Monitoring Behaviour

For some children these behaviours  can significantly challenge the boundaries of others. We regularly support children whose behaviours can manifest into verbal aggression and abuse, physical aggression (hitting, kicking, punching, spitting, hair pulling, biting, head butting), withdrawal and self-harm. We know that this behaviour is a form of communication and we strive to understand what the child is trying to tell us so that we can support them in being able to communicate this message in other more socially acceptable ways. 

We need to know how effective we are in supporting the child to manage their behaviour so we can measure the impact of the interventions and behaviour strategies being used. If the child is not making the progress that we feel they should we can make timely adjustments to their relational support plan so that we are more effective. We monitor behaviour across the school in a number of ways to provide a detailed picture of each child:

Relational support plans – every child is involved in their own relational support plan which includes detailed information about how the child learns best, boundary limits, areas for development that the school adults are focusing on, how the child would like school adults to work with them including which safety holds they would prefer adults to use if required, what are their potential triggers, which THRIVE and neurolinguistic techniques to use with the child and what are the main behaviours we are targeting. These plans are updated as required and certainly half termly.

Academic progress across core subjects – this data is monitored half termly through SMT reviews to identify children who are either under- or over-achieving and put in place timely interventions to achieve positive change quickly. This is a good measure of behaviour as often children who are under achieving are struggling to have their needs met and this is impacting on their ability to learn. Children who appear to be achieving very well but who are also displaying difficult behaviours might be under challenged and this can be a source of their behaviour which needs addressing.

Children’s attainment records – record how well children are progressing towards their EHCP outcomes which are usually a mix of education as well as social, emotional and behavioural objectives. Progression through small steps to larger objectives is an excellent measure of how well children are progressing emotionally, behaviourally and socially, all of which will bode well for academic progress.

Attitude to learning reports – these are available to children and parents and carers at the end of each half term and detail teacher assessment around the areas of collaboration, concentration, respect, independence, perseverance, organisation, punctuality and homework: This data is collated so we can track and review progress half termly in these areas through SMT reviews to highlight children who might need additional support.

Weekly passports – passports are used to record daily data relevant to a child’s engagement with their learning. We record how many Take 5s a child is utilising to provide an indication of engagement and missed lesson time. This data allows us to see over time how effectively children are managing their behaviour and what impact interventions are having. This is reviewed half termly by SMT to put in place timely interventions to achieve positive change.

Language – we record poor and inappropriate use of language throughout a day and monitor this data to ascertain impact of interventions or to highlight additional interventions that might be required specifically in the area of pre-offending or specific PSHE work.

Safety intervention data – we have in place stringent procedures for recording data around issues requiring safety intervention. This data is reviewed monthly to look for patterns of behaviour, for the impact of interventions or newly applied behaviour strategies to ascertain how well a child is managing to stick with their agreement thereby reducing the need for safety interventions which can result in changes to a child’s relational support plan.

Children’s questionnaires – are completed twice yearly. The data provides a useful picture of how children view their own behaviour and therefore how effective we are as a school.