Behaviour
Throughout the academic year of 2023-2024, and following our Ofsted report in April 2023, we worked alongside Charles Dickens school in Southwark as part of the Department for Education's Behaviour Hub programme.
As part of our work with Charles Dickens, we wanted to:
- review the school's behaviour policy,
- create the Wessex Way based around consistent classroom expectations, a greater emphasis on recognising the school values and development and launch of the school's character curriculum.
We were lucky enough to be able to visit schools all over the country to gather ideas and see how they promoted their own values and policies.
What has been our biggest success?
We have created the Wessex Way which allows for a consistent set of expectations for how we behave at the school, exemplify the school values and how we teach pupils the expected character traits that we believe are important for integrating in today’s society. This approach to recognising positive behaviours has formed the backbone of our new behaviour policy and according to parents, pupils and staff, this approach has been very well received.
What has been the outcome?
There are now consistent expectations across all classes so children and adults know what to expect. This has been achieved by implementation of our classroom expectation visual graphics being displayed prominently in every learning space. This is exemplified in our survey of staff where one respondent stated, "I think the visuals definitely help the children recognise what is expected of them and it has made it easier to implement an all round expectation in class. This is good for us all to follow the same procedure and reiterate the rules."
Having the school values displayed and referenced in conversations between all stakeholders has helped to drive a positive culture of social norms. Introducing school value stickers to recognise pupils displaying the school values has also been very positively received by everyone. The following are quotes from our staff survey in Summer 2024.
“It is lovely to have a whole child approach to learning including building character as well as academic excellence” “Good to remind and teach children about the ways we would like them to behave.” “More thought from the children and clear ways of them dealing with things and knowing expectations” “The children are proud to receive recognition.” “I love what Wessex stands for, we have a clear identity in our Wessex Way.” |
Pupils have enjoyed the Wessex Way being introduced. Through our pupil survey in Spring 2024, pupils gave the Wessex Way a score of 4.02 and reported that they saw children demonstrating our Character Curriculum often around the school.
Visitors often comment about the welcoming and calm feel when they walk around the school too:
"Relationships between staff and pupils is a real strength of the school... Classrooms were organised, pupils were engaged in learning and the school was calm and purposeful. " - Al Whitelaw, Pupil Inclusion and Support Manager - Achieving for Children
We ran parent workshops explaining our new behaviour policy in September 2024. If you missed these and want to see the slides, they are available here.
What are our next steps?
- We want to embed our Character Curriculum further into everyday life at Wessex by spending more time in lessons teaching the Character Curriculum alongside our assemblies.
- We want to continue to develop adaptations and adjustments in lessons to allow pupils greater access to their learning, which in turn will drive even greater engagement in lessons.
- Developing the Wessex Way to include whole school routines, such as coming in to school in the morning, leaving school at the end of the day, being in the dining hall.
We welcome visits to the school to see The Wessex Way in action. For more information and to book a visit, please call the office on 01628 626724 or send us an email.