Student behaviour is always an impassioned topic within education. The reasons for bad behaviour and methods for ensuring good behaviour are always in debate.
Thorpe St Andrew School and Sixth Form, which is an outstanding school on the eastern side of Norwich, is no exception. Like all schools, we face the daily challenge of ensuring all students are present and ready to learn.
The most challenging students present a range of issues and there are often challenging situations within their home life, SEN and attendance concerns which lead to the child struggling with behaviour in the classroom. Too often, students would end up in “time-out”, losing lunch or break-times, in detention or in the worst cases, excluded.
I joined the school as assistant principal in 2013 and felt more needed to be done to ensure students with challenging behaviour were able to thrive within the school and wider community. I decided to explore how we could better utilise the support that students with behaviour issues received.
Within the school structure, at-risk students already received support from academic and pastoral staff. What the system needed was to pull all the support together, reflect on the success and areas for improvement, and to be more strategic in its approach.
A joined-up approach
I initiated a “key worker” scheme to target students who are at risk of exclusion, who have had one or more fixed term exclusions, who have attendance issues or who have been subject to many removals into internal referral – students who are therefore not making progress in line with expectations.
I felt that the support these students received should reflect the complexity of the issues which led to their inability to engage with their lessons and the consequent behaviour issues.
I began to develop the role of the key worker and decided it should be part of the Learning Support Assistant (LSA) team. However, unlike the LSA role, key workers would be expected to work across many departments in the school. The LSA role sits next to the student and supports with their work, it does not extend outside the classroom. The key worker role would support the whole child and the family as well.
My vision for the role was to develop someone who had a broad range of skills. I needed them to be able to investigate and analyse attainment and progress data, as well as gather anecdotal evidence on students from teachers, form tutors, heads of house, the SEN team, Pupil Premium co-ordinator, leadership team and parents. Once they had all the information, the key worker could plan an effective programme of support because they would have a deeper understanding of the students’ needs.
I wanted the key worker to sit in the classroom with students, as well as work with them on a one-to-one basis, and to be a behaviour and academic mentor to the student. This would enable other key staff, such as heads of house, to use their time more effectively.
I spoke to the principal and vice-principal about the initiative. Both thought it was a good idea and agreed the role should sit in the LSA team. I created a job description and shared the idea at a senior leadership meeting, and following this to heads of house and the rest of my colleagues.
The initial idea was well received as I explained that while teachers maintained the responsibility and power within their classroom, this was an extra layer of support which would enable them to focus on teaching.
A new LSA had been recently appointed and, with no budget to hire for a whole new role, we decided that I would support them to take on and trial the key worker role in the summer term of 2015.
In order to decide which students needed support, we worked together with another assistant principal and heads of house to analyse the data. This included the number of negative logs that a student had received, and the reason for these, the number of detentions, instances of referral and any exclusions. We analysed the SEN data, attainment grades, attendance figures and any information regarding family background and parental support from the Student Support Plan.
Once we had identified a student who would be supported by the key worker, I held a meeting with the head of house, SENCO, key worker, assistant principal and parent, which enabled everyone involved to have their views heard and gave the parents and student the opportunity to agree to the support.
After this meeting I worked with the key worker and student to review the student’s timetable and decide which lessons the key worker would sit in on. The key worker then informed the teachers that they would be working with this student in their lesson. As the role developed I was not present in all these meetings, which are now managed by key worker.
Each key worker has a caseload of three students listed by priority. I devised this list so that, if the key worker finds themselves in a classroom waiting for an absent student, they can attend the second priority student so their support is not wasted.
I set up a meeting each week between myself and the key workers to review the students’ progress. After this, they adjust the level of support given, complete the support plan, and contact parents and other staff involved in working with the student.
Impact for students, parents and staff
The initiative has been developing now for four terms and has seen impact with the students targeted by the scheme as well as the wider school community. Parents have said that they appreciate the weekly, or more frequent, telephone calls regarding any issues or any positive news – they feel listened to and are confident that their child is getting the best support.
The good relationships between the key workers and the students’ homes have led to a significant reduction in the number of negative logs for homework.
Students have also commented positively on the support provided, even when they are challenged by the key worker. They are spending more time in the classroom and less time in referral, and they score lower on the negative behaviour logs and more highly in attitude grades. The number of negative behaviour logs received by the nine students supported so far has decreased, with four students dropping out of the top 50, and six of the students falling out of the top 10.
Attendance has improved for six of the nine students and there are fewer instances of lateness. One student who was removed from languages during year 8 for poor behaviour has managed to stay in the language lessons for this year and the work he has managed to complete is at a Level 6, where previously he had not achieved a level as he had consistently missed classes.
Teachers spend less time supporting challenging behaviour in the classroom and more time teaching the lessons they have planned. Heads of house have said that it frees them to deal with more students.
One head of house recently thanked a key worker for supporting a student who always scored poorly on the attitude grade list, and is now much further up. Another teacher said that as a result of the relationship between the key worker and the student, the student was much more compliant, which in turn has improved the relationship between the teacher and the student, as well as the atmosphere across the whole class.
The key worker role is targeted at students in the lower school, year 8, and the support is usually withdrawn as they get to the end of year 9 and move into year 10, where there is access to other mentoring and support networks through the GCSE years.
In developing the initiative, I would like to have a key stage 4 and a key stage 3 team that focus on different priorities as the students move through the school. I would also like to buddy the key workers with one another, as the role can be intense and I think they would benefit from discussing and sharing ideas. Communication is key, and I would like to give more time to the key workers to gather the information and liaise with staff.
Ideally, I would like to expand the team so there are more staff and they are able to work with a larger group of students. The impact that they have had is only restricted now by the number of staff and the time they have available.
It is encouraging to see what we achieved by being more strategic and tailoring the support we provide to students with challenging behaviour. I look forward to developing the scheme further and examining the data to see how the impact ripples out to the whole school and wider community.
- Louise Vereen is assistant principal at Thorpe St Andrew School and Sixth Form in Norwich. She is a graduate of the Future Leaders programme run by the charity Ambition School Leadership.
Ambition School Leadership
Ambition School Leadership is a charity that runs leadership development programmes in England to help school leaders create more impact in schools that serve disadvantaged children and their communities. Visit www.ambitionschoolleadership.org.uk