Behaviour Management

All schools have discipline issues from time to time. Managing behaviour relies on consistently applying both a formal behaviour management plan and strategies to promote positive student behaviour.

What is Restorative Practice?

The essence of restorative practices is disarmingly simple: that human beings are happier, more productive and more likely to make positive changes in their behaviour when those in positions of authority do things with them, rather than to them or for them.

Increasingly parents, caregivers and community groups are seeking out support and direction around managing the young people in their care. Building, enhancing and restoring relationships across any workplace, community group, school or culture, is absolutely essential for a strongly connected, empathetic, functioning society.

Restorative approaches in schools

Restorative approaches in schools are being sought as alternatives to more punitive disciplinary systems and procedures where often there have been little or no links between wrongdoers and those they have harmed, nor any real connections between the punishment and the actual offence.

Previous measures are also often failing to meet the relational needs of teaching and learning in 21st century schools. Increasingly schools are finding restorative approaches more effective in establishing long term lasting changes in relationships, more connecting of the members of a school community, more involving and hearing of victims, and more enhancing of climates of care within schools as a whole.

Individual programmes and strategies for difficult students are devised with parents and staff, and outside agencies if necessary, and these students are dealt with outside the behaviour management plan.

Objectives

Teachers maintain positive classroom climates and relationships with students.
The school makes a clear statement of acceptable and unacceptable behaviour known to all staff, parents, and students, and displays it in classrooms and other places around the school.
The school consistently applies a behaviour management plan in all cases of unacceptable behaviour.

In cases of extreme and persistent behaviour, the school actions the procedures outlined by the Ministry of Education for the stand-down, suspension, or exclusion of students.

See our Behaviour Management plan for more information.

Stand-down, Suspension, and Exclusion Procedures

All New Zealanders between the ages of 5 and 19 have the right to a free education under section 3 of the Education Act, 1989. Between the ages of 6 and 16 it is compulsory for students to attend school.

From time to time it is necessary to stand down or suspend a student from school for his/her own safety and/or to enable other students to pursue their education without severe and/or repeated interruption from another student. A student so stood down or suspended continues to have a right to an education and is required to attend until the age of 16.

These definitions are taken from the Ministry of Education website:

Stand-down means the formal removal of a student from school for a specified period. Stand-downs of a particular student can total no more than five school days in a term or ten school days in a year.

Suspension means the formal removal of a student from school until the board of trustees decides the outcome at a suspension meeting. Following a suspension, the board may decide to:

lift the suspension without conditions
lift the suspension with reasonable conditions
extend the suspension with reasonable conditions for a reasonable period
exclude or expel the student.

Exclusion means the formal removal of a student aged under 16 from the school.

The principal is usually the person with the delegated authority to stand-down or suspend a student.

The principles of natural justice must be applied to any process leading to stand down or suspend a student. There must be sufficient grounds to warrant any stand-down or suspension, and the rights of the student and any parent/caregiver must be recognised throughout the process.

There is a clear procedure which must be followed. See Guidelines for Principals and Boards of Trustees on Stand-downs, Suspension, Exclusions and Expulsions on the Ministry of Education web site for comprehensive information and resources.