Teach Secondary Issue 13.6

arrivals at lessons by introducing a late bell, and drawing on some standard ‘tricks of the trade’ to impart a sense of pace, urgency and expectation into the school day. Reset, refocus It was clear frommy early findings that behaviour at the school had been difficult to manage. Behaviour tended to be managed within classrooms, with the ultimate sanction – after some warning – being removal from the classroom, into a different classroom. Unfortunately, however, the disruption would often continue. I wanted to get to a situation where the school could remove all the barriers preventing teachers frommaking great progress in their classrooms, one of which was evidently behaviour. We therefore instituted a simple on-call system, whereby teachers could request that someone from the school’s 12-strong behaviour team visit the classroom and remove the student, but then take them to our Refocus Room for a period. This was a room that had already been designated for behaviour purposes at the school, but with the help of two new deputies who joined the school alongside me, we reinvented the room as a learning space where students could take some time out, and at the end of that period, try again, with the process being tracked and monitored. What’s crucial about this system is that once a teacher has had a child removed from their classroom and logged the incident, that's their part done . They're not setting detentions, they're not calling home – they’re freed from those burdens. Instead, we’ve established a centralised detentions system that’s run after school by our pastoral team. Moreover, we’ve introduced same day graded detentions of 30- 60- or 90-minutes in duration (which obviously necessitated putting in place robust communications with parents to ensure that they’re appropriately notified). Learning behaviours Another key aspect of our behaviour system is the use of daily reports. The pastoral team for each year group download a daily report at the end of the day, detailing any issues that may have been encountered. They will then phone parents that same day regarding any concerns, log what’s raised in those discussions –maybe a change in seating plan, a student having had a bad day – and enquire whether there’s anything further we can do, or any meetings we can arrange. Those reports are then sent through to the school’s deputy and myself, resulting in a systematic check-in of all behaviour within the school and how it’s being tracked. Introducing this system involved changing some responsibilities – particularly for staff who were formerly heads of year and are now Achievement TeamLeaders, whose roles require them to distinguish between students presenting negative behaviours, and those presenting negative learning behaviours. Once some parents began receiving what were essentially daily phone calls, much of what I’d term as the school’s low-level negative behaviour soon disappeared. In effect, you're bringing those issues to the stakeholder’s door and saying, ‘This isn’t actually good enough – we need to start doing things differently.’ Dominic Roberts, director ofmaths Joined the school in 2021, having previously been head of a school in China When you're part of a staff body and you get judged Inadequate, whether you agree with it or not, you can’t help but BITESIZE SESSIONS Taking the form of four sessions scheduled on Wednesday mornings and four on Friday mornings,Welling School’s Bitesize Sessions are conceived as short 20- to 25-minute CPD seminars, focusing on pedagogy and teaching practice. These are predominately led by teaching staff, as a way to encourage the cross-departmental sharing of knowledge and best practice. Presenters are regularly rotated, and have previously included lead practitioners, ECTs and all roles in between. ASPIRE, AMBITION, GRAMMAR At Welling School, KS3 students are assigned to one of three different streams: Aspire stream: A comparatively small group of students two to three years behind their cohort in terms of progress, who receive additional English and maths support Ambition stream: Amixed ability group that includes the majority of KS3 students Grammar stream: A smaller group made up more able students 56 teachwire.net/secondary