Relationships

Rationale

With our ‘love of one another’ at the heart of all we do, we strive to be a ‘relational’ school. This centres heavily on the need for positive relationships and on the impact and importance of the role of the adult, and adult interactions. For this reason, this policy is known as our ‘Relationships’ Policy. Research shows that spending more time on building relationships, will consequently result in less time having to ‘repair’ situations.

This policy is underpinned by a whole school Thrive approach, the use of Restorative Practice, and educational research and reading for example Paul Dix (2017). We are very proud to be recognised as an ‘Embracing Thrive’ school, as well as having achieved our ‘GHLL Mental Health Award’.

We aim to continually deepen our understanding of how social and emotional learning develops and the impact that trauma and Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE’s) can have on children- supporting our capacity and availability for wider academic learning. Through our professional development, research and reading we have engaged in relating to neuroscience and child development, we are aware that unless pupils feel safe, feel special and to have their needs met, they will be unable to access learning.

Rather than ‘punishing’ pupils for their actions, which makes a child suffer retribution for having a problem, we work with children to help them solve their problems and use their experience as a learning opportunity. We use restorative approaches to achieve this, the underlying premise being that people will make positive changes when those in positions of authority so things WITH them, rather than TO then or FOR them (Watchel & Costello 2009). We believe that by using a Restorative Approach, we are giving pupils the skills to independently make better and more informed choices in the future. Restorative approaches encourage pupils to think about how their behaviour affects others, both pupils and staff. It helps children to develop respect, responsibility and truth telling. If a pupil in our school has been negatively affected by someone’s behaviour, we will try our very best to make sure they feel that it has been put right for them and that it will not happen again. If a child has done something wrong, they will be asked to put things right and change their behaviour so it does not happen again.

Although the emphasis of this policy will be on theory, we do reserve the right to ensure there is a consequence for serious misbehaviour where appropriate. This is because we also believe that it is our responsibility as educators, to teach children that in society, there is a consequence for serious misbehaviour. Thrive states that children need ‘clear, consistent boundaries’ (‘containment’) and we therefore ensure that an individual’s need and learning does not adversely impact on another’s.

Parents/Carers

Please click here to access a condensed guide to our Relationships Policy for parents. 

Rewards, achievements and behaviour incidents will be shared with parents/carers via EPraise. Parents can access this by logging in on the EPraise website or downloading the app at their convenience. Parents/carers should contact the member of staff who logged the behaviour if they would like further information on incidents logged. 

The powerpoint from our Relationships Parent/Carer Information Session can also be found here