one turns up.

I have another thread here re behaviour and I suppose this question is on the back of that. SLT have asked staff to make suggestions.

Ideas I have seen recently that seem to work are:
-conduct cards used for minor infractions (uniform, location, language etc) 5 conduct points = detention
-all lates get detention
-1 warning then sent to isolation and always followed up with detention, contact home and conversation
-member of teaching staff to support pastoral and to be sent for if necessary (and run detention)
-strict register policy so know where everyone is all the time
-everyone (staff) supports policy
-homework policy doesn't have any give either
It all builds to a clear message that students do as they are told and respect rules - really cut low level disruption in school I visited...several in the area are adopting similar strategies...

'on site out of sight' for phones. If seen they are confiscated and parents have to pick up.
Conduct cards for uniform and behaviour out of lessons (so you don't have to chase up a kid you don't know for detention). These allow 3 signatures then a dtn then you move up from green to orange to red. Prize draw for 'clean green' conduct cards.
Massive focus on silent lining up and formal starts and ends to lesson.
Lots of phone calls home both positive and negative
Heavy sanctions for refusing to give planner or conduct card
A pro-active SLT who come when you call them and remove a disruptive student quickly.
A very strong pastoral care system with lots of counselling available and a chaplain who is also a counsellor (Catholic school, I not Catholic but the ethos really works).

We have a team of duty staff who have a rota. There is a 3 stage policy in lessons, and a third strike means duty are called and the child is removed to isolation for the rest of the day. Staff are required to do restorative conversations with students that have been removed from their lessons. It's works most the time but sometimes it isn't instantaneous.

We have no phones allowed on site.

qumquat can you please explain the conduct cards? Does every child get issued one?

I work in a school where many pupils don't value school things - even a pen 😞

Every child gets a conduct card. They have about 10 'infringements' on them. Uniform and things outside lesson like: unruly, loitering, defiant etc. WE introduced them a couple of years ago and they definitely help with disciplining students you don't know, so you're not chasing them around for detentions when you don't teach them. They have 3 spaces on them and if they've been signed by a teacher 3 times they get an hour's SLT dtn then move from green to orange, then same again orange to red. Not sure what happens if they fill in red but it gets more serious! At the end of each half term they are collected in and 'clean green' conduct cards get entered into a prize draw for shopping vouchers. Students have to have them out on their desk every lesson along with their planners.
It's not perfect (I have been known to chase a student the length of the school as they run away from me refusing to give me their card) but it does generally make disciplining outside of lessons easier. The students do really care about them which I was sceptical of at first, and in a way that sometimes causes more problems, e.g. they refuse to hand it over because they are desperate to be 'clean and green'. The admin staff hate them because it is a hell of a lot of printing and cutting every half term!

Telephones must be handed in first thing in the morning. Anyone not handing a phone in has to have a written confirmation from home that child has not bought phone to school. Any phone found goes to safe in HT's office and needs to be collected by a parent.

Bad behaviour notes are logged onto electronic register accessible to parents. More than 2 and they don't go on school trip.

Don’t the kids just ‘lose’ their conduct cards when they get an infringement? It sounds like a great idea, but relies on the kids being honest!

My school does a version of "Ready to Learn" basic details here:

www.sec-ed.co.uk/best-practice/a-simple-whole-school-behaviour-system/

It involves having clear expectations, issuing one warning per lesson if they aren't met and a full day in isolation plus afterschool detention if they disrupt learning a second time.

This has been implemented in several schools in my area, however not all get great results from it because they don't implement it consistently.

The key factors for making it work seem to be:

all staff need to be behind the idea, particularly SLT as they will have to handle the complaints from parents who don't like the system;

clear and consistent expectations (it is not ok to disturb learning by calling out, talking over the teacher etc);

clear and consistent implementation of the policy (warning needs to be given clearly; pupils can't talk their way out of the consequences)

time spent in isolation is not fun - pupils work in silence & must produce sufficient work each period;

if pupils "fail" isolation and are sent home they will need to redo isolation the day they return to school before going back into lessons.

If done properly this completely changes the behaviour in a school and enables teachers to teach to the best of their abilities.

If done poorly - watered down, inconsistently applied, SLT don't support teachers etc it makes very little difference to behaviour and annoys staff, pupils and parents alike! I've experienced and observed it done both ways!

I don't want to completely out myself on here just in case, but I could suggest some schools (via PM) that I believe are doing this well if you or your SLT want to see it in action.

And our pupils are rarely collected from lessons if sent to isolation, most will take themselves there. Pupils who refuse to leave are collected by SLT and sent home, then have to do their isolation the following day.

What happens where the volume of the incidents just gets too much for the behaviour policy to have any effect. in some schools, it gets to the stage where the pupils just don’t CARE what happens to them, they don’t care about going to isolation. They wander around school knowing that no-one can pick them up because there aren’t enough staff available to do it because SLT are dealing with other behaviour issues.

Oh and some seem to be engineering situations where they get sent to isolation from a lesson knowing full well their friends will end up there too and they’ll spend the whole time just messing about. The next step for these serial offenders would be exclusion (internal exclusion so completely isolated for whole day, higher staff ratio, pupils separated by partitions between desks) but there is only so many places available.

How do schools stop it all getting out of hand once pupils realise that they can’t give serious consequences to ALL pupils as half the schools would be gone?!

Behaviour in lessons:

Warning, one behaviour point lost, two behaviour points lost, then sent to isolation. Behaviour points also taken for homework, equipment, late (but cannot get sent to isolation for these)

If they get sent out they get a two hour Head of year detention the following week. If they get 8 behaviour points they have a 1 hour detention the following week.

In corridors/uniform etc we have behaviour cards in their planners. 5 signatures in a term is a 2 hour headteacher detention, or if they refuse to hand their planner over when asked.

It works, but it ONLY works because it is backed and supported by all senior leaders. When we first started we had 40 children per year group in head of year detention (teachers and slt all mucked in). Now we have about 15 in each detention per week (270/300 in each year group in a rough area)

Oh, and if year 11 get more than 6 behaviour points in a week they are not allowed to come to after school revision sessions.

In our school - if they mess around with friends in the inclusion room parents are called and they go home.

That’s exactly what most of ours would want!

@LegoClone when you say sent home, is that as a formal fixed term exclusion?

It's an immediate hour's SLT detention if they don't produce a conduct card. But yes, it does rely on the students fundamentally caring. I think once students don't care it is very hard to turn that situation around. My school is very strict from day one of Yr7 so things flow relatively easily. Changing the behaviour and attitudes in a school where the behaviour system isn't working is a whole other kettle of fish.

How do you know who to set the detention with if they don’t produce their card if it happens at break or lunch? Our kids get away with stuff in unstructured time because if you don’t know their name, you’re screwed.

Noble - At ds's previous school not having the card on you at all times was an immediate detention. They were meant to be kept in the blazer pocket. During PE lessons they were meant to be in the blazer hung up in the changing room.

I do have to say though at his previous school ds got to the stage where sanctions had no effect. He knew he would never be capable of meeting the expectations with regards to homework, organisation and not having sensory overloads due to his then undiagosed asd and at least detention/isoaltion got him away from a difficult environment.

I've seen a school who use a conduct card style system give out second cards with one row/set of strikes blocked out if the child can't produce theirs. Form tutors are supposed to keep track as well, so if a child isn't producing the same card each week, it should get spotted.

That said, if you are enterprising/inventive enough I think it's possible to come up with a workable rotation system-but most students doing this eventually get caught out and the sanctions for this have to be severe enough that it doesn't look like an attractive option. Having rewards for clean cards also helps.

But the school also had a quite rigid culture and SLT and middle leaders were always available to help deal with serious problems. The major work to turn around behaviour in the school had already been done and the conduct card system was really just to deal with minor stuff.

I think the biggest thing that makes a difference in any school is consistency- regardless of the system, if all staff do the same, eventually the students expect it and will start to follow the rules at least 80-90% of the time. If people do things differently, some will push the boundaries at any opportunity to see what they can get away with!