Behaviour and Rewards
Behaviour and Culture
At Hope Valley College, we pride ourselves on our positive ethos and culture that promotes the holistic development of our students. We have consistently high expectations of what each student can achieve and how they should behave. We will model behaviour and expectations and will support students in learning how to accept the perspective of others and restore relationships.
Culture is based around building good habits, breaking poor habits, and establishing positive working relationships with students. We have simple, consistent systems based on kindness and respect to ensure that all students are safe, happy, and confident.
Our Routines and Expectations
At Hope Valley College we aim to establish the same high expectations of all students. These expectations are focussed on punctuality, readiness to learn (incorporating uniform, equipment and attitude to learning), effort and respect for staff, students and self.
The expectations are clearly established and followed by all staff.
The Hope Valley College expectations are:
- Arrive on time, fully equipped and ready to learn
- Develop positive attitudes to learning through showing respect, resilience, resourcefulness, respect and by being reflective
- Move around quietly around the school
- Treat the school buildings and school property with respect
- Follow all instructions, first time, every time
- Accept sanctions when given
- Refrain from behaving in a way that brings the school into disrepute, including when off-site
Student rules
- Every point counts: all positives and negatives lead to a consequence.
- Uniform: top to toe uniform, coats off in learning spaces.
- Equipment: every lesson, every day.
- Corridors: left is best.
- Break time: outside if it's dry.
- Phones: Turned off and in bags. If we see it or hear it, we will take it.
- Lessons: on time, every time (five lates in a week = detention)
- Toilets: go during your break, not lessons or changeovers - Y7 and Y8 upstairs, everyone else downstairs toilets only.
- No chewing or eating in lessons.
- Student planner to record homework - out in every lesson.
- Wet break – Year 7 – ICT1/Library, Year 9 – English rooms, Years 8, 10, 11 – Hall
- Bus queues – in lines in correct place. Year 11 only at the front of school.
- Food – all food must be eaten in the dining room.
Behaviour in Lessons
This builds on the rights of all students to learn, the teacher’s right to teach and an environment where everyone is treated with respect and dignity. All members of the school community have a responsibility to ensure that they behave in a way that inhibits any of the above. All members of our community are expected to follow the rules that create the right environment for learning and will adhere to the routines that enable this.
The ‘good behaviour’ procedure requires that all members of our community create and contribute to an environment conducive to learning. When staff are discussing behaviour in class, they will use the language of ‘chance, choice, consequence’ to support the student:
- Chance: a reminder of our expectations
- Choice: a warning to choose the correct way to behave
- Consequence: a clear consequence for a student’s choice of behaviour.
On call
On-call is used to collect the student not meeting expectations and they are removed from the learning space. Students will be provided with work to complete and an opportunity to resolve the issue with the member of staff.
Rewards
As a school we will look to nurture our students and recognise the positive behaviours that they display. There are a wide range of rewards that staff can use to recognise the behaviour and effort of students. These include:
- Positive mentions/points in Arbor management information system will lead to a range of rewards
- Positive praise postcards
- Contact with home to share positive feedback
- Feedback from head of faculty or the leadership team
- Feedback from the pastoral team
- Assemblies
- End of year awards
- Other informal ways of celebrating the success of students
We have introduced badges for whole-school achievements:
- Points awards (Bronze/Silver/Gold/Platinum)
- Student ambassadors
- Student council
- Sports leaders
- Key stage leader awards
- Headteacher's award
Sanctions
There are a range of sanctions depending on the severity of an incident or sequence of incidents. Students who receive more than five negative points in in a week may have a Senior Leadership Team (SLT) detention to review the behaviour and develop a plan to stop them from happening again. Students who are regularly late to lessons or have failed to attend faculty detentions may be given a SLT ‘work’ detention. Teaching staff and heads of faculty can also assign detentions for subject based discrepancies.
Report Cards
We will place a student on a report card following instances of poor behaviour in order to set targets and monitor behaviour. We have three report cards – green, yellow and red. Green report cards are monitored by tutors, yellow report cards are monitored by key stage leaders and red reports by a member of our Senior Leadership Team.
Student Support Plan
Student support plans are written for students who require a bespoke package of support to ensure that they behave well and make progress at school. These plans are developed with the student and parent/carers to ensure that it meets the individual needs of each student.
Internal Suspension
Depending on the severity of a behaviour incident, or a series of repeated events students may be internally suspended – working on their own and prohibited from mixing with peers at break and lunchtime. Students may also be placed in seclusion when serious incidents are being investigated. School will contact home when this is due to occur as soon as is practicable.
Suspension
For more serious incidents we may decide to suspend a student from school for a set period of time.
Pride in uniform
We take great pride in our school uniform at Hope Valley College. It serves not only as a symbol of community, cohesion, and identity but also promotes a strong sense of belonging and a positive work ethic.
