Behaviour

Victoria Primary Academy is committed to providing a broad, balanced, and effective education for all children who attend our school. We believe that meeting pupil’s basic needs by creating safe environments, forming strong and positive relationships, and developing a healthy self-esteem is key to cultivating good behaviour, good learning attitudes and success in life. We expect all adults to embrace this approach and to proactively support it. A positive behaviour approach emphasises that most interactions are positive ones. Staff, at all times, focus on positive reinforcement and ensuring that pupils feel like valued members of our school community. This approach is the responsibility of all staff throughout the schools.

Our behaviour policy is designed to:

● Promote a positive climate and learning culture within school.
● Develop an understanding of what appropriate behaviours are.
● Define a framework for rewarding success and de-escalating negative behaviours.
● Promote self-esteem, self-regulation, and positive relationships with all staff members.
● Involve parents/carers, pupils, and staff in the application of this policy with strong communication.
● Provide a safe school environment in which all pupils can learn (Keeping Children Safe in Education).

The expectation of children and staff in our schools is that they will follow the ‘Victoria Promise’:

We are safe
We are honest
We are respectful
We are responsible

The expectation of adults is that they will understand and implement restorative practice and work
within the spirit of the policy:

Value Relationships:
● Encourage, praise, and actively listen to children.
● Offer equal amounts of challenge and support to work ‘with’ children, without ‘punishment’.
● Focus on the prevention of undesirable behaviour, rather than the reaction to it.
● Listen, talk, and show empathy with children, so that they know that we understand them.
● Recognise that all behaviour is communication and endeavour to translate this.
● Enable children to communicate with their words because they feel safe and are afforded time to talk.
● Invite children into their calm and not join them in their chaos.

Be consistent:
● Provide clear rules, routines, and boundaries for all children.
● Reflect upon practice objectively, without judgement, to reduce risk.
● Work as a team to maintain high standards of behaviour within the school.
● Have consistently high expectations within individualised responses to challenging situations.
● Take responsibility for noticing behaviours as they occur, acknowledging and describing both socially acceptable and socially unacceptable behaviours.
● Actively model appropriate behaviours and consistently apply the policy fairly, without favour.
● Collaborate with the SENCO/Learning Mentors to create and implement personalised plans which enable all children to thrive.
● Work in partnership with parents/carers, school-based staff and outside professionals and ensure that advice is understood and implemented.

Monitoring, Evaluating and Communication:
● Keep a record of incidents on CPOMS and ensure that the Head of School and parents/carers are informed within that same day of any serious incident.
● Monitor, analyse, and evaluate records and data to identify possible factors contributing to undesirable behaviours, using multiple perspectives: at school level, group level (including protected characteristics), and pupil level.
● Maintain an open and honest dialogue with your colleagues, your phase leader, your SENCo and your Principal. Do not keep concerns about pupil behaviours to yourself – seek and take the advice of colleagues. Adults managing an incident outside of the classroom must ensure that the class teacher is informed as soon as possible following resolution.