Behaviour and Attitudes

Heart of the Forest school aims to provide a whole school, consistent and positive approach towards
behaviour management, with a focus on individual needs. All staff are aware that behaviour is a form of communication and that it aims to create a purposeful and positive learning environment in which pupils feel safe, heard and are able to develop as individuals. As a Thrive school, we have Thrive embedded within our ethos. We aim to continually deepen our understanding of how social and emotional learning develops and can be supported and how this underpins our capacity and availability for wider academic learning. We recognise this is core to our work as a school. Our schoolmenvironment, resources, learning approaches, timetable and planning are all informed
by our understanding of how importantly each impact on social, emotional andacademic development and learning. Drawing all these elements together is a term vision for the school. We recognise that behaviours can be learned and within our cognitive awareness, but also that they can be unconscious, patterned, non-problem solving defence or discharge responses and might feel overwhelming. Attentive, observant adults working in relationship with children are required in order to recognise behaviours, identify the underlying needs and respond in appropriate ways. We are very clear that everyone has the right to feel safe, feel special and to have their needs met. Therefore, our Behaviour Policy reflects the deeper, important social and emotional learning that each child needs to develop, both personally and within our community, where consistent containment aims to ensure that one individual’s need and learning does not adversely impact on others.

We recognise that punctual and regular school attendance is essential to ensure uninterrupted progress and to enable children to meet their full potential. We expect all children on roll to attend every day, when the school is in session as long as they are fit and healthy enough to do so. We do all we can to encourage the children to attend, and to put in place appropriate procedures to support this. We believe that the most important factor in promoting good attendance is development of positive attitudes towards school and learning.