Perspectives: The inclusion question

How do you balance the needs of individual pupils with the interests of the whole school when you are delivering or developing strategies for tackling challenging behaviour? That’s the question we put to two school leaders and here's their response.

Paul Gallagher, Inclusion Deputy, The Kingstone School, Barnsley

Having worked in the secondary sector for over 30 years, I have never been more acutely aware of the need to ensure that all pupils feel that they have a stake in the school; the curriculum must be relevant and accessible and the contribution that children make should be valued and, just as important, must be seen as being valued.

I am also aware of the impact that disruptive individuals and small groups of pupils can have on the stability and ethos of the school. The effects of the behaviour of the significant minority can potentially destabilise a school. Needless to say, I believe that it is in everyone’s interests that we strive for a school which promotes positive behaviour for all through its curriculum and through its support and guidance programmes.

Many of our strategies in school come at little financial cost but reap huge rewards by ensuring that our expectations, the product of consultation with teachers and pupils, are explicit and are reinforced regularly by all teachers and support colleagues within school. I am fortunate to work in a school where there is a shared acknowledgement from stakeholders of the need to aim for 100 per cent consistency; although not there yet, I do believe that we are edging ever closer to this objective.

When we do need to apply sanctions in the school, an emphasis on restorative practice has provided an opportunity for reflection and the rebuilding of positive relationships where the barriers to acceptable behaviour are addressed.

Although there are occasionally incidents of particularly challenging behaviour, the school has adopted a policy whereby, as a rule, fixed-term exclusion, is seen as counterproductive. This proposal, it is fair to say, did generate anxiety from some staff initially, who felt that this was not for the ‘greater good’ and that by excluding pupils you are ‘sending out a message’.

We have found through ‘seclusion’, as opposed to ‘exclusion’, what I believe to be a more effective way of sending a powerful message with the restorative outcome on behalf of both the individual and the wider school community being a far more positive one. Over the last two years, there have been no permanent exclusions and no fixed term exclusions and yet the perception of staff and families, supported by the data, would suggest that the school is in a position of real strength and that the approach that we have adopted has enabled a far more positive and productive climate for learning.”

Sarah Creighton, Headteacher, The Hill Primary, Rotherham

We’ve always regarded ourselves as an inclusive school but we started to question whether we should tolerate instances of challenging behaviour that caused anxiety, fear and physical and emotional harm to other children and staff. The answer was quite clearly in our case no. The needs of a small but active minority could not overwhelm the education and life chances for the vast majority of our school population. We needed to make it ‘cool to be at our school’ and children who followed the acceptable school and social codes were the children who were looked up to and not the other way round.

As a school we decided there was a need to look really closely at the curriculum that was being offered to children.The issues that surrounded cause and consequence of actions by pupils, support for children in the classroom and at social times together with the use of outside agencies and crucially the support of parents.  

The school is fortunate in having a BIP (Behaviour Improvement Programme) worker and a learning mentor along with a committed team of teaching and support staff. By radically overhauling our curriculum, behaviour policy, classroom and outside spaces, we have been able to significantly reduce the numbers of pupils exhibiting challenging behaviours. The quality of teaching and learning has improved, teacher stress levels and anxiety amongst children reduced and parental support has increased.

For all children, clear boundaries for behaviour were established and additional support was given to children with behavioural issues to help with the specific areas they needed to personally address. For a very small number of children, with all this support available, the school needed to use the managed move programme operated by the local authority.

As a school we want to meet the needs of all the children that come to us but from time to time the needs of those children exceed the resources at our disposal and those of other service providers. To further support those children who continue to exhibit extreme challenging behaviours, and for whom we have exhausted the range of strategies available to us, then in the best interests of every child it was better that they were included in a setting that better meets their needs, as we feel that this is real inclusion for those children.“