If your school has a behaviour policy in place, it’s highly recommended that the policy is reviewed at least once per year to ensure your resources allocated towards school behaviour are being spent effectively.
In the UK, the school behaviour policy must be set by the head-teacher by law. The policy needs to have parameters of acceptance, reasonable solutions to poor behaviour, prevent bullying and promote good behaviour. However, without reliable feedback related to the behaviour policy from staff, the head-teacher may find it difficult creating judgements on how to improve the policy and produce more effective results.
There are three primary areas of focus when reviewing the policy:
Staff — Do they understand how to comply with the policy effectively?
Pupils — How does the school inform every pupil of the policy?
Policy — Is the policy still relevant? Have previous results not produced the desired effect?
Staff
Each member of staff needs to understand the behaviour policy and the methods of incorporating it into the classroom. Staff should be able to make a judgement depending on the severity of the behaviour problem and maintain a consistent solution for each level of behaviour. Staff should produce a referral form or incident slip each time a classroom disruption takes place. A common issue when reviewing behaviour policies is that staff only produce referral forms when severe instances of behaviour issue arise. This results in only upper levels of behaviour management being recorded with little data being used to review common occurrences.
A more modernised method of tracking pupil behaviour would be to use a CMS(Classroom Management System) such as ClassCharts; www.classcharts.com. This allows staff to easily report student behaviour and share the data with other teachers which can then be printed when the data is required for review.
Pupils
Pupils need to be well informed on the levels of behaviour management and the associated punishment with that level of infraction. A common method of doing so is printing an easy-to-read table at the beginning or end of each pupil’s planner or diary given out by the school. Staff members should also remind pupils of the consequences of poor behaviour in class.
Policy
If staff have applied the behaviour policy effectively and recorded the appropriate procedures when an issue occurred, the data can then be analysed with a broad range of data from minor infractions to severe behaviour issues. From this data, certain changes can be made in key areas to improve overall student behavior as well as being able to further promote good behaviour.
Overall, the school’s behaviour policy should be clear, easily understood and consistent. Pupils should be aware that good behaviour is rewarded while poor behaviour should be punished and discouraged. The behaviour policy can then be improved upon each year to suit the needs of the staff and pupils.
For more info on classroom management visit http://www.classcharts.com
About Class Charts:
We specialise in providing innovative learning solutions for schools. At the core of what we do is the experience and knowledge of education professionals, we build on this to tailor our products to the needs of today’s teachers and school management teams.
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Edukey Education Ltd
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Trefin, Haverfordwest SA625AX
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http://www.classcharts.com