SAFEGUARDING

We take the safety of our children seriously. All of our staff listen carefully to our children, take care to ensure that they have the opportunity to express their emotions and work with them to ensure that they can be happy in school.

Mrs Kittle is our Designated Safeguarding Lead (DSL). Please share any concerns you have with her.

Our Deputy Designated Safeguarding Leads are Mr Hill, Mrs Couto, Ms Newbury, Mr Baker and Mrs Marshall.

Our safeguarding team can be contacted at safeguarding@widden primary.co.uk

In their absence, any safeguarding concerns should be reported directly to a member of the Senior Leadership Team (SLT), in confidence. The SLT can be contacted through the school office.

Ms Newbury is our Designated Teacher for Looked after Children (DTLC) and she has responsibility for Looked After Children and Previously Looked After Children within the school.

Our dedicated pastoral team provide specialist support in a variety of ways depending on children's and parent's needs.

Further people below may be able to support you with pastoral needs:

• Miss Kalejova - Attendance and community liaison
• Mr Patel - Attendance and community liaison
• Mrs Gray - Learning Mentor
• Mrs Barr - Parent Liaison Officer
• Mr Mulla - Pupil Support Worker
• Mrs Bobat - Pastoral Support Worker

Anti-bullying

At Widden, we expect that our children should feel safe and happy. We strongly focus on children having good relationships and friendships across the school. We educate our children on what happens when we need to repair a relationship and how we can solve our problems peacefully. We want our children to know the difference between falling out, children being unkind or mean and bullying. And what to do about it. Our bespoke PSHE programme of study helps children to understand that, bullying is: Targeted and intentional Malicious and unkind It causes harm over time as it is repeated. It can be both physical and emotional harm. The whole school focused on being united against bullying during anti-bullying week and what we can do when we are witness to or victim of bullying. Bullying is taken seriously by staff and pupils alike and dealt with appropriately.

If you have concerns regarding bullying, then please share these with Mr Baker in the first instance.

BEHAVIOUR

Ready, Respectful and Safe

The vision for behaviour management at Widden Primary School is underpinned by aspirational expectations of outstanding behaviour, which, in turn, is focused on enabling all of our children to access high-quality educational experiences and prepare them for a fulfilled existence as the citizens of tomorrow’s community.

Our ethos focuses on understanding, caring and nurturing every child as we seek to prepare them to succeed at school and beyond. This ethos may evolve to reflect the local, national and international environments, cultural trends and the complexity of the changing community we serve, yet the primary purpose of our approach is to develop a culture of excellence in behaviour and respect. This culture is embedded in a consistent and transparent approach which is deeply rooted in mutual respect, modelling of behavioural expectations and recognition of the roles played by each and every member of our community. This ensures that Widden Primary School remains an inclusive school which is fun, fair and safe for everyone.

Culture refers to the way we do things here at Widden: the behaviours we expect to see from our pupils, staff, parents, carers and our wider community. This culture is based on the school’s values of Community, Integrity and Diversity.

Our strategy for attaining outstanding behaviour consists of three central strands: establish collective expectations across pupils, staff, parents, governors and the wider community; seek to promote positive behaviour and deliver appropriate sanctions where necessary; endeavour to educate our pupils in order to empower them to act consciously and to choose to behave positively.

Collective - We understand that behaviour is a choice. These choices are often influenced by long-term factors such as prior experiences of behaviour management, existing relationships, a myriad of external factors and prior expectations both inside and outside of school. We also recognise that behavioural choices can be influenced in the short-term, often by situational matters such as upheaval in the family home, mobility related issues and illness or death of a loved one amongst others.

Although we recognise that behaviour is often situational and a result of a complex myriad of factors (many of these often beyond the scope or control of school), we also recognise the importance of community as we seek to establish norms, expectations and provide support to children who may otherwise find it challenging to successfully operate in the school environment. We recognise our responsibility in providing this security and establishing boundaries for all of our children.

There is a significant emphasis placed on social roles and responsibilities across the school and we will continue to consult all stakeholders and seek to develop and then embed a collective understanding of, first, our community here at Widden Primary School and, then, what we deem to be positive and acceptable behaviour. These rules provide a clear and transparent approach to rewards and sanctions. From this framework we can then begin to consistently and fairly address undesirable behaviour and ensure that teaching and learning and other educational opportunities are maximised for impactful learning.

Promote - At Widden Primary School we are seeking to promote and reinforce positive behaviour by highlighting behaviours and actions which are deemed appropriate or which exceed the expected standard within our community.

Based on our collective community understanding of expectations, we are able to recognise and reward positive behaviour consistently and proportionately. In contrast, undesirable behaviour is addressed using positive dialogue and where appropriate, sanctions. An example would include a child running down a corridor being asked to ‘Remember that we walk sensibly in the corridors at Widden,’ rather than ‘Stop! Stop running!’ or ‘I would like you to complete two more questions before break time’ as opposed to ‘You’re not going for break unless you complete two more questions’.

A transformational shift in communication will help to reduce emotion and remove negativity from individual situations and seeks to result in positive outcomes and behavioural learning. We are focused on promoting positive choice rather than negotiating with negatives.

Educate - There are two central aspects to improving behaviour and maintaining high standards. The first part is to ensure that we establish clear expectations with rewards and clear and fair sanctions. This forms a core part of the whole school behaviour system. It is essential that we are clear, consistent and fair in our approach to dealing with behaviour. This contributes towards the creation of a community where children feel safe and can focus on their academic work and wider learning experiences.

The second part of this approach involves the process of teaching behaviour. This aspect employs an approach to restorative dialogue and the development of a conscious awareness of expectations and understanding of choice. We believe that teaching our children how to behave and guiding them to develop an internal moral understanding of emotional intelligence will underpin their ability to self-regulate, make empathetic decisions and to act responsibly.

Simple restorative dialogue is employed with a focus on promptly exploring and rectifying each behavioural incident. Adults teach the concepts of fairness and equality by demonstrating them in their roles when addressing behaviour concerns and when highlighting positive behavioural choices that children elect to make.

This approach is designed to provide a forum where adults and children can calmly discuss behaviour and actions. It is expected that these will often be unpicked to develop a more conscious approach to behavioural choices and its impact on others, thus reducing inappropriate behaviour across the school in the longer term.