St Nicholas School is a special secondary school with 108 students in Southend, serving a typical deprived English coastal town demographic and catering for children and young people with moderate learning difficulties and additional needs such as Autism, ADHD and Down’s Syndrome.

 

Before things came to a head in 2019, the setting had developed a culture where students felt that they could leave lessons and congregate in corridors around school. In addition, a small number of students would regularly damage the school property. Staff were struggling to manage the most difficult and dangerous behaviours, and opinions and approaches on how to do this varied. Staff were keen to change things and wanted to support students in the most safe and effective way, but the consistency wasn’t there. 

 

Behaviour was starting to escalate and came to a dramatic head on one particular day in March 2019, known as ‘Black Tuesday’. 12 students were involved in a very unsafe incident that resulted in the school contacting the police. 11 of those students received suspensions, ranging from 1 - 3 days. As a management team it was decided that meaningful change was needed. They wanted to support the students who were struggling, empower staff, and create a safe and caring culture across the school, where all students felt that they could be themselves and make mistakes safely. They wanted to reduce the number of incidences dramatically and be free of suspensions.

 

Over the past 5 or so years St Nicholas School has been on a real journey, one which continues today. Initially the SMT purchased a copy of ‘When the Adults Change, Everything Changes’ for every member of staff. Staff would then read a chapter or two each half term as part of ‘Monday night book club’. The staff teams would agree on three strategies to focus on for the half term which were then voted on by the whole staff body and the most successful ones were then taken forward as the whole-school approach to behaviour management and would form part of the behaviour curriculum. This format ran for a period of time until the whole book was completed. From this work they now use many WTAC strategies that form part of their behaviour curriculum and underpin their relationships policy. Consistency and modelling from the top has been crucial to set the culture that they wanted for St Nicholas.

 

Key strategies have included meet and greet, dealing with negative behaviours, extreme botheredness, positive notes, picking up your own tab, keystone classroom routines, ignoring secondary behaviours, using the six changes to managing difficult behaviours and staff scripts.

 

St Nicholas School is lucky to have a fantastic staff body who really got behind the changes. Trying to embed things and make them consistent has been tricky however, and a small proportion of staff did struggle to change their mindsets and habits. Covid 19 also stalled and complicated things. It was crucial to involve staff in the changes being made and give everyone some ownership over the decision making process. Staff were able to have a real say in what works best for them, but within clear boundaries.

 

St Nicholas School is now in a very good place. They have reached the point where the relationships policy fits their behaviour curriculum, and they feel well on their way to embedding it in their day-to-day practice. They have created a culture in their staff team to make relational practice second nature. The academic year 2023/24 saw the lowest number of total incidences and suspensions by a significant amount since beginning the journey in 2019, with the figures reducing by almost three quarters. These statistics speak for themselves. We are delighted in how far St Nicholas School has come and are pleased to make them a WTAC Partner School and to continue to work with them, supporting them in their journey. 

 

We’ll end with a beautiful quote from St Nicholas School which sums up why relational practice is so crucially important: “Our school has a significant proportion of students who have had a very negative experience of school and education. It has made them fall back in love with learning in a calm, safe, nurturing environment. Thank you!”