How to reduce suspensions - a year on…..

A year ago, I wrote my first article around reducing suspensions. I find that often I want to come back to themes and areas I work in, not just because the context changes but also because, across the course of time I am always learning.

Unfortunately, massive numbers of suspensions and a big year on year increase is still the context this year as it was last. That’s mirrored by increases in exclusion rates too and recent research from the IPPR has shown what experience will tell us is true. We’re dealing with the most vulnerable students here. Excluded pupils are twice as likely as their peers to have been in care, four times as likely to be living in poverty, seven times as likely to have SEN and ten times as likely to suffer from a recognized mental health problem.

It's often presumed that high numbers of suspensions come from the ‘zero tolerance’ high control wing of education thought. They certainly contribute their fair share but I’m regularly seeing inclusive relational schools struggling with high suspension numbers because of the levels of challenging behaviour they are seeing. It’s also always been more of a secondary problem but is now stretching down to more challenging behaviours and suspension numbers at primary.

Suspensions and exclusions are often prompted by a behaviour crisis. Either an incident or series of incidents that bring about a breakdown in terms of relationships between school and pupil.

As always, this is just a list of my thoughts, they need judging and evaluating against your context. They won’t be exhaustive; you’ll think of other things but hopefully they help and support your thinking.

So, what can we do to reduce the numbers and keep more pupils in school for longer?

1)        Know your situation.

Before we can devise a response to high suspension numbers, we need to fully understand our context. The more I work in schools the more I realise that every setting has its own context and microclimate. Schools just half a mile from each other geographically can be miles apart in culture and cohort. There is no plan you can deliver straight out of the box. As Dylan William says, ‘Everything works somewhere; nothing works everywhere’. We need to know what will work for us.

I’d suggest this needs some hard data, a forensic look at the situation and not relying on gutfeel or more established staff telling you ‘this is the way it is’. In school leadership we’re time and resource poor and often after quick results and impact. It can seem like an unnecessary step to spend time researching for too long first, but it makes it far more likely that we can bring about long-term sustainable change if we really understand the situation first.

How about some answers to the following questions:

·      Who is getting suspended?

·      Which year group/class/gender/vulnerability are they?

·      Where are the incidents causing suspension happening – are some areas of school more problematic than others?

·      When are the incidents happening?

·      Which members of staff are involved in the incidents?

·      Which subjects have higher incidents?

·      What types of behaviour are causing suspensions? It’s ‘persistent disruptive behaviour’ that causes most exclusions but that’s a wide category. Really break it down. It is happening because of truancy, teacher confrontation, lesson disruption, aggression etc.

Take a good look at the pupils who are getting suspended. Talk to teachers, your safeguarding team, your pastoral staff, the pupils themselves and their families or carers. Don’t just take opinions from those who shout loudest, no child wants to fail. What are the reasons behind their behaviour? Be curious. Watch them in lessons, track them for a day. Find out what barriers they face.

Drive any planning from a position of thorough knowledge of your problem.

2)        Think about school culture

Culture eats strategy for breakfast. What does your school culture look like?

There are three key points that I think encourage improvements in engagement markers such as attendance alongside a reduction in dysregulation and crisis from pupils.

Does your school culture drive a sense of:

·      belonging

·      safety

·      positive relationships

When you break down a lot of behaviour incidents they come from a root of inappropriate threat responses. Alarm bells ring in a pupils head because they feel unsafe. This could be a reaction to a shouting teacher, another pupil, being challenged by learning etc. It’s often an inappropriate response for the brain to take but triggered by ACEs or trauma. It results in fight or flight, the rational part of the brain going off-line and an inability to reason properly. If we can create a school culture which creates a sense of safety and belonging and creates positive relationships between staff and students, then it reduces these alarm responses and that crisis level behaviour.

There’s a lot to unpick here but track a pupil for a day. What does it look like when they arrive late in the morning or with missing equipment or uniform. What happens when they misbehave in a lesson? Is behaviour debriefed and improvements supported or is it a one-way journey to further problems during the day?

When a pupil has been suspended it brings about a sense of exclusion – how are your returnees treated? Are relationships rebuilt? Do pupils return to classes with any learning gaps addressed? How do you keep a sense of belonging in a situation where you have asked a pupil to stay away

Routines and consistency breed a sense of safety. How are yours? Do pupils know what response they will get from staff every time? Do they know what the expectations are as they move from staff member to staff member?

None of these changes to culture negate the need for high expectations. We need both high expectations and high support for our children. With just high expectations we get anxious pupils struggling to meet standards. With low expectations and no support, we get chaos, with low expectations and high support we get boredom. We need both high to see the transformation we want for our young people.

3)        Aim for suspension and exclusion as a last resort

This sounds obvious but, if we really want suspension to be a last resort then we need to have some steps and interventions that offer an alternative. In many contexts I come across suspension that is the next step after classroom disruption leads to some sort of internal isolation and the pupil ‘fails’ that. It’s suspension because – where else do we go at that point?

The best and most inclusive schools have a range of strategies to keep those students who struggle most with conforming to the norms of mainstream engaged. They proactively use external AP, whether it be a day for respite once a week or as a temporary solution, they understand the alternative provision options locally, they understand the needs and pupils they work with and they are prepared to invest strategically in their use before the pupil gets to crisis point. The best inclusive schools also have internal options, internal pathways or provisions, working with specialist staff and helping to teach behaviours and the curriculum or to fill learning gaps that can re-engage children, keep them attending and move them back towards successful mainstream education.

4)        Intervene early

Use your data from number 1 to get ahead of the game. Work with your pastoral staff to be more proactive than reactive. Anyone who has taught a year 7 class in week 1 of secondary will know – you can identify who are going to be challenging in terms of behaviour right then. Add to that the information you have from step one, and you’ll be able to see the red flags that lead to suspension activity in your setting. Which students do you know have the red flags? Which students do you know are going to struggle? Don’t wait for crisis point. Intervene – are we teaching explicit behaviour curriculum to students that need it? Are we increasing a sense of support and safety for the students who attend our school feeling anxious and unsafe? Are we using mentoring support for those in danger of suspensions?

I know, I’ve been a busy ‘firefighting’ leader of behaviour in a large secondary school. I know that your day can become one long bounce between responding to urgent issues. Somehow you need to step back and try and work pastorally earlier in the pupil journey. We structured in a vulnerable pupils meeting every week with pastoral and safeguarding teams looking at the early red flags that pupils were sending up and making intervention plans for each to try to stop them reaching crisis point could that help?

My experience with alternative provision has made it clear that lots of students who end up in provisions have had undiagnosed learning needs or issues going on under the surface that are only discovered when they start working in a smaller more therapeutic environment.

This student understanding comes from pastoral and classroom input but also having a strong safeguarding team with a proactive approach. Behaviour is communication, if a student is struggling then why is that? What is going on for them? How can we help?

5)        Train everyone

If you’re a teacher I’m sure you’ll have had that pupil who regularly arrives late, never has their equipment and puts their head on the desk during your most important part of the lesson. How do you respond? Now does that response change if you know his parents are addicts, that he gets his siblings up and to school before him every morning, that he’s late because their school is a two mile walk away and he never has his equipment because his belongings are kept in plastic bags on a shared bedroom floor?

That background isn’t an anomaly any more. We have around a third of our pupils who live below the poverty line. Does every teacher in your school understand this and the barriers your vulnerable pupils face? Does your Chemistry teacher still respond like it’s a personal attack when one of these students can’t concentrate or turns up late?

If reducing suspensions is to work across your school, then the initiative must involve everyone. It means working to change practice in the students and in all the staff, not just on a pastoral level but classroom teachers and support staff too. This takes some training – practice won’t change just because we announce a new strategy in a staff briefing or assemblies. We need to re-wire brains and change hard-wired responses both from pupils and teachers. Coping strategies and behaviour teaching can be part of your curriculum for both pupils and staff.

Do you actively support development for:

·      Pupils around learning behaviour and coping strategies

·      Staff around relational approaches to behaviour and non-confrontational behaviour management

·      Trauma aware approaches

·      De-escalation strategies

6)        Improve staff welfare

A lot of the more serious incidents I’ve had to unpick over time have had their root in the inability of a staff member to de-escalate a situation. They’ve been situations where instead of co-regulating with a child the staff member has inadvertently co-escalated. Where instead of presenting with calm patience, the staff member has reached the end of their tether and become angry themselves. It’s totally understandable, how many of us can say we’ve never got cross with our partner or children more easily after a hard day. If our bucket is full, it’s more difficult to react appropriately and the small added pressure creates the drops which make the bucket overflow.

Practically we can teach staff regulating strategies, both for pupils and for themselves. We can openly talk about how to ask for help and set up support for staff that need it most, allowing opportunities to tag out when we’ve reached the end of our patience.

For those who deal most with safeguarding and behaviour we can also create regular supervision opportunities allowing them to debrief and share concerns and worries.

I also see resource stretching in schools meaning that inappropriate staff choices are made which, almost inevitably lead to behaviour consequences for pupils. ECT’s or supply staff are used in internal behaviour provisions or with some of the toughest classes. If we’re serious about getting ahead of behaviour crises then we need to look at the way we staff every area, from those duty points that see the most risk through to cover lessons. It’s not always possible but sometimes I’ve seen a presumption that we learn by being thrown in at the deep end or that staff should be able to cope. I’ve also seen fantastic practitioners who just can’t cope with challenging pupils in small groups. How can we work around staff strengths to reduce vulnerabilities as much as possible?

In my previous post on the topic, I directed people to some books that are great and help your thinking on the topic. That hasn’t changed, so, in case you missed that post the books are:

When the Adults Change Everything Changes – Paul Dix

A School Without Sanctions – Steven Baker and Mick Simpson

Know Me to Teach Me – Louise Bomber

Hopefully this gives a few ideas or encourages you with the steps you already take to reduce suspensions and those behaviour crises that lead to them. Every context is different though so if you’d like some more bespoke support, we support schools to help students struggling in education. We can help, just get in touch.