Seaham High School and its Governing Body believes that good behaviour in all aspects of school life is necessary to enable effective teaching and learning to take place. It seeks to create a caring and learning environment by:
- Promoting good behaviour and discipline;
- Promoting self-esteem, self-discipline, proper regard for authority and positive relationships based on mutual respect and understanding;
- Ensuring fairness of treatment for all;
- Encouraging consistency of response to both positive and negative behaviour;
- Promoting early intervention;
- Providing a safe environment free from disruption, violence, bullying and any form of harassment;
- Not allowing pupils to bring items into school which may cause offence, injure or be harmful to others.
- Providing a framework to promote acceptable standards of behaviour;
- Encouraging positive relationships with parents to develop a shared approach to involve them in the implementation of school’s policy and associated procedures.
Procedures – The Behaviour Curriculum
It makes clear to the pupils how acceptable standards of behaviour can be achieved. It has clear rationale which is made explicit to staff, pupils and parents. Procedures are consistently and fairly applied and promote the idea that every member of the school community has a responsibility towards the whole. The Behaviour Curriculum “STEPPED DISCIPLINE” initiative seeks to pro-actively remove low level disruption immediately to ensure successful learning for all students. It also encourages students to reflect on their own behaviour and supports them to take action to modify their behaviour.
Behaviour steps in class
Stepped Discipline System
All students will start on Step 0 and this will be reviewed each half-term by Miss Thynne (Head of Student Guidance) and the Year Manager. The information recorded on Class Charts will be used to make a decision on every individual student. It is expected that all students remain on step 0. However, as a student moves up the Steps more support will be put in place to help the student modify their behaviour and move down.
Rewards
A school ethos of encouragement is central to the behaviour curriculum that seeks to promote good behaviour. Rewards are one means of achieving this. They have a motivational role in helping pupils to realise that good behaviour is valued, and are clearly defined in the procedures. Our reward system focusses around the development of the 6R initiative, which is to encourage students to develop attributes such as resilience and responsibility. Integral to the system of rewards is an emphasis on praise both informal and formal to individual and groups.
Sanctions
Sanctions are needed to respond to inappropriate behaviour. A range of sanctions is clearly defined in the procedures and their use will be characterised by clarity of why the sanction is being applied, what changes in behaviour are required to avoid future sanctions. There is a clear distinction between the sanctions applied for minor and major offences.
Sanctions available for staff to use are as follows;
- Verbal reprimand
- Setting extra work or repeating unsatisfactory work
- Setting of written tasks as punishments
- Loss of privileges such as attendance on a visit, attendance to Prom, not being able to participate, withdrawal of lunch time pass
- Missing break time or part of lunch
- After School detentions
- School based community service- designed to be restorative and non-humiliating such as Litter picking, tidying a classroom, helping clear the dining hall, removing graffiti, extra physical exercise.
- Placed on report to identified members of staff for a period of time
- Referral to the Deputy Headteacher for consideration for Placement in the Exclusion Unit
- Referral to the Deputy Headteacher for consideration for Fixed Term Exclusion
- Referral to Headteacher for permanent exclusion
Detentions
The school has a policy of whole school detentions. Brunch-time detentions are given to students who are late to school. Detentions are given to those students who misbehave at break or lunch time, are caught smoking or truanting. These are largely but not exclusively issued by members of SLT or Student Guidance. Students might be asked to attend “Lesson 6” to catch up missing work. This will be arranged between Student Guidance and Faculty staff. Pupils are placed on detention for a variety of reasons, including being removed from lessons by senior members of staff due to disrupting the learning of the other pupils in the class, lateness, not completing homework and persistent misbehaviour. Parents/ carers will usually be informed if their child is being placed in detention via the Class Charts app. Any member of teaching staff is able to give a student a break time, lunch time or after school detention lasting no longer than an hour, provided they notify parents of after school detentions and permit toilet breaks and time for students to eat lunch when appropriate.
Exclusion Unit
The Exclusion Unit aims to support pupils who are experiencing difficulties at school.
This unit has been introduced in an attempt to improve pupil behaviour without excluding them. Appropriate work is provided for the pupils (while they are in the designated room) so that in time they can be re-integrated back into lessons. Pupils will spend time in the unit depending on their individual needs. Pupils will attend one of two sessions 8:15am-12:15am or 12:30pm- 4:15pm. Pupils will be expected to remain at home during school hours when not in the Unit. Parents/carers will be invited to a meeting prior to Exclusion, given an opportunity to visit the unit and agree success criteria. Return to mainstream school is dependent on pupils meeting their success criteria.
Excluded Pupils
Pupils whose behaviour is so extreme, will be considered for a Fixed Term Exclusion from school. Parents/carers will be invited to attend the re-integration meeting before pupils are re-admitted into school. A pupil will only be considered for permanent exclusion if they meet the criteria from the DCSF and all other strategies have been exhausted within school.