Rationale:
Mitcham Primary School's behaviour support policy guides:
- • The behaviour we expect of children and young people
- • How staff, parents and carers will support positive behaviour
- • The safe inclusion of children and young people.
Mitcham Primary School's policy aligns with the Department for Education behaviour support policy.
Children and young people's behaviours fall along a continuum. This means behaviour can range from safe to unsafe.
Range of behaviours
- • Positive, inclusive and respectful behaviours.
- • Developmentally appropriate boundary testing. This behaviour can interrupt learning but can be redirected.
- • Behaviours that cause concern due to their severity, frequency and duration. This behaviour significantly interrupts learning and needs consistent guidance and support.
- • Complex and unsafe behaviour which can place children, their peers and others in danger.
All along the continuum, the policy and practice approach is proactive, consistent, responsive and tailored to the student’s needs.
Aim:
We will support the safe inclusion of children and young people in learning with these actions.
We will promote, model and support productive and positive behaviour.
Our actions
- • Promote a school-wide positive behaviour approach. We will continue to work on this with our community of students, staff and parents/carers.
- • Display behavioural expectations visually around the school and share these with students and the community regularly.
Implementation:
Teaching
We will explicitly teach positive behaviour and expectations about behaviour.
Our actions
- • Establishment of consistent class expectations and routines across all learning environments. This supports students to positively participate in learning.
- • Teach students self-awareness, self-management, social awareness and social management through a variety of behaviour support programs.
Intervention
We will intervene to prevent, reduce or redirect behaviours of concern. We will use methods that are the least exclusionary possible.
Our actions
- • School staff use proactive strategies to co-regulate students to prevent behaviours of concern.
- • Safe, quiet spaces are provided for students to use as an opportunity to self-regulate. Staff support students to feel calm and return to their learning environment when they are ready.
Working With Others
We will work with children, their families, professionals and other key adults to understand the environmental, social and family context of a child or young person's behaviour. We will draw on these people to support positive behaviour change.
Our actions
- • Involve and value all students’ perspectives when developing behaviour supports.
- • Engage students and families to understand possible reasons for behaviour.
- • Use Team Around the Child approach to coordinate, assess, plan, monitor and review behaviour interventions.
Responding
We will respond to behaviour visibly and fairly. Responses will help grow confidence and trust.
Our actions
- • Tell those who raise behaviour concerns about the process to respond to the concern. Do this without disclosing personal information of the parties involved.
- • Investigate concerns about behavioural incidents. Understand the nature of the incident and the experience of the incident by those involved.
- • Apply positive behaviour responses. Taking into account children with disability or additional needs, children in care and Aboriginal children and tailored to individual student’s circumstances.
- • Document planned behaviour support responses in Behaviour Support Plans, Safety and Risk Management Plans, and Safety and Support Plans.
Repairing and restoring relationships
We will repair and restore relationships harmed by behaviours of concern.
Our actions
- • Students who have acted inappropriately recognise the impact of their actions. Provide students the opportunity to apologise, repair and restore relationships when appropriate, safe and consented to by all parties.
- • Implement restorative approaches.
Creating safety and wellbeing
We will create safety and wellbeing for people involved in behaviour incidents.
Our actions
- • Provide specific and targeted strategies to reduce the risk of harm to students and staff following behavioural incidents to ensure all students have the right to learn and all teachers to teach.
- • Use suspension as a last resort strategy to ensure safety for staff and students.
- • Engage department supports when responding to serious incidents.
Behaviours of Concern
Behaviours of Concern:
- • are challenging, complex or unsafe behaviours
- • are more serious, happen more often or last a long time
- • significantly interrupt learning for the child or others
- • could put the child or others in danger
- • need consistent guidance and support.
Behaviours that disrupt learning or safety will always receive a response that considers:
- • the needs of the student with behaviours of concern
- • other people's rights to learning and safety.
How we respond to behaviours of concern
At Mitcham Primary School we use specific proactive responses to behaviours of concern.
Teacher/SSO Responses
- • Provide quality differentiated teaching practice. This is a way to meet each student’s learning styles and needs. For example, the teacher plans ahead to clearly teach values and safe and inclusive behaviours.
- • Create plans that support positive behaviour change. Partner with parents/carers and others to do this.
- • Provide time and space for students to self-regulate or co-regulate with appropriate support and supervision. Activities might include sitting quietly, talking quietly, doing calming activities - breathing and yoga or physical activity - running, shooting hoops or bouncing a ball.
- • Offer students choices that enable them to stay regulated and participate at school.
- • Explicitly teach interoception skills. Support students to self-regulate using an interoception space, interoception activities, or both.
- • Consequences should be timely, considering the individual needs and related to the behaviour.
- • Notify parents of any behaviours of concern and make sure appropriate records and documents are kept of behavioural responses.
Leadership Responses
- • Monitor behaviour. Act on any reports about behaviour of concern. This includes incidents that happen out of hours or off-site that impact relationships at Mitcham Primary School.
- • Consider the use of suspension and exclusion from school to support safety. This is after we consider all other options to reduce danger.
- • Support staff in how they respond to and develop student behaviours.
- • Support with the development or review of Student Behaviour Support plans including SMARTAR goals and reconnection meetings with staff, parents/carers and students.
- • Seek input from Student Support Services to support targeted and intensive behaviour interventions.
- • Work with the Education Director and Department for Education staff to plan whole of site communications about serious behavioural incidents.
- • Report criminal offences to the police.
Department-Level Responses
- • Negotiate other learning options away from school to make sure the school community is safe. This is after we consider other options to reduce danger.
- • Support staff and local leadership in how they respond to a child or young person.
Students:
- • Treat others with kindness, respect and inclusiveness.
- • Make sure their actions are safe, respectful and inclusive. This includes verbal, physical and online actions.
- • Seek help from adults to intervene when they see behaviours of concern in person or online.
- • Report behaviours of concern to classroom teachers, yard duty teachers or the Leadership team.
- • Speak and listen respectfully.
- • Allow others the right to learn.
- • Move safely in and around school buildings.
- • Care for the school environment.
- • Support their friends and peers to seek help from trusted adults if they are experiencing behaviours of concern.
- • Support their friends to behave in safe, respectful and inclusive ways if their friends are engaging in behaviours of concern.
Parents/Carers:
- • Report any child’s concerning or unsafe behaviour in the first instance to the classroom teacher.
- • If an incident happens, work collaboratively with the school to resolve concerns.
- • Follow the complaint resolution process to deal with concerns. A copy of the parent complaint resolution process is on our website or in our front office.
- • Show and encourage safe, respectful and inclusive relationships with: their own children; other children; other parents/carers and staff.
- • Support their children to develop safe behaviours at home. Check on and supervise their children’s social interactions, including online.
- • Seek support from our staff to create consistent responses to behaviours of concern. This includes at home and at our site.
- • Take part in learning opportunities about safe and inclusive behaviour.
- • Talk to their children about safety issues, including unsafe behaviours. Help them understand what it is, why it’s harmful and how to respond. Use the same messages that Mitcham Primary School promotes.
- • Make sure their children continue to attend school while a behaviour issue is being resolved. This is in a child’s best interest. If you feel that your children coming to our site is not in their best interest, please communicate your concerns to a member of the leadership team.
- • Seek external professional support for their children when required.
- • Do not approach other children or families about behaviours of concern. Advise a member of the leadership team.
- • Understand that, because of confidentiality, we cannot share information about other children at our site.
The school council and staff regularly monitor and review the effectiveness of the Behaviour Policy (at least every three years) and revise the policy when required.
Policy last reviewed September 2022. Next review May 2023.
