Heatherlands Primary School is a three-form entry National Support Primary School. In the first term of using Trackit Lights they were able to reduce negative behaviour incidents by over 50% and then saw a further 15% reduction by the following year, they were also able to make huge reductions in their teachers behaviour admin workload.
This case study explores how the school has transformed their behaviour through using Trackit Lights alongside Restorative approaches and other strategies.
“As a National Support School, we are designated to work with schools with Ofsted inspection grades of Requires Improvement or Special Measures to help and support them in their specific areas of need. Many of the schools we visit are struggling with behaviour and we always signpost them to Trackit Lights.” Bea Collis, Assistant Head, Heatherlands Primary
Promoting Positive Behaviours
Research suggests that especially with primary aged children, reaffirming positive behaviour that the child is already doing, is cognitively far easier to conceptualise than telling the child to behave in a way that they are not currently doing. Last year, Heatherlands School logged nearly 110,000 behaviours and 85% of them were positive. They run a ‘Promoting Positive Behaviours Policy’, which puts a greater emphasis on praise and celebration than warnings and sanctions.
Using Trackit Lights, Heatherlands have been able to customise their green behaviours icons to their school values – Respect, Resilience, Motivation, Aspiration and Independence, as well as other positive behaviours such as contributing well and working hard. These visual icons are displayed on the board every time a positive behaviour and class point is awarded to a pupil. This gives the pupils instant recognition for positive behaviour and helps them continuously visualise, internalise and memorise the school values and learning behaviours. At the same time, the behaviour is automatically logged into their easy to use school-wide behaviour tracker which tracks everything.
Restorative conferences
At Heatherlands Primary, if behaviour escalates beyond low-level, a member of staff sits with a pupil and guides them through a Restorative conference in ‘Reflection Time’. The focus is to help the child reflect on the thoughts and feelings that are driving the behaviour, but also the consequences of their behaviour and how it has affected others. The goal is to identify any needs of the pupil, identify strategies to resolve and repair the issue and equip the pupil with the self-awareness to regulate their own behaviour moving forwards.
Many schools see the same pupils receiving the same sanctions, for the same behaviours week after week highlighting that the interventions in place aren’t working for that child. At Heatherlands though, they have reduced the amount of Reflection Time referrals by up to 67% in some year groups. Across the whole school they reduced Reflection Time referrals from 347 in a term, to 150 when comparing this year’s statistics with last years.
Using Trackit Lights, the staff members conducting Restorative conversations can see every low-level behaviour logged in class, or break times, and how it has escalated. They can see the time of each log, what the specific behaviour was. Also graphs, trends and statistics highlight patterns in behaviour across days, weeks, months and even years and notes regarding what the triggers and motives were can be viewed which then directly informs the Restorative conversation.
“All behaviour is an attempt to meet a need and can be seen as a form of communication” – quoted from the Heatherlands Primary School behaviour policy
Trackit Lights also helps senior leaders do termly analysis that visually highlights any pupils who have high levels of challenging behaviour and Reflection Time, and then they are able to put additional interventions in place such as Individual Behaviour Plans, meetings with parents, and follow up meetings to reflect on strategies. This also provides Ofsted with evidence that the school knows exactly where any problem areas are and that the school is responding accordingly.
Rewards
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.
Sanctions
When a pupil’s behaviour does need challenging, they can use Trackit Lights to log low-level behaviour and give visual warnings to help the pupil visualise the behaviour policy and the expectations of the classroom. When challenging behaviour is logged, senior leaders and behaviour support can see this instantly appear in their reports and email notifications inform them of the pupil, class and behaviour. SLT then visit the class and have a Restorative chat to nip the behaviour in the bud and stop it escalating any further if necessary. This provides teachers with extra support and it allows the behaviour to be dealt with more restoratively before reaching the point of a sanction.
The school uses sanctions as a last resort, but avoids them if other strategies can be used. Sanctions can include moving seats within the class, loss of Golden Time, loss of break time, referral to the Headteacher and Reflection Time. When an extreme incident is logged, an incident form is generated automatically from the system and the pupil’s name, teachers, class, date, time and all the lead up behaviour is input into the form without the teacher having to do anything. The teacher can then add additional information and on completion, the form is instantly inputted into their safeguarding system using the Trackit Lights integrations. This reduces the time it takes to fill out a form from 10-20 minutes to a matter of seconds and allows the school to see all their behaviour issues along-side their safeguarding issues.