Page 50

Backbeat

Confronting conflict

The charity Leap works with pupils and teachers to help them understand their relationship to conflict. Lara Stanley describes how Leap can help your school.

Leap has been delivering training for more than 20 years, helping pupils and their teachers to understand and manage conflict. We’ve worked in schools across the UK, and our curriculum includes conflict resolution, peer mediation, gangs and territorialism and restorative justice.

Schools have problems with bullying, fights, exclusions, anger and aggression. What sets some schools apart is how they deal with it. If spoken about openly and positively, students can explore sensitive issues. Leap uses mutually agreed ground rules to create a safe space for this to happen, and schools see a change in how pupils and teachers interact.

We work with the school to identify where conflict may occur, then design training to fit. Training typically includes practical models, games and role play to offer experiential learning in understanding conflict and how it affects us.

We engage with the whole school to ensure learning is embedded and easily adopted by everyone. This improves behaviour and attendance, and consequently attainment.

Key benefits for schools

After peer mediation training, one school showed improved relationships between staff and students: 91 per cent of students reported that the process had solved their problem and 84 per cent felt more confident about dealing with low level conflict. Training is linked to the curriculum, including citizenship and PSHE.

Training contributes to Ofsted’s inspection area of ‘the behaviour and safety of pupils’, as well as ‘the spiritual, moral, social and cultural development provided for pupils’. After mediation training, a school reported a 19 per cent increase in student safety in the classroom, a 14 per cent reduction in low level conflicts, and a 7 per cent reduction in physical fights.

Key benefits to teachers and students

Our courses are accredited – students and teachers can gain recognised national qualifications.

Training empowers young people from KS3-4 to become leaders, role models and mediators, sharing their learning with their peers. It teaches them how to discuss challenging issues, improving relationships between students and teachers.

Want to know more?

Call 020 7561 3700 email info@leapcc.org.uk visit www.leapcc.org.uk