Best Practice

Restorative justice: Detentions don’t work

Pastoral issues Behaviour
Some schools have adopted restorative practice at the heart of their behaviour policies. Nadine Pittam looks at this emerging strategy

Our school had the French exchange students over. One of them talked during assembly. The school’s head of “discipline” was not impressed. He spied the visiting Mr French talking and dealt with him in exactly the way he would deal with any of us talking: he made the lad stand up (everyone else was cross-legged on the floor) and walk to face him.

We all knew the flavour of what was to come: the head of discipline threw his booming voice, almost point blank, into the French boy’s face, then further humiliated him by making him stand on stage with his back to us for the rest of the school assembly. We watched, aghast, as the 16-year-old’s shoulders shook with sobs.

Where is this teacher now? He and his like are no longer seen in secondary schools; students are, thankfully, no longer effectively ruled by fear in this way. But I wonder if we, as educators, have yet successfully replaced those old-fashioned disciplinary measures.

Detentions don’t work for many of our students and, increasingly, students don’t even show up for that detention with their teacher unless the lesson happens to fall immediately before a break or lunchtime so the teacher can virtually lock the door on the offender.

We use punishments such as detentions in schools because we think they are quick, and require little staffing, and little time to implement. But, here’s the truth: that is not true.

How many of us spend hours a week administering and chasing detentions for students who have no intention of complying, at least not until three or four weeks have passed and three or four levels of staff have had a go at dealing with it.

Lorraine Amstutz writes in her book (The Little Book of Restorative Discipline for Schools): “When children’s lives and behaviour are too regulated by others, they feel no need to control themselves since others do it for them. So an important long-term goal is to teach self-discipline.”

Punishment may only encourage young people to behave appropriately while someone is watching. The minute a young person is on his or her own the misbehaviour is likely to raise its head. Meaning, we are not creating a generation of youngsters with any self-control – something which might be contributing to many schools pushing to reduce breaks and lunchtimes (because giving students too much time only allows them to cause more mayhem).

Lorraine Amstutz again: “The punished student then tends to question the nature of the punishment and to blame the punisher rather than take responsibility for the harm done by the misbehaviour.”

So, what are we to do? We need to do something, something appropriate for our dislocated and “isolated” society. We all agree that low-level disruption is one of the most wearing aspects of teaching in secondary schools.

A widely reported poll carried out by YouGov for Ofsted in 2014 found that “disturbing other children” was cited as the most disruptive aspect of teaching (by 38 per cent of the teachers). One in 12 secondary teachers polled said that on average, “more than 10 minutes of learning was lost per hour because of disruption” (Below the Radar: Low-level disruption in the country’s classrooms, Ofsted, September 2014).

On average. I’m sure many of us have had lessons with more offensive statistics than that.
I am starting to think that we need something radically different, and I wonder if restorative approaches could be it. A good number of schools are already on board.

Restorative justice

Restorative justice is a process that resolves conflict and is part of a larger ethos also known as restorative practices/approaches. The website RestorativeJustice4Schools continues: “It promotes telling the truth, taking responsibility, acknowledging harm as an appropriate response to conflict, and in doing so creates accountability.

“It is a very valuable tool to a modern school, as it not only allows the harmer to see the impact of their behaviour but also allows the ‘harmed’ person the opportunity to see if they contributed to the conflict in anyway by their own behaviour. Both participants are then able agree their own joint contract of how they are going to treat each other in the future, this gives them a personal stake in the success of the contract.”

Restorative practices work on the principle that anger comes from hurt. And if we can help heal the hurt, we can try to stop some of the anger.

Know what you are doing

There is much evidence to support restorative justice in adult and young offenders’ criminal spheres. Women’s Hour recently ran an episode where Jenny Murray interviewed a rape victim who had support setting up a meeting with her rapist – it can be very powerful stuff.

But one thing is evident in all the reading I have done: the meetings need to be structured and handled with extreme care. School-based trainers are adamant that teachers shouldn’t embark on such methods without training.

There are some schools which have adopted restorative approaches wholeheartedly as their way of handling behaviour. There is all sorts of research to support its success, and there are blogs by headteachers who have rolled it out across their schools who will happily vouch for its effectiveness. Not least among these, you may have read Andy Williams’ SecEd article last year on how restorative practices help him and his school – Restorative practice in schools, SecEd, April 2015). There is also strong argument that it saves money for schools and for society.

Among the myriad websites offering training for you and your colleagues on how to implement restorative approaches across a whole school, here are a few key points. The website FutureBehaviour proposes a series of questions used to respond to those with challenging behaviour:

  1. What happened?
  2. What was on your mind at the time?
  3. What have your thoughts been since?
  4. Who has been affected by what you did?
  5. In what way have you been affected?
  6. What do you need to do to make things right?

Furthermore, it proposes a series of questions to help those harmed by the actions of others:

  1. What did you think when you realised what had happened?
  2. What have your thoughts been since?
  3. How has this affected you and others?
  4. What has been the hardest thing for you?
  5. What do you think needs to happen to make things right?

Here are some conversation structures from two other websites. Howard Zehr (apparently known as the “grandfather of restorative justice”) suggests six guiding questions for a restorative approach:

  1. Who’s been hurt?
  2. What are their needs?
  3. Whose obligations are they?
  4. What are the causes?
  5. Who has a stake in this?
  6. What is the appropriate process to involve stakeholders in an effort to put things right?

Meanwhile, Transforming Conflict, a website offering resources and training, proposes five core themes intended to help you structure these discussions:

  • Theme 1: unique and equally valued perspectives – what happened, what’s happening, what’s up?
  • Theme 2: thoughts influence emotions, and emotions influence subsequent actions. What were you thinking when that happened, and so what were you feeling at that point?
  • Theme 3: empathy and consideration for others – who has been affected by what’s happened and how?
  • Theme 4: awareness of our own and others’ needs – what do you need so things can be put right and you can move on from this?
  • Theme 5: trust and empowerment – what needs to happen now to repair the harm and put things right? What could you do?

It is easy to see the benefits for pastoral and behaviour leaders of a restorative approach to bullying concerns, to theft and to vandalism, but how might it work in the classroom? For the individual teacher?

Can it work if you are a lone practitioner trying to help your young people address their casual indifference or to undo years of unknown damage? One thing is for certain, detentions are going very little way to helping, and I’m sure that even that old head of discipline would agree that the system needs a new approach.

If you are part of a school who has adopted restorative approaches, or if you have applied some of the ideas in your own practice, do get in touch.

  • Nadine Pittam is founder and director of the skills-based website of teaching ideas, www.spark-ed.co.uk

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