Being the Adult in Behaviour Management

Being the Adult in Behaviour Management

by | Oct 11, 2023 | Alternative Provision, Behaviour management, Blog

Behaviour Management in Alternative Provision

Children who struggle to cope in mainstream settings often present with behaviour which the adults find difficult to deal with. There are different schools of thought about how best schools should manage problematic student behaviour. England’s Behaviour Tsar, Tom Bennett advocates  ‘zero tolerance regimes’ where children are sent out of classrooms if they threaten the learning of others.  In common with, from what I can see is most professionals who post on LinkedIn, I favour a needs-based approach founded on authentic relationships of mutual respect,  when it comes to creating the best outcomes for children, and this applies, perhaps most acutely, for those for whom inclusion is a daily challenge.

Regardless of the philosophical perspective on behaviour management one adopts, I suggest that key to an effective strategy is the commitment of the professional to the role of "the adult" in the relationships they have with the children they work with.

For many of the children who find themselves in ‘Inclusion Units’, Alternative Provisions or Special Schools, the adult/child relationship is a complex proposition; they will all have had difficult interactions with staff at school, for some, relationships with adults in their communities and families are painful and unsafe.

For this reason it’s important to establish what a positive adult/child relationship entails, and to model it in our work. Jane Bluestein, the American educator, breaks down what she calls the ‘win-win’ approach necessary for a positive adult/child relationship in the classroom (Bluestein J, The Win Win Classroom: A Fresh and Positive Look at Classroom Management, Thousand Oaks, 2008).

Jane Bluestein on Behaviour Management

For me, Bluestein’s model is as good a description of being the adult and professional in working with children as I’ve seen, and I’d like to suggest that we could all benefit from acquainting ourselves with it.

Bluestein notes the importance  of 8 key factors:

  • Suppotiveness
  • Boundaries
  • Integrity
  • Eliminate double standards
  • Win-win
  • Proactivity
  • Success orientation
  • Self care

According to Bluestein, it’s the responsibility of the adult to ensure that all these elements are present at all times in our relationships with our students. We need to be sure that whatever we say or do is driven by supportiveness for the child; that we set and hold boundaries and communicate them clearly; that we create situations where the child and the professional both feel they have the outcome they need from any interaction; that every aspect of the environment is geared towards the child achieving success; that we are proactive in anticipating any problems and mitigating them in advance; that we have the integrity to stand up for what we think is right, even when it’s difficult; that we don’t demonstrate double standards and that we look after our own wellbeing and resilience so that we can continue to be a positive adult in their school lives.

Bluestein's model asks a lot from the professional, and balancing all 8 elements of being the adult can be an extremely big ask for staff working at the sharp end of challenging behaviour. The best possible model for implementing this doesn't just ask for more from individual staff; it puts the onus on leadership to find ways to ensure these 8 features can be embedded in the fabric of the school or community. Using these 8 as a starting point can help ensure that processes, policies and practice are aligned to create the best possible set of circumstances for staff to "be the adult".

Being the Adult in Practice

An example from my own experience involved the concept of eliminating double standards. One of the hard and fast rules of the AP I worked at was that fizzy drinks were banned from school grounds. In order to give this policy the best chance of succeeding, staff were also banned from consuming fizzy drinks on site, a policy which (during my first week) I had failed to register in my cursory reading of the staff handbook. I thus strolled into the lunch area one day with a can of diet coke in my hand, only to be met with (playful) consternation from one of my senior colleagues. He publicly challenged me on my consumption of the offending item and made me pour the contents down the kitchen sink in full view of our students.

It was done with a light touch and in good humour, but it underscored for me the importance of being able to challenge problem behaviour in adults in order to show that the same rules apply to all. Had I been allowed to consume the diet coke in view of students, it would have contributed to a culture where students felt a strong sense of injustice around the ways the rules were applied. While in mainstream settings it could be argued that understanding the complexities of how rules apply differently to children and adults is possible, it is certainly not a great idea to operate a set of double standards in the context of children whose relationships with adults in education has been fraught. Here was an example of how integrity and the elimination of double standards had been built into the culture of a school in such a way that staff felt comfortable to challenge a senior person (new as I was). In this way, I argue, it is possible to embed these 8 principles in practice across a provision to ensure the best possible chance of success and limit the extra "work" staff need to do to inhabit the role of adult.

In her book Bluestein also gives detailed examples of what this might look like in practice; it’s an accessible and insightful read and I recommend it. I want to suggest that by really thinking through our responsibility as the adults in our professional relationships with children, our philosophical stance will develop in ways in which ensure that practice is effective and outcomes for children and young people are consistently positive.

Alternative Provision: The “Hidden Hive”

Alternative Provision: The “Hidden Hive”

by | Oct 1, 2023 | Blog

APs are a hive of innovation

I have spent a fair bit of time thinking lately about the industrious nature of alternative provision settings. Despite facing the same huge challenges around resources as mainstream schools, APs often deal with even higher levels of need around supporting behaviour, attendance and other types of pastoral services while needing to ensure academic progress. It has always been the case that APs can deliver excellent provision with benefits that feel very tangible to staff on the ground. However, it has been harder to evidence this in ways that funders, colleagues in mainstream education, parents (and sometimes students) can understand and value.

The LearnTrek team has been working alongside colleagues in AP settings for many years and we’ve always marvelled at the levels of ingenuity, resourcefulness and determination which exist among the professionals working in small, independent settings. When it comes to improving outcomes for children who don’t flourish in mainstream education alternative providers apply themselves to the challenges presented by an education landscape where its students are marginalised and where the commercial market finds little incentive to invest in finding solutions.

Between 2016-2023 I was privileged to be embedded in a small AP; in 2017, in response to the Green Paper on SEN and Disability - Support and Aspirations , the setting was working towards registration as an Independent Special School for children who have Social Emotional and Mental Health difficulties.

Curricclum can be the biggest challenge in AP

The biggest challenge for the team working on the application for registration, was in producing evidence of a fully sequenced curriculum. Leaders at the AP were confident that children were receiving a ‘broad and balanced’ offer which was entirely tailored to their needs and interests; qualifications were delivered in a range of responsive ways and students were making great progress.

As a team we'd spend many hours poring over the National Curriculum in an effort to understand what a fully sequenced curriculum would look like. We were daunted, to say the least, and it was clear why this format had not worked for our students in the past. We scoured the market for AP curricula which our work could fit into and, in 2015, we found nothing appropriate for our students. Leaders realised that the team would need to start from scratch and create a bespoke curriculum which would be structured enough to satisfy the DfE yet relevant and meaningful to our students’ and deliverable by our staff. 

Innovation is a team sport

Lara Penfold was our Head Teacher and curriculum specialist at the time. Lara is a genius in assessing a problem, breaking it down into component elements and creating workable solutions; she also has an acute understanding of our students and a passion for working alongside them, helping them to recognise and fulfil their potential.  Our focus was on building a curriculum based on what students need and want, at school, in their families and communities and in the wider world. We wanted to deliver schemes of work which would build towards inspiring and achieving students’ aspirations for their future. 

Our discussions were lively and often more ‘stream of consciousness’ than efficiency demanded; but this was part of the process of creative co-production and it took time. The work was hard and there were barriers along the way – not least in terms of capacity when we were all flat out running an AP. Time for the project was hard won and carved out of busy working weeks, - tasks often intruded on evenings and weekends too. The process was disrupted by the 70% of AP life which cannot be planned, such as responding to incidents, safeguarding concerns and so on.  

We thought about what’s important to our students, and we asked them about this. We talked to parents, our staff team and colleagues who are external stakeholders in our work. We thought about our history and our values as an organisation; we thought about the world at large and what our students needed to succeed in it. I remember I’d read  Al Gore’s The Future: Six Drivers of Global Change around that time and, much to the occasional exasperation of my colleagues, I took my learning from this into our curriculum development conversations! 

Alternative provision progress tracking is essential 

Together we created a programme which we all believed in, which could be delivered in ways to engage students and could flex to their needs. The curriculum has developed organically since then in response to lessons learned, changing educational landscape and the demands of the world outside school. The piece of work we did together at this setting is one example of the many brilliant solutions  created across the country in small, independent provisions whose passion and talent more than make up for barriers they face.

Out of these collaborations LearnTrek has been developed to deliver alternative provision progress tracking, including student progress and AP impact. We count ourselves lucky to be part of the journey of many small settings whose work generates magic out of challenge and adversity - a hidden hive of excellent practice that deserves to be celebrated.

SEND & AP Improvement Plan: Technical Solutions to Evidencing National Standards

SEND & AP Improvement Plan: Technical Solutions to Evidencing National Standards

by | Sep 11, 2023 | Alternative Provision, AP Progress Tracking, Blog, EdTech

Why is evidence of progress so important  in SEND and AP contexts?

I want to preface this blog with the assertion that it’s important to have strong evidence of student 
progress in Alternative Provision, not only because of the demands of commissioners and regulators, but because children in AP deserve the best possible opportunities to grow as learners and citizens and to make a contribution to their communities and society at large. It is our responsibility as the adults and professionals to be creative in devising ways of measuring outcomes against individual starting points and to evidence these to the world in ways that can be understood and appreciated for the work and achievement they represent.

The SEND and AP Improvement Plan (2023)

In March this year the UK Government published its SEND and Alternative Provision Improvement
Plan: Right Support, Right Place, Right Time. The document asserts new evidence-based standards as the foundation for its planned ‘nationally consistent SEND and Alternative Provision’.

It is proposed that Ofsted and/or the CQC are used to carry out area SEND inspections with a focus on ‘the outcomes and experience of children with SEND and in alternative provision’. It is also implied that as part of the imperative for financial sustainability, value for money assessment will favour targeted support in mainstream schools, time-limited interventions and transitional placements in external AP.

The Improvement Plan makes clear the critical, if not existential, challenge for APs of evidencing
their impact. It’s so important to recognise the contribution of AP to improving outcomes for
children who don’t thrive in mainstream settings. However, in providing bespoke programmes which meet the needs of children and young people with SEND, APs create packages which resist
standardised regulation. As leaders working in AP, we battle to account for the impact of our work to commissioners and other stakeholders; there is always a challenge in evidencing, measuring,
recording and analysing progress against such varied terms of reference. Clearly the SEND and AP Improvement Plan heralds an era of increased pressure in this respect.

 

Tech Solutions to the SEND and AP Improvement Plan

The ed-tech industry has been prolific, particularly post-covid 19, in producing applications which
attempt to address issues faced by alternative providers – from online teaching spaces to wellbeing and mindfulness platforms; there are also some good products which allow staff to upload evidence of student work in the form of, for example, student-created artefacts, photographs and witness statements.

However, if we are to demonstrate compliance with a set of national standards on students’ experience and outcomes, we must focus on developing robust systems which can show impact both anecdotally and through so-called ‘hard’ data. There is very little on the market which can do this, because the task is difficult and daunting. The commercial motivation is limited because the number of children affected is relatively small in relation to the mainstream market.

At Huis we have been lucky enough to partner with a team of leaders in AP committed to working on this problem. We were embedded in an AP for a number of years and with the help of colleagues in the setting we developed LearnTrek, a cloud-based portal which can record all aspects of a child’s progress, including in social, emotional and mental health, attendance, engagement, behaviour and academic achievement; it also manages safeguarding, since in APs the volume and seriousness of concerns are significantly higher than in mainstream or other types of maintained schools.

LearnTrek has developed organically out of the needs of each setting which uses it. We meet
monthly with all our clients to troubleshoot any problems and discuss additional requirements;
these respond to ideas for improvement borne out of user experience, to changes in the AP’s offer,
and to external drivers such as national or local regulation. Needless to say the demands of the SEND and AP Improvement Plan are on the agenda for many of our clients at present.

What LearnTrek can do, which other systems cannot, is to record student progress numerically,
regardless of the starting point, the tailored nature of the programme or fluctuations in the journey. For example, attendance can be recorded against a wide range of increments familiar to staff in AP. It’s a triumph for a student who has not been to school for many months to speak to a tutor or mentor through a bedroom door; the next time the staff member calls they may not speak at all, or may respond with aggression and swear words. LearnTrek can track and analyse such shifting patterns, it can recognise improvement and produce graphics and charts to illustrate the journey to the child, to parents, to colleagues, to funders and to other stakeholders.

The biggest challenge to date in developing LearnTrek has been to add a curriculum function. This
was a huge undertaking, for everyone involved in the project. The complexity of sequencing a
bespoke curriculum and breaking down outcomes into the smallest imaginable units of achievement was a labour of love, as was the process of converting these into a system which could be expressed in a series of noughts and ones.

What the work has produced, however, is a way of identifying and measuring students’ achievements, and of evidencing this with hard data. The information generated can be used for a range of purposes – to plan effectively and to identify staff training needs; to help students understand themselves as effective learners and members of the school community, and, of course, it can be used to prove impact to funders, commissioners and regulators.

The impact of the SEND and Alternative Provision Improvement Plan remains to be seen; it promises significant positive change for children and families and this is to be welcomed. The Plan is also a cause for concern among the large community of unregistered AP across the country who provide highly effective tailored programmes for children with SEND. It’s essential that we collaborate across disciplines to develop solutions which will maximise the availability of innovative and impactful provision.

Social Mobility and Lost Potential – Why Progress Tracking Matters

Social Mobility and Lost Potential – Why Progress Tracking Matters

by | Aug 25, 2023 | Alternative Provision, AP Progress Tracking, Blog

The Sutton Trust’s recent longitudinal study entitled Social Mobility: The Next Generation- Lost Potential at Age 16 (June 2023) highlights what many of us working with children and young people already know – the gap between advantaged and disadvantaged learners is already wide (or – “baked in”) from an early age and widens significantly by secondary education. The report focusses on the period of time between the end of primary school and GCSE exams, taking as its main indicator of disadvantage eligibility for free school meals and its baseline for potential (where a disadvantaged but academically capable child has the most potential for achievement) the final year of primary school.

The measure of academic achievement used in the report is GCSE English and Maths results. Learners who are identified as academically capable in Year 6 are tracked through to their GCSEs. The study overwhelming shows that disadvantaged learners perform less favourably than their non-disadvantaged peers for a range of reasons including ethnicity, poverty, levels of parental involvement, young carer responsibilities, school demographics and admissions policies, and access to technology among other reasons.

The study is hugely valuable and points to the complex mix of barriers to full potential experienced by disadvantaged children and young people, as well as the terrible cultural, socio-economic and wellbeing impacts of lost potential for these learner as well as the rest of society. The report also makes sensible recommendations for how schools and the government might help to close the attainment gaps it identifies.

However, the research conducted did get me wondering about how we might measure lost potential in ways that didn’t rely on GCSE results as a measure of achievement or “success”. How, for example, could we look at the same sort of statistics for learners who show potential at Year 6 and who go on to realise that potential in ways not so easily measured or understood as successful?

In the report, levels of Special Educational Needs are identified as “one of the biggest differentiators between the high attainer [cohort] and other disadvantaged groups”. The percentage of the disadvantaged high attainer cohort identified as having SEN in year 11 was just 9% compared to a national average of 60%, with the most common reason given as “social emotional and mental health”. While this suggests that the number of potential high attainers with SEN is much lower than those without, it is still the case that many learners with high potential find themselves unable to continue in mainstream education after Year 6. Often this will be for reasons related to trauma and mental health difficulties rather than difficulties with learning and cognition or physical and sensory SEN.

For children and young people who find themselves without a school placement or in alternative provision or other non-mainstream settings offering something other than GCSEs – how could a similar journey be tracked from academic potential in Year 6 to outcomes by Year 11? Does the metric chosen by the study (tracking a cohort through to GCSEs) demonstrate the understandable problem of gathering data on the potential of a cohort of learners in non-mainstream education – a group more invisible to statistics in terms of its own (equally important) achievements?

The answer is yes. Tracking attainment for children and young people who find themselves in alternative settings or without formal education is almost impossible at the scale demonstrated by The Sutton Trust’s important research. However, as leaders and educators we owe it to these children and young people to design ways of tracking their progress, whether through qualifications other than GCSEs or other metrics designed to assess them from their individual starting points and up to and including the GCSE achievements of their peers.

Part of supporting children and young people to understand the value of their own contributions to society is helping them recognise themselves as learners with the capacity to contribute- to be “socially mobile”. Viewing success only through the lens of the National Curriculum (and by implications GCSE qualifications) is deeply problematic for the cohort who will inevitably view themselves as failing by this measure. 

More importantly, recognising and valuing achievement more widely is a key factor in building the sort of self-worth that helps children and young people to have the confidence to go into the world and make that contribution. With the lifetime costs of NEET for children between 16-18 estimated to be somewhere between £12 billion and £32.5 billion there is an economic argument for finding ways to foster innovation in progress tracking in education and support settings. The onus is on us as professionals to innovate  so that all children and young people can socially navigate to appropriate successes depending on their own individual starting points.

In my own work in Alternative Provision and in designing educational technologies, I have recently been very focussed on how to build a full and rich picture of attainment for those whose successes can look pretty different to GCSE results but for whom the success in no less of an achievement. This has been based on a strong belief the the first step in social mobility for this cohort must be the recognition of its possibility.

The Sutton Trust’s study has certainly given me food for thought, as well as a few ideas about how to build this into future research and design of my own using both qualitative and quantitative data. I am so excited to begin sharing the new progress tracking options within LearnTrek over the next few months – hopefully, this will be a small but important step towards helping evidence potential (as well as the challenges in realising it) for other equally important  cohorts of disadvantaged students.

What is “banking compassion” and why does in matter in Alternative Provision schools?

What is “banking compassion” and why does in matter in Alternative Provision schools?

by | May 18, 2023 | Alternative Provision, Blog

n my role as a leader in an education charity with a small independent special school at its heart, I have designed and delivered courses in behaviour management which incorporate the ethos of the organization and train professionals in best practice. Key among the core values I strongly advocate for is the importance of ‘Banking Compassion’ – a term we use a lot at the school but which originates in work done by Portsmouth Local Safeguarding Board back in 2016.  It refers to the belief in continuing to invest professional love and care in the children and families we serve, without any guarantee of a return.  In attempting to explain the concept I’ve been reflecting on a day a few years ago which highlights the lived reality of ‘Banking Compassion’ for staff working in SEN.

For me the day in question was full of the usual hustle and bustle of a school day combined with meetings involving various aspects of the organisation’s work – a complex discussion about one of our  services took up most of the morning, and this was interrupted by knocks on the door and phones ringing with questions from staff, students and outside callers. A Year 11 group set off on their DofE residential – they all pitched up despite the cold and drizzly weather – a triumph in itself; there were lots of safeguarding worries to deal with, which is normal for us; there was a lot of laughter among staff and students and absolute hilarity at times – also normal!

At around 2.00 pm I received a phone call from a member of school SLT who had been assaulted by a student whilst driving him home. The incident was particularly upsetting because at one stage the student spat in this staff member’s face, a traumatic thing to deal with at any point, but at the height of a global pandemic, as we were at the time, it brought with it more acute anxieties than usual.

The manager was very calm and insisted that she was ok; she continued with her day and was there to support her team at debrief. When I spoke with her later in the afternoon, her main concern was what the child was going through, and what the consequences for him would be. She understood the implications for managing the risks going forward, but was very anxious that no decisions should be made which would have a negative impact on the child in the long run. Another colleague, who works with the same child and has been at the receiving end of some similarly dangerous behaviour, came to me to express deep concern about the impact on the student and his family of anything which would interrupt his education.  

Tough decisions have to be made, in each case, which take into account the needs of the child and the risks entailed for  her/him, for other students and for staff at the school. This is always a complex and nuanced process involving the student, parents, commissioners and other external stakeholders working with the family.  In this case significant time, energy and resources were invested in generating a raft of measures which would keep everyone safe, would avoid another painful rejection for the student and  which would ensure his needs would continue to be met, including his need for love and belonging. 

Whatever decisions are made, we check ourselves to ensure that they are underpinned by the commitment of staff to bank compassion with our children, and that this overrides other considerations. The school team build and maintain authentic relationships with students, with all the challenges and responsibilities these carry; it is in the DNA of our work to hold at the forefront of practice an enduring concern for the best interests of the children in our care, regardless of the rejection from them we face on a daily basis.

Continuing to bank compassion in the face of physical aggression, verbal abuse, threats and phlegm is a major test of our commitment to the models we rely on. Those of us who work with children who have special educational needs, the alternative is unimaginable.  

Dr Catherine Brennan

Designated Safeguarding Lead and Head of School