Park View Primary School
Behaviour FAQ
Promoting Positive Behaviour
“ Almost all behave appropriately and often well in the classroom and around the school”. (OFSTED January 2007).
At Park View our aim is to create a happy and secure learning environment, where children have opportunity to achieve success and satisfaction from effort and perseverance. Working together with parents we want to help our children to grow personally, socially and academically, and in order to achieve this we believe that good behaviour is essential.
Our discipline policy is based on praise and support for work done well and good behaviour. We have established reward systems in school such as certificates, apple reward tree, stickers, stamps and other individual teacher rewards. Sanctions for low level disruptions e.g. talking, being silly, not finishing work etc are loss of playtimes, served in Mrs McClean’s room with names recorded. One-off, more serious incidents are dealt with according to the nature of the incident. Involvement of senior staff, discussion with parents, being sent home for a ‘cooling off’ period, involvement of LA support agencies, and ultimately exclusion are all ways of dealing with the minority of these incidents.
Frequently Asked Questions:
Here are the answers to questions parents’ have raised over the last few months.
Q: How can I as a parent support the school’s behaviour policy?
A: We do have a number of rules that we want the children to follow and each pupil is expected to follow a Code of Conduct both in class and around school. This code and school rules are clearly displayed in each classroom and discussed with pupils. Please take the time to read our Code of Conduct (copies available from the school office) and discuss it with your child. We value your support in encouraging good behaviour at all times as we believe it is too important to be left to chance – children need clear guidelines and consistent encouragement from everyone.
Q: How would I know if my child had behaved incorrectly at school?
A: Most instances of poor behaviour are relatively minor and will be dealt with through minor sanctions within school (e.g. expressions of disapproval, withdrawal of privileges, loss of playtimes). However, where the behaviour of a child is giving cause for concern the class teacher will initially contact parents either in person, on the telephone or by letter in order to discuss the situation and parental support will be sought in devising a plan of action to address the problems.
If children have been causing a problem during playtimes, or a pattern of misbehaviour becomes apparent through our monitoring procedures, Mrs McClean, our Assistant Headteacher, may ask you to attend a meeting in order to discuss these issues.
Class teachers will also use the Red book system for agreed serious incidents
(e.g. swearing at a child or teacher; threatening behaviour; physical abuse; verbal abuse).
If an incident takes place the teacher will record names in the class Red Book. Names are entered daily. A letter will be sent to parents explaining the reasons for inclusion in the book and the teacher will speak to parents at end of day if at all possible. A confirmation slip at bottom of letter needs to be returned to school following day. The class teacher will keep a record of letters sent and notes returned.
If a child has their name recorded in the book 3 times, they will be sent to Headteacher who will record their names in the Black book and a letter will be sent home to parents requesting a visit from them.
If a child has their name recorded in the Black Book 3 times this will result in a fixed term exclusion from school.
We firmly believe that a positive partnership with parents is crucial to building trust and developing a common approach to behaviour expectations and strategies for dealing with problems.
Q: What constitutes bullying?
A: Bullying is the intentional and repetitive hurting of one person by another. It results in pain and distress to the other person.
Bullying can be
Bullying can include:
Bullying can be done:
At Park View we are committed to providing a caring, friendly and safe environment for all our pupils so that they can learn in a relaxed and secure atmosphere.
Ø Bullying of any kind is unacceptable in our school.
Ø Bullying is never justifiable.
Ø No one person has the right to bully another.
Ø If bullying does occur, all pupils should be able to tell and know that incidents will be dealt with promptly and effectively.
We are a TELLING school. This means that anyone who knows that bullying is happening is expected to tell a member of staff – this is not telling tales.
As a school we plan a lot of work around bullying which takes place across all year groups and will include the following:
Q: How are children rewarded for good behaviour?
A: Our emphasis is on rewards to reinforce good behaviour, rather than on failures. We believe that rewards have a motivational role, helping children to see that good behaviour is valued. The commonest reward is praise, informal and formal, public and private, to individuals and groups.
The following rewards are currently used in our school.
Foundation Stage:
Key Stage 1:
Key Stage 2:
General:
In classrooms:
Q: Do whole classes get sanctioned for individual bad behaviour?
A: No. Group punishments breed resentment and do not solve the problem. Sometimes it may be necessary to wait for a class as a whole to become ready to leave the room for example, in order to move around school safely, or remind individual children that we are waiting for them to provide an acceptable standard of behaviour before continuing with an activity.
Q: What is the difference between being excluded and being expelled?
A: Both mean the same – we tend to use the term excluded rather than expelled. This is the only sanction reserved exclusively to the Headteacher and can be a fixed term exclusion (that is for a designated number of days) or a permanent exclusion. There are very clear guidelines laid down by the Local Authority for when it is necessary to impose this sanction.