Mission Statement
The School of Coding is a safe, well ordered and caring environment for learning. It delivers high quality education to all its students and supports them to develop their individual potential for growth, self-worth and self-control.
High quality outstanding teaching, and clear and consistent guidance and support facilitates students in succeeding in education. Our broad and balanced academic and vocational curriculum will provide students with access to a broad range of accredited qualifications as well as educational and social experiences, which will address their learning and emotional needs. Our purpose is to support every student to develop their true potential, make positive contributions to their families and find fulfilment in employment.
Values
- Alternative Provision doesn’t mean a dumping ground…it’s mainstream with the reasonable adjustments to succeed
- High standards and high expectations are incredibly important and are the corner stones to a successful school
- The School of Coding should become the go-to place for educators from across the country to see best practice
- Good simply isn’t good enough
- Learning is about a journey and there is more than one way to get to the destination
- Qualifications, manners, respect and opportunity should be the foundations for students that need a second chance.
School Ethos
High standards – students are pushed to achieve beyond their potential, and staff work to ensure everything that we do is better than people expect.
Daring to Dream – students at The School of Coding may have been in an educational setting where they lacked aspiration to be successful, at The School of Coding we challenge students to reach their potential and go on to further education and employment.
Traditional Values – some things often get forgotten in education, at The School of Coding we pride ourselves on mutual respect, good manners, making a positive contribution, supporting one another and an orderly, litter free environment.
Success – can come in many virtues, at The School of Coding we celebrate the small steps every day and tell students when they are doing well. We ensure that students can have a successful future.
Personalised Support – all students at The School of Coding have a Learning Coach who guides them, sets them bespoke targets and supports them in making social and academic progress.
Statement of Purpose
This policy will outline how The School of Coding will manage behaviour throughout the school to ensure we provide a safe, caring and orderly learning environment for staff, students and visitors. The School of Coding prides itself on our ability to deal with students that may have found mainstream education difficult, but in turn we will not settle for second best. We expect all of our staff, students and visitors to adhere to the guidelines set out in this policy, without question.
The School of Coding expects;
- Students, staff and visitors to behave respectfully always;
- There is a focus on positivity throughout the school;
- That the school is safe, calm and orderly;
- Students become self-managers of their own behaviour and in turn support their peers on how to behave correctly;
- Staff to find resolutions and solutions to negative behaviour in school.
Positive Behaviour
It is clear from extensive research into supporting behaviour management in schools, that the best strategies are the ones that focus on positivity. This should not be confused with a ‘soft’ approach when dealing with student behaviour. We aim to offer preventative strategies that reduce the need to challenge poor behaviour as they allow students to conform to a positive school culture. We encourage self-management, self-respect, responsibility and co-operation.
We want our students to feel they are part of The School of Coding family and whilst families sometimes fall out, they have a bond that unites them. We want students, staff and visitors to feel welcome at our school and see that our positivity is embedded into everything that we do. Praise and acknowledgement are a key foundation that will be evident throughout the school.
Students learn best when they are in a safe, secure and positive environment, it is important that they buy into this concept, so they can be effective learners. The School of Coding wants to develop young people into positive members of society.
Behaviour for Learning
Students at The School of Coding will primarily be here because they have difficult or challenging behaviour. This is considered when dealing with students, but with the clear message – we are uncompromising on the school rules.
The School of Coding uses the methodology, ABC – Actions Bring Consequences. This can either be positive, negative or neutral.
There is no lavish reward programme, we work clearly on the assumption that The School of Coding is a second chance and gaining some qualifications and getting an opportunity post sixteen is the reward for attending The School of Coding.
However, our verbal praise, encouragement and tangible rewards such as mentions in assembly, are the ways that students will be rewarded. This will be regularly communicated with parents.
To support a positive learning environment, staff and students will work together to ensure that The School of Coding is a successful place, and everyone achieves their full potential.
Behaviour in the classroom directly impacts on students’ performance and their results. As a school we must always praise achievement and challenge poor behaviour in a proactive way, fairly and consistently.
At The School of Coding there is a focus on positivity to make our students successful.
Sometimes a student’s behaviour is not acceptable. In these situations, we need to enforce the relevant sanction.
Staff using non-verbal cues and reminders to encourage students to do the right thing
Staff will issue a formal warning to attempt to get the student back on track
If a student needs to be given a formal warning for disruption of learning, please ensure you explain all of the points below when issuing the warning. This will ensure that the student clearly understands what the consequence of their behaviour is.
Student Support
If a parent feels their child is experiencing a difficulty or a barrier to learning, parents should contact their child’s Learning Coach to discuss an appropriate course of action.
All staff in school are there to ensure that students succeed. All students will create a One Page Profile that will help advise staff on how best to support our students.
All our staff are trained to support students that might be struggling for whatever reason. We encourage all students to talk about their problems, to ensure that we can deal with them and in turn help support them.
Our Head of Personalised Support will be a point of contact for parents and will deal with a variety of issues ranging from administering testing, supporting attendance issues, family liaison, safeguarding concerns and liaison with external agencies that will come in to support students.
Expectations of Parents/Carers
We expect our parents/carers to support the school behaviour policy and in turn our code of conduct. We welcome feedback, advice and support from parents/carers, however; to change the lives of our young people we ask for parents/carers uncompromising support. Sometimes students may disagree with staff, but it is important that parents/carers support the school in order to educate our young people and support them in overcoming their difficulties. Parents/carers must;
- Inform school of anything that could impact their child’s behaviour;
- Follow our code of conduct on the telephone, on site and in meetings;
- Attend regular review meetings when requested by the school; Maintain regular contact with school;
- Be fully supportive of this policy.
The Right to Search
The School of Coding has to maintain high levels of safety for staff, students and visitors; therefore, we ask parents/carers to support us in ensuring that no dangerous items/harmful substances are brought onto the premises. We ask everyone to apply a common-sense approach to this, if it’s not safe don’t bring it to school! As a school we will exercise our right to search a student or their belongings without consent. This will be completed by at least two members of staff. We have identified a list of prohibited items, they are;
- Knives, including craft knives, pen knives, razors, guns of any kind, including replicas and BB guns
- Alcohol
- Illegal drugs and ‘legal highs’ stolen items
- Tobacco and cigarette papers including e-cigarettes
- Fire lighting equipment or inflammable liquids
- Fireworks or explosives of any kind
- Offensive material such as pornographic, racist or violent images
- Any article that has been or is likely to be used to commit an offence, cause personal injury or damage to property
- Laser pens or LED torches
- Energy drinks containing high amounts of caffeine (Red Bull, Relentless, etc.)
- Any item deemed to be inappropriate or unsafe by a member of staff
If anything is found on a student’s person or in their property, school will confiscate this item. If this is an illegal item, the matter will be referred to the police. If not, school will determine if, when and how the item will be returned. School also reserves the right to confiscate mobile phones and delete any images or recordings that are unauthorised.
In certain circumstances school will destroy any of the banned items that are listed, or anything else this might be linked to one of the items listed. Sanctions will be applied to any student found in the possession of one of these items
Malicious Allegations against Staff
Our aim is to build positive and secure relationships between staff and students. However, there may an exceptional case where a student makes an allegation against a member of staff. If this does occur it will be fully investigated. If it is deemed that the allegation was a deliberate act to deceive, serious sanctions will be applied to the student including exclusion.
Working in Partnership
At The School of Coding, we are fully aware that communication between home and school needs to be strong, to maintain discipline and good order. To ensure we achieve this we will;
- Meet regularly as a staff team to discuss behaviour
- Communicate regularly with parents/carers, via text, e-mail, letter and telephone
- Use our Schools Information Management System to track and record behaviour
- Meet with parents/carers to try to prevent an issue or to deal with issues as and when they occur.
Every student is different and whilst we always aim to be consistent it is important to remember that not all students can be responded to in the same way. The School of Coding will never discuss other students (including their sanctions) with parents/carers. We will always ensure that praise and sanctions are applied fairly to everyone.
Use of reasonable force
The School of Coding staff has the power to use reasonable force to prevent pupils committing an offence, injuring themselves or others, or damaging property. Senior staff, alongside other authorised staff, can use reasonable force depending on the circumstances if the verbal risk assessment will mean that an incident can be prevented.
Removal from Lessons
If a student is causing a disruption to a lesson and it is preventing them or others from learning, staff will remove the student from the lesson. They will then be placed in a suitable venue to complete their work. A sanction will be applied to the student depending on the reason for their removal from class. Whilst we will always try to prevent a removal from lessons, sometimes we will have no other option.
Collective Responsibility
At The School of Coding, we aim to develop a culture of mutual respect for one another. To do this we will upskill students to be self-managers and self-regulators of their behaviour. In turn they should be able to support one another with this. By holding students to account collaboratively this will support staff to employ the behaviour policy fairly. For example, if students do not clean up after themselves at breaktime, no food/drinks will be issued the following day. As a school we will use this as a learning experience for the students to enable students to see the importance of working together.
This policy has been implemented using information from Education and Inspections
Act 2006 and Keeping Children Safe in Education 2018. This policy links to our
Safeguarding, SEND and Equality policies. We make particular reference to the Equalities Act 2010, to ensure we a consider information covered by this law.
This page was last updated on 19/01/2023