Behaviour & Anti-bullying Policy

School Aims

We aim for our children to be:

Successful Learners: who enjoy learning, making progress and achieve.
Responsible Citizens: who are self-assured and socially aware – who have pride in their own history and heritage and respect for that of others.
Confident Individuals: who are able to live safe, healthy and fulfilling lives.

Statement of Inclusion / Equality

At St. Benedict’s Infant school, we realise the value and importance of all children and families being able to play, learn, achieve and develop alongside each other. We want parents to have confidence that we meet the needs of all their children effectively. As a setting we strive to provide an environment in which all children and families feel safe, are as healthy as possible and can enjoy experiences that will help them to understand and contribute to the world around them.

Data Protection / Confidentiality

We understand the importance of the terms of the 1998 Data Protection Act, and any subsequent, relevant legislation. We ensure personal data is treated in a manner that is lawful. The school has specific data protection and freedom of information policies available.

Behaviour Statement of Intent

We believe every child should have the best possible learning opportunities. We recognise that some children may have a particular need or disability and we ensure that specific action to support and encourage these children is paramount to our practice. We believe that we are a caring setting, whose values are built on mutual trust and respect for all. Our Behaviour policy is therefore designed to encourage the way in which all members of the school can live and work together in a supportive way. It aims to promote an environment where everyone feels happy, safe and secure. We work closely with parents and other external agencies to monitor the child’s progress carefully and provide effective additional support to meet the child’s needs.

Legal Requirements

At St. Benedict’s Infant school, we have an effective policy ensuring equal opportunities for supporting children with behavioural difficulties. We have regard for the SEN Code of practice. We provide information about how the individual needs of a child will be met, we provide information about how all children including behavioural difficulties will be included, valued
and supported, and how reasonable adjustments will make for them. We are committed to working with parents and other agencies.

We agree that the SEN Code of Practice is put into practice in the provision that we have established. We have a named Behaviour co-ordinator for statutory and none-statutory aged children. We have arrangements for reviewing, monitoring and evaluating the effectiveness of inclusive practice and how the provision will promote and value diversity and difference.

All members of staff are aware of the regulations regarding the use of force by teachers, as set out in DFEE circular 10/98, relating to section 550A of the Education Act 1996: the use of Force to control or retrain pupils. Staff only intervene physically to restrain children or to prevent injury to a child, or if a child is in danger of hurting themselves. The actions that we take are in line with government guidelines on the restraints of children.

Roles and Responsibilities

Responsibilities of the Board of Governors
The Governors have the responsibility of setting down the guidelines on standards of discipline and behaviour and of reviewing their effectiveness. The governing body supports the Leadership in carrying out these guidelines.

Responsibilities of the Leadership / Management
The management have the responsibility to ensure that all staff, students and volunteers have up to date knowledge regarding current procedures related to behaviour. Procedures are in place for the behaviour policy and procedures to be updated annually by the appointed person(s). The management are also responsible for the overall implementation of the correct procedures and demonstrate a clear vision and focus on high quality teaching and learning and to have high expectation of all children. It is the responsibility of the Leadership Team, under the schools Standard Framework Act, 1998, to implement the school’s Behaviour Policy consistently throughout the school and to report to governors, when requested, on the effectiveness of the policy. It is also the responsibility of the Leadership Team to ensure the health, safety and welfare of all children in the school. The Leadership Team keeps records of all serious incidents of misbehaviour and the head has the responsibility for giving fixed term exclusions/ permanent exclusions to children for serious/ repeated acts of misbehaviour.

Responsibilities of Staff
It is the responsibility of the staff to ensure that the school rules are enforced in their class and that their class behaves in a responsible manner during lesson time. The staff should have high expectations of the children in terms of their behaviour and that they strive to ensure that all children work to the best of their ability. The staffs have a responsibility to treat all their children fairly and enforce the classroom code consistently. The staff has a responsibility to ensure that the parents are kept informed at all stages of the procedures that the school is following.
Responsibility of Parents and Children
The school collaborates actively with parents and carers, so that children can receive consistent messages about how to behave at school. We aim to build a supportive dialogue between home and the school, and we inform parents and carers immediately if we have concerns about their child’s welfare or behaviour.

Parents will build an understanding of the school’s responsibilities to ensure that the correct procedures are put in place to support children who have behavioural difficulties learning and development. They will also be made aware of the support that is available for them as parents to access and utilize facilities that are available to them in order to support them and their children through the support from outside agencies. This is part of the settings admissions procedure.

Admissions

St. Benedict’s Infant School places a great emphasise on the parents and the child at the admission procedure. All parents and children are invited into our school, where the year managers or relevant staff meet the family alongside a member of the Support Staff. The year manager spends time with the parents to establish relevant information, needs, medical conditions, previous settings etc to ensure the child settles easily into our school and to ensure that we know as much as possible about the child’s individual needs. The member of our Support Staff will carry out an informal assessment of the child to establish needs which is discussed with the child’s new teacher. The Assistant Head for Pupil Support will contact previous schooling if appropriate to discuss child’s needs and IBP targets and to support transfer of records swiftly. This information and the child’s informal assessment will be used to gage support needed.

Operational Procedures

PaTHs

St Benedict’s Infant School adopted the PATHS programme in September 2014 in order to help support our children.

PATHS® stands for Promoting Alternative THinking Strategies.

The programme is a universal, classroom based curriculum that teaches social and emotional learning to primary school children. It involves helping children to:

recognise emotions and values;
make constructive choices about personal and social behaviour; and
show understanding and empathy for others.

The programme teaches children how to label their feelings and apply self-control strategies, leading to improvements in classroom behaviour, resilience and verbal fluency.

Behaviour Week

At the beginning of each academic year staff and children participate in activities, games, circle time, planning and implementing strategies to establish and promote a positive working environment that will instil among all children their values, respect and discipline within each classroom. The purpose underlying these procedures is to first and foremost improve behaviour but also to help develop children as effective learners.

All staff to meet to discuss strategies to be implemented before the arrival of the children.

All year groups to have consistent strategies to deal effectively with behaviour.
Each year group to choose 5 behaviour strategies.
Year group meetings to be used to discuss the effectiveness of the strategy or the need to change strategy if deemed appropriate.
Deputy year managers to inform Assistant Head for pupil support of strategies used and changes made.

Rewards and Sanctions

We praise and reward children for good behaviour in a variety of ways.

Teachers congratulate children;
Teachers used an approach that is consistent across the year group;
Each week we nominate a child from each class to receive a reward for excellent behaviour;
The school acknowledges all efforts and achievements of children. The school employs a number of sanctions to enforce the school rules and to ensure a safe and positive learning environment. We employ each sanction appropriately in each individual situation.

The Graduated Approach to Behaviour

When there are persistent difficulties with a child a policy of graduated action must be considered. At St. Benedict’s Infant School we follow a “ Behaviour Intervention” procedure that consists of 3 levels of support and intervention.

This approach recognises that where necessary, increasing specialist expertise should be brought to bear on the difficulties that a child or may be experiencing.

Tier 1
The Role of the Class Teacher

It is the responsibility of the Class Teachers to ensure that the school rules are enforced in their classes, and that their class behaves in a responsible manner during the period that they are in the teacher’s care. The Class Teacher, in the first instance, will contact a parent if there are concerns about the behaviour of a child. The class teacher should ensure that parents are aware of repeated low level negative behaviour such as calling out or disrupting the class.

When behaviour is unacceptable and a class rule has been broken, there is a familiar hierarchy of consequences in place. If a consequence is given to a child, it is given in accordance with each individual situation, and must be approached justly and fairly.

A Behaviour Log is kept in each classroom and this acts as a record and a reminder to the children about their behaviour throughout the day.

Unacceptable behaviour in the classroom

At each stage, the intention should be to stop the escalation of the behaviour. These are:

Behaviour is named and guidance is given. The child is then given a choice on whether to stop the unacceptable behaviour or have it recorded in the Behaviour Log and receive a consequence.
The behaviour is recorded in the Behaviour Log
The child will be asked to move to another part of the classroom This is a 5 minute “cool off period to rethink”, but away from other children. The children will be asked to rejoin the lesson when they feel ready.
The child will to move to another class. If the child is displaying behaviour that is likely to lead to classroom disruption. This is a time to reflect for the child. On reentry to class a working relationship should be established.
The child will sent to the Deputy Year Group Leader.
The child will be sent to a member of the leadership team and parents will be contacted to come into school.

The Role of Lunchtime Supervisors

Midday supervisors should make themselves aware of the school’s Behaviour Policy and general guidelines so that their management of the children at lunch time is consistent with that of all other members of staff.

Dinner supervisors should be perceived as a member of staff who should enjoy the support and respect of all other school personnel.

This can be enhanced by:

Good liaison between teacher and supervisor
Dinner supervisors to be called by their surname
Dinner supervisors to know the names of the children that they are responsible for
Positive reinforcement to be used to support the children in the playground
Dealing with minor infringements within the spirit of the Behaviour policy and reporting all incidents to the class teacher were a decision can be made on how to deal with the incident and the procedures that are to be followed.
Persistent behaviour should be dealt with following the above procedures, e.g time out and removal from an area of the playground.

In the playground
Dinner Supervisors will encourage children to:
Use games marked on the playground
Play traditional games with adult support
Use outdoor equipment to support play
Look after other children if they are sad or hurt
Be polite to others

Wet lunchtimes in classroom
Dinner Supervisors will:
Liaise with class teacher regarding class rules and strategies used to support behaviour
Resources and equipment to be kept ready and accessible for the Dinner supervisors

Unacceptable behaviour in the playground

This will be dealt with using the following procedures:

A reminder from an adult about what they expect.
Children will be given the choice of stopping the unacceptable behaviour or taking ‘time-out.’
The child is given 5 minutes time-out in the allocated, supervised area, before returning the child to the playground.
If the behaviour continues, the lunchtime supervisor will give the child a ‘Red Card’ and the behaviour is recorded in the Class Behaviour Log.

Tier 2
The Role of the Deputy Year Leaders

The Deputy Year Group Leader is the first point of contact for class teachers on issues of behaviour. This is either through the weekly monitoring of incidents recorded on the Class Behaviour Log, a referral with an ABC form or an informal discussion.

It is also the Deputy Year Group Leaders responsibility to ensure that the strategies decided by their year group is implemented and used consistently.

If a child’s behaviour becomes more persistent targets for improving behaviour are set by the teacher, Deputy Year manager, child and parent. These targets run for approximately 2 weeks.
Tier 3
The Role of the Assistant Headteacher

Incidents that continue to occur, despite the interventions put in place are then referred to the Assistant Headteacher for behaviour, whereby she conducts a meeting with parents, child and staff to set up an intensive programme that will run for a further 2 weeks, with daily/weekly intervention from the Assistant Headteacher with responsibility for behaviour.

It is the Assistant Headteacher’s responsibility to refer to support services and external agencies. The Senior Leadership Team are available to support at any stage of this process.

Anti Bullying Statement

The school does not tolerate bullying of any kind. If we discover that an act of bullying or intimidation has taken place, we act immediately to stop any further occurrences of such behaviour. While it is very difficult to eradicate bullying, we do everything in our power to ensure that all children attend school free from fear.

In response to a complaint of bullying, the behaviour procedures of St Benedict’s Infant School should be followed, with staff making a full investigation, keeping detailed records and applying sanctions as necessary.

Bullying Directed Towards Race, Gender, Sexual Orientation or Disability

St Benedict’s Infant School will not tolerate bullying against anyone because of his or her race, gender, sexual orientation or disability. The school will take preventative action to reduce the likelihood of bullying incidents of this nature occurring. Stereotypical views are challenged and pupils learn to appreciate and view positively differences in others, whether arising from race, gender, ability or disability.

Racial Bullying/Harassment

Racial bullying will not be tolerated in St Benedict’s Infant School and will be treated severely. If a child receives verbal abuse, physical threats or attacks, or if a pupil brings racist literature into school, incites others to behave in a racist way or writes racist insults, behaviour strategies will be implemented.
A full investigation will be carried out, recording incidents in the Racist Incident Log. St Benedict’s Infant School has a duty to develop children’s understanding of ethnic diversity issues and explore racial tolerance in PSHE, PATHS and Religious Education lessons.

Sexual Bullying

Sexual bullying has an impact on both genders. Sexual bullying is characterised by abusive name-calling, comments about appearance, attractiveness, inappropriate and uninvited touching and sexual innuendoes.

Sexual Orientation

Sexual bullying can also be related to sexual orientation. Children do not have to be homosexual or bi-sexual to experience such bullying.
Strategies to deal with such bullying include:

awareness by staff that homophobic bullying can occur
challenging homophobic language and explore pupils’ understanding – they might not understand the impact
implement discipline procedures if the bullying warrants it.

Special Education Needs or Disabilities

Pupils with special educational needs or disabilities might not be able to articulate experiences as fluently as other children. However, they are often at greater risk of being bullied, both directly and indirectly, and usually about their specific disability.

St Benedict’s Infant School makes sure the behaviour of staff does not trigger bullying unintentionally. They should avoid undue attention towards SEN children compared with others, and should not make comments based on pupils’ appearance or perceived character e.g. boys playing football poorly should not be told they play like girls.

We try to make classroom activities and lessons sensitive to such children’s needs. We use the PATHs programme to build self-esteem. If the bullying is serious, St Benedict’s Infant School will undertake a full investigation, including a full discussion with witnesses, recording incidents in writing and contacting parents. Discipline procedures are implemented.

High attainers, gifted or talented pupils can also be affected by bullying. Teachers should treat this as seriously as any other type of bullying.

Date Reviewed: 20th October 2016
Next Review: 20th October 2018
Head Teacher: Armine Williams
Chair of Governors: Mohammad Zabar

St Benedicts's Primary School