Behaviour and Attendance
It is our belief, as a key part of our agreed Christian Values in this school, that children at Upton St James CofE Primary School (USJ) should be enabled to ‘rise to their best’.
This includes developing a strong self-discipline and learning to ‘love their neighbour as themselves’ (taken from Mark 12: 30-31). The Christian values of Respect, Compassion and Courage underpin our vision, taken from the Parable of the Good Samaritan. We believe that children learn best when there are high expectations about how they should behave and therefore are not affected by fear of being disrupted, hurt or treated badly by someone else. We have high expectations of behaviour, which forms a key part of the USJ way. Our approach is fully explored within our Relationships and Behaviour policy.
Rules
We aim for absolute clarity about what is expected throughout the school, framed in a positive set of language all pupils can understand and apply. Where children follow the school rules, they are rewarded through our ‘Good to be green, great to be gold’ behaviour positive pathway. When rules are broken, there is a clear negative behaviour pathway, which everyone follows, with the aim to get children 'back on track' as quickly as possible.
Our USJ way: six school rules are expected to be adhered to by everyone:
A Graduated Approach
Whilst each individual child benefits from a consistent approach to behaviour, we believe that this does not involve every child getting the ‘same’ but instead everyone getting what they need. Children often need personalised responses to support their personal development and well-being, which is consistent to our Christian values and beliefs.
USJ has its own reward and sanction system called ‘Good to be green, great to be gold’. We will always endeavour to focus on positive behaviours and reward these as frequently as possible. This includes individual and collective daily, weekly and termly rewards. Where a child is not behaving well, they are given sufficient opportunity to ‘stop and think’ and to then make a positive behaviour choice.
At USJ, we strongly believe that although consequences for actions are often necessary, the real learning which actually changes behaviour comes from a restorative conversation with a trusted adult followed by reparation with any other parties involved. This aligns with our Christian message of ‘love your neighbour as yourself’, as children are taught to develop empathy and to understand the impact of their behaviour on others.
Staff will structure restorative conversations based around these main questions and use restorative prompt cards as a scaffold:
• What happened?
• What were you thinking at the time?
• How did this make people feel?
• Who else has been affected?
• What should we do to put things right?
• How can we do things differently in the future?
Please see our Relationships and Behaviour policy for more information.
Attendance
We believe that children can reach their full potential only by receiving full-time education, through regular and structured attendance. We expect all pupils to arrive and leave school punctually and we emphasise this to parents.
All staff are concerned for the children’s welfare and happiness and everyone plays a part in promoting regular attendance among the pupils.
The school gate opens at 8:35am and every child is expected to be in school and in their classroom by 8:45am. All children should enter via the playground gate which will be shut promptly at 8:45am. If you and your child arrive after this time you will need to sign in at the office, giving a specific reason for lateness.
If your child is not going to be in, please ensure that you contact school via phone or email with a specific reason for absence by 9.00am on the day of absence and every subsequent day. If you do not contact the school, someone from the Attendance team will call you to establish a reason for absence. If no contact can be made, they may undertake a ‘safe and well’ home visit.
If your child is absent from school due to sickness and/or diarrhoea, they can return to school once they have been clear for 24 hours.
All requests for a child to be absent from School during term time must be made in writing by completing an absence request form obtainable the school office. The Headteacher will decide whether or not to authorise the absence, on a case by case basis, and will only do so where there are exceptional circumstances.
Where a decision is made not to authorise a request for leave of absence, the school will write to the parent(s)/carer(s), notifying them of that decision. Further information is available in the school attendance policy.
All attendance is monitored fortnightly and any child with attendance under 96% will be identified. Our Attendance Officer, Steph Musselwhite may contact you if your child’s attendance continues to drop and may invite you in to meet with her to discuss how we can support you to improve attendance.
If you have any concerns regarding attendance, please leave a message at the school office and Steph will contact you.
