Ryder-Hayes Primary School is a National Teaching School who support over 90 schools and provide over a thousand teachers with bespoke training. After using Trackit Lights and achieving ‘Outstanding’ from Ofsted for behaviour, the school has promoted Trackit Lights across all of their schools in the Midlands as a way to reduce teacher’s behaviour admin workload and improve behaviour management.
In this case study we find out some great insights about how they have incorporated Trackit Lights within their Restorative Justice, Growth Mindset and Behaviours for Learning initiatives to promote their school values. We will be looking at how they have maximised the impact of Trackit Lights by customising it to their needs and how they have reduced their teachers’ behaviour admin workload by 95%.
Why choose Trackit Lights?
Ryders Hayes already had a positive Behaviour for Learning policy which awarded house points for good behaviour, and they had multiple steps of interventions for challenging behaviour. They were using the ‘Good to be Green’ wall charts where pupils start on green and are moved to yellow as a warning and then finally a red if an intervention is needed. Trackit Lights offered them a way to track everything across the school without adding to teachers’ workload. In fact, they were able to reduce teachers’ behaviour admin by 95% whilst logging and tracking far more information.
They also make use of the SIMS and CPOMS ‘writeback’ feature so that behaviour logged on the board in Trackit Lights, is instantly logged into their other systems without any manual data entry. This means far more behaviour data is captured than would be possible with manual data entry, it saves hours of admin time and it brings all their data together across different platforms. This is helping them expand their rewards system, quickly identify any concerns as they happen, measure the success of any initiatives (such as encouraging Growth Mindset, Learning Behaviours, Home-learning etc) and they are able to monitor and evidence patterns of behaviour with far more accuracy and ease.
Positive Behaviour Policy
Every time a pupil is given a class point on the board in their lessons, it is automatically added to their house points in Trackit Lights. The leading house gets recognition in assembly every week. When a pupil earns 50, 100, 200 and 250 points they receive bronze, silver, gold and the ‘Head teachers award’ certificates which are generated automatically in Trackit Lights and can be printed at a click of a button. Trackit Lights also visually identifies pupils who have had constant good behaviour and have not received any sanctions for a specific date range. This makes sure that it is not just pupils who are overtly ‘trying’ to behave in the moment who get recognition, but also the pupils who never disturb the class but often go unnoticed. The school also makes use of ‘value stickers’, visiting other teachers and the Headteacher for praise, Golden Time, postcards home and wristbands.
Behaviours for Learning and Growth mindset
In many Trackit Lights schools, they use Trackit Lights to promote Growth Mindset and Learning Behaviours by adding positive behaviour icons such as ‘Resilience’, ‘Team work’ and ‘Great effort’ which appear on every board in the school. Every time the icons are displayed, it reminds the pupils of the Learning Behaviours, helps them internalise them and the teacher can give recognition where needed. In Trackit Lights, Senior Leaders can then monitor how much the teachers are awarding points for these Learning Behaviours and make sure that the initiatives are being applied.
At Ryders Hayes, staff have been trained in Growth Mindset internally using principles from Carol Dweck. Through a range of activities, pupils have been taught the difference between ‘fixed’ and ‘growth’ mindsets and how they can change their perspective, with no limit to their potential. Using Trackit Lights, the school have directed praise towards Growth Mindset qualities, rather than just giving recognition for academic achievement. This develops intrinsic motivation and enthusiasm to learn for pupils of all ability because the recognition is given for their attitude towards learning and achievement is gained through overcoming challenges at whatever level they are at, rather than just focusing on attaining another academic level which will inevitably leave many children behind and discourage them. They also focus heavily on Learning Behaviours such as ‘Problem solving’, ‘Creativity’, ‘Aiming high’, ‘Leadership’ and ‘Teamwork’.
The school participated in a research project conducted by Plymouth University, funded by the Education Endowment Fund (EEF). The research was able to identify and measure the pupils’ mindsets before and after implementing a Growth Mindset programme. The research looked at their emotional resilience; how they celebrated mistakes, embraced change and persisted when learning and saw a measurable improvement in all categories. To view the report, please click here.
Learning Passports
At the end of every term, all parents receive a Learning Passport which includes attendance, achievement and behaviour data for their child. Ryder Hayes School can use Trackit Lights to export a graphical behaviour report for every pupil in the school. They can print them off at a click of a button and then add them to the Learning Passports.
Restorative Practice
Ryders Hayes School have appointed a member of staff to be their Restorative Practice Facilitator who is responsible for all in-house training and implementation of Restorative Practice across the school.
Restorative Justice is fully embedded throughout the school with Restorative Conferences taking place following any conflict or challenging incidents. All parties involved in an incident will be brought together to discuss what happened, needs and feelings, the impact of the behaviour, how they could have done it differently and how the damage can be repaired. To assist in this, a pupil’s profile can be viewed in Trackit Lights to see a detailed picture of every behaviour leading up to an incident and behaviour patterns across weeks or months can be identified which can further shed light on a situation and help inform the right questions to get to the root cause of an issue.
The school also incorporates Restorative ‘Circle Time’ at teacher’s discretion, they run the ‘Zippy’s Friends’ programme to promote social and emotional skills through stories, they have a ‘School Council’ and a ‘Pupil Leadership Team’ who meet once a week on their own and feed back in Senior Leaders in SLT meetings.