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Leading lights

The NUT runs a number of courses for heads and senior teachers. Janey Hulme finds out how one course helped participants develop their behaviour management skills.

The NUT’S ‘Leading behaviour improvement’ course takes place over two two-day seminars at Stoke Rochford Hall. After the first, participants try out what they have learnt in their school over several weeks. Then they attend the second to share experiences and develop a personal action plan for the future.

Tutor Rob Long explains: “The course is about understanding challenging behaviours and, more importantly, ways to promote positive behaviour. It looks at behaviour as a curriculum area that some learners need to be taught.”

Systems for dealing with individuals and groups of troublesome pupils are explored to help teachers avoid resorting to detention, suspension or exclusion. Participants also learn about multifaceted and multi-agency behaviour intervention techniques, and about setting up behaviour teams.

Rebecca Toogood and her colleague Alison Foster from Vyners School, Uxbridge, pictured above, attended both sets of seminars. “It was a really enjoyable course delivered in an informative but lighthearted way. We learned a great deal from it and the tutor was inspirational,” says Rebecca.

“We had developed a new whole school behaviour policy at our school,” she continues, “but we didn’t have a strategy for the more challenging students. There were particular individuals for whom the policy didn’t fit.”

At Vyners School a new action plan worked well. “We trialled it with a student who had very particular needs, who had been causing a lot of staff anxiety. We felt that, in our leadership role, we needed to support staff. They were really grateful that we came back with lots of new ideas, new approaches and perspectives,” Rebecca explains.

Neil Oxley, a behaviour improvement consultant working for his local authority, Cheshire West and Chester, attended the course to improve his practice. He trains staff teams in schools to help them support vulnerable children, and coaches individuals.

“If there’s a school where a teacher, say an NQT, is experiencing difficulty with a class, I’ll go in and observe. I’ll meet the teacher later to discuss various routines to follow.

“What Rob did and how he delivered the course increased my knowledge and understanding. People there were like-minded leaders of behaviour sharing good practice and networking.

“I would definitely recommend this course for head teachers and senior management wanting to improve pastoral and behaviour systems in their schools.”

Find out more

Go to www.teachers.org.uk/cpd and click on ‘school leaders’ or ‘behaviour management’ for more information about relevant NUT courses.