Through the Pivotal Blog, we are publishing in full "Views from the Bridge" a book about the Bridge Project in Chesterfield.
We are publishing this book in chapters. Every week a new chapter will be uploaded to the blog. So make sure you bookmark this page or subscribe to the RSS feed.
If you have questions for the authors, please contact us and we will pass them on.
Get up to date before you begin this chapter.
We have already published the following:
Project Headlines and Foreword
Chapter 7
Chapter 12
Summary (or Homily)
School.... Is based on the assumption that the children are essentially biddable, will be willing to entrust themselves to the teacher and will have some understanding of her expectations. It presupposes that they have an awareness of how the world about them functions, are sufficiently well organized to attend and follow through what is required without being constantly reminded, and that they already have some sense of time through the comfort and security of routines established at home. Furthermore, the children are now in a large group situation and must therefore be able to wait when this is necessary, to give and take with the others, and to have some tolerance for frustration. School thus continues a learning process which began years before in the home.
These assumptions are not necessarily true for the severely deprived and disadvantaged children. They do not always accept the teacher as a trustworthy and reliable person, and do not attach themselves with confidence; they cannot engage with the situation and they do not learn...
Benathan M and Boxall M, Effective Intervention in Primary Schools. Nurture Groups p19 (1996) London: David Fulton
I have been aware in writing about the Bridge experience that either explicitly or implicitly it may seem that we are critical of mainstream schools and their management of pupils who have nurture needs - however these needs have been expressed. This was not our aim and as a former headteacher I am well aware of the limitations on what a large school can achieve. For example, caseload. With small numbers of pupils to manage Bridge staff can give levels of attention and intensity which are very difficult to achieve in mainstream without making special arrangements. Bridge staff undertake to contact parents every day for the period of settling in and every week after that. A busy mainstream inclusion teacher or worker will typically have a large "caseload" and of course will find that level of commitment to an individual pupil difficult to maintain.
However, I believe there are matters for mainstream schools to consider and the first of these is ethos.
Until recently it was tempting to concentrate time and resources on the "C/D borderline pupils". At another time it was the "gifted and talented". Now in the latest Ofsted analyses of school performance, weight is given to the progress of target groups of pupils, some of which are likely to include nurture group candidates. The focus on levels of progress also means that attention has to be paid to as many pupils as possible. Schools which have overall figures hovering around the Ofsted acceptable thresholds in terms of overall pass rates, levels of progress and the like are now focussing more than ever on small groups of pupils and even individuals, using the pupil premium allowance to do so.
Typically activities such as teaching very small groups, individual tuition and booster classes - usually in Maths and English - take place in Years 10 and 11. The effort needs to be put in much earlier, tempting though it is to focus on raising the achievement of the next set of pupils. It is in schools' interests to make sure that pupils do not challenge to the point of disruption to the progress of others and anyway the results for challenging pupils count too.
Anyway, as politicians are wont to say these days, "It is the right thing to do." Why? Because every school will have some statement of ethos which says something about valuing every pupil.
But we know full well that this is very difficult with some young people. When it comes to behaving in the ways the school would like, for some it is a case of can't rather than won't.
So, with a young person who acts out in ways which disrupt the learning of the other pupils and which can undermine the confidence of teaching staff, what might teachers and school leaders do? Most schools have systems to deal with low level disruption which very often entail removing pupils from the classroom to a "seclusion" facility. I have found that some pupils appear to prefer a period of time in seclusion rather than struggle away in a subject they find difficult with a teacher they find unsympathetic. The seclusion room may well be staffed by a friendly teacher or inclusion manager who receives the pupil on a regular and frequent basis and who tries to understand the underlying problems the pupil might be experiencing. This way a relationship begins with a member of staff who seems interested. Simple work is provided in contrast to the class work which this pupil may well have found difficult. You can see how seclusion might be preferable to attendance at lessons.
I have had pupils make a return appointment for the next timetable slot - "same time, same place" - and have overheard groups of pupils arranging to be removed from their different classes in order to meet up in the seclusion facility.
Schools then try to devise ways around these problems. Seclusion staff may be instructed to be severe and keep interactions with the pupils to matters of fact and to the procedural. Very often a predetermined series of consequences is put in place for those who keep getting removed from lessons. These usually escalate from some form of detention, carrying a report card to be completed every lesson, contact with parents and appearances at governors' panels or similar and ending in exclusions.
All concerned know that with some pupils these strategies just will not work. Progress through a school's pupil behaviour protocols often leads to exclusion as the school feels it needs to maintain the integrity of the systems. A very common reason given for exclusions is "Failure to follow the school's instructions and/or procedures". Another is "Verbal abuse of staff". How many of such incidents follow a member of staff giving an instruction to a pupil who is in a heightened state of emotion in the midst of a disciplinary incident? The member of staff feels s/he must respond in the pre-determined way; the pupil feels angry, frustrated and impotent. The teacher regains power by implementing the procedures; the pupil saves face by swearing and kicking off. Both are locked into an ultimately unsatisfactory chain of events.
Schools react in different ways to pupils who present difficulties for staff and in the long run cause difficulties for themselves. Some senior leaders advocate strict adherence to sets of escalating pre-determined consequences for disruptive behaviour. Many at the chalk-face will approve of this clarity of approach.
Most school staff hold the belief that you have to treat all the pupils in the same ways or chaos and unfairness will ensue. Pupils will argue and complain when they believe they are being treated unfairly but when pushed most can accept that some of their peers need special consideration. Teachers acknowledge this too by constructing lesson plans with lots of differentiation, but commonly the school community does not see this principle as appropriate for behaviour management.
On meeting with a disruptive pupil teachers ask for help, but often the strategies offered only work for a short period of time. Failure of these strategies reinforces the teacher's understanding that they are failing.
Simon Bishop, (2008), Running a Nurture Group p2, London: Sage Publications
Other schools, finding that such automatic response systems can be inflexible, seek creative solutions to individual pupil circumstances. However, this approach can be seen as a sign of inconsistency and weakness. The need to explain such a flexible, inclusive approach to all members of the school community is crucial. It takes time in a busy school schedule to answer the frustrated teacher's cry, "What does a pupil have to do to be excluded in this school?" or "I didn't come into this job to be a social worker!"
A "one size fits all " approach is obviously attractive. It is easy to understand and appears to give consistency. An approach which is responsive to the circumstances and the individuals involved needs explaining and the policy needs repeating and justifying at regular intervals. Flexibility and responsiveness though are not just buzz-words to mask ill thought-out and frequently changing responses. A "scattergun approach" is not the same as working out and evaluating and explaining individual solutions.
Quite frequently we see in Bridge Project referral forms, a list of the tried and tired ways schools console themselves that they have done everything they could to modify a pupil's behaviour. These are usually followed by a list of agencies which have been approached for help, all to no avail. It does seem, at times, that these strategies have been worked through in a mechanical, tick-box fashion, without a real understanding of the point of view of the pupil and the approaches which might be needed to meet his/her real needs.
We ask you to consider what chance of success in secondary school a pupil has who spent the majority of his/her time in junior school being supervised by the head teacher, separated from the other children at breaks due to the problems s/he caused in the classroom and the playground? What chance of thriving with five or more teachers to deal with each day, perhaps fifteen each week in secondary school when s/he couldn't respond effectively to the one class teacher? Think of the difficulties someone, with short-term memory and organisational problems, from a chaotic family, will have simply trying to deal with a two-week timetable.
There are also busy corridors to negotiate and the denizens of smokers' corner want to befriend you, and your classmates appreciate you best in your role of class clown.
In class, s/he sees that many of the other children are very successful and realises that s/he most definitely is not. In fact s/he has long since realized that s/he never will be successful at the things school seems to value.
S/he has no realistic chance of success, not even with sympathetic teachers, the help of a classroom assistant, an IEP or even a statement of SEN.
This is where we in the Chesterfield and NE Derbyshire group "came in". We were finding more and more youngsters who had had just such a junior school experience and who had families which were unable to give them the level of nurture and care they needed.
Now there is additional pressure on schools to cope with such pupils as the financial consequences of permanent exclusion are quite considerable. The cost/benefit equation of exclusion versus an alternative provision has swung in favour of finding solutions which avoid exclusions.
So, what to do?
Our belief is that the pupils who would benefit from a Bridge type of nurture experience deserve that opportunity, as much as the gifted and talented who in the recent past were chosen for special arrangements. Showing an understanding of the need for restorative work on a pupil's nurture needs shows the whole school community that everyone is valued.
Schools should not labour under the false belief that someone, somewhere else has the solutions and is expert at managing challenging pupils. There are specialist organisations and they do excellent work but they are few and far between and usually have to concentrate on those with direst need. They can also be very expensive.
A school or as in our case - a group of schools - could organise provision which has the philosophy, structure and staffing to meet the needs of these pupils. The rest of the pupils and the teachers will see the benefit too as there will be less disruption to lessons and less time wasted in trying to shove square pegs into round holes.
The school community will need to give the nurture staff permission to carry out this work. Formally this permission will come from senior leadership and governors but informally the staff body will need to be persuaded of the rightness and the worth of the provision. They need to appreciate that removing the pupils from the classroom and - for example - providing breakfast is the way to help redress their lack of nurturing experiences and is not a "reward for bad behaviour". Any of the activities we have described should be viewed not as a reward but as a part of the solution.
The nurture regime will look like an easy option but is all about providing the conditions where personal growth and change can happen. Learning to trust others and have belief in yourself is not an easy option.
Whether schools go it alone to establish their own nurture provision or join with other schools as we did, our experience and the data gathered over the two years we have been in operation show that great improvements can be made for individual young people. By looking after the needs of those requiring some form alternative to mainstream in fact improves standards across the board. (See Chapter 8: Assessment, for the data for the Bridge Project).
Those who were disrupted from their learning by the challenging pupils are now free to make the progress they ought to. Teachers spend more time on their more motivated and easier-to-teach pupils. The morale of the whole school is lifted as the school community sees the nurture pupils improve. Everyone will realise that the strategies are there to help these pupils and that the school can live up to its mission statement that all pupils are valued, that the progress of every child matters.
Bibliography
Effective Intervention in Primary Schools : Nurture Groups, Bennathan M and Boxall M, 1996, London: David Fulton
Nurture Groups in Schools, Boxall M revised Lucas S, 2010, London: Sage Publications
Running a Nurture Group, Bishop S, 2008, London: Sage Publications