Sent to parents and carers on 16/05/2025

 

Proposed Changes to the Behaviour System

for Summer Term 2 from 2 June 2025

 

Back in January, 230 parents and carers (around a quarter of our parent/carer body), gave us some feedback about what the academy is doing well and what it needs to improve. We have used this feedback, the student survey and staff feedback to propose tweaks to our behaviour system. We received some very clear feedback on C3 (lesson removal) seclusion and suspensions.

We all share the ambition that our students should leave Westbourne Academy as rounded characters with the qualifications and personal skills to lead successful and happy lives. As teenagers grow and develop, there are occasions when they will make wrong choices and need to learn from their mistakes.

We need a system which allows the majority of our students to learn in a disruption free environment, but one that also deals with those students who disrupt learning. We also need to make sure that the sanction is proportionate and does not result in students missing too much learning.

C3 System: Lesson Removal

What happens now?

  • students are removed from the lesson for 2 lessons and a social time
  • students go to the Seclusion Room, where limited work is completed and they miss learning from two lessons

What we propose to change?

  • students are removed for 1 lesson only and the teacher provides work for them
  • students may go to another classroom to complete the work
  • if there is no classroom or if they refuse, students will go to the removal room for that lesson
  • students will get a45-minute detention after school the next day
  • this will be reduced to 30-minutesif they have completed the work and return to the teacher to discuss what went wrong and put it right
  • if a student refuses to attend, the detention will be increased to 60-minutes
  • if a student does not attend the hour, they will be placed in seclusionfor one day

 

Suspensions

In the survey, we had a range of comments about suspension being ineffective, that

students completed little work or did not take the punishment seriously. We want to create a separate Seclusion Room, so that we can reduce suspensions, ensure students do not miss out on learning and that we try to address some of the causes behind the behaviour choices that we are seeing.

What are we proposing?

  • the Seclusion Room is a separate area to removal
  • students would go to Seclusion the next day after an incident or if they had failed to attend the second chance of detention
  • students would arrive at 9:00 and their day would finish at 4:00 and they would have a different breaktime and lunchtime
  • there would be a separate social area
  • students would follow their normal timetable and would complete work provided by their teacher
  • if a student does not complete their work, then the seclusion would be repeated the next day and the work would be returned to their teacher
  • the same warning system would operate in our Seclusion Room
  • students who were disruptive or defiant in the Seclusion Room will be suspended

 

We hope you see that we have listened to some of your feedback and are trying to move our systems forward. If you any comments about these proposals or have some different solutions, we would really like to hear about them.

Kind regards

Mr M Higgon

Principal

 

Academy vision: Westbourne is an inclusive academy. We support all students, regardless of starting point, to achieve their potential and develop the skills necessary for employment and life.

Academy values: Be Safe, Be Thoughtful, Be Accountable and Be Respectful.

 

General queries to: wes-office@attrust.org.uk or 01473 742315

Attendance or Absence queries to: wes-attendance@attrust.org.uk 

Exam queries to: anna.fulcher@attrust.org.uk 

MCAS, online payments and data information queries to: wes-data@attrust.org.uk

Lettings queries to wes-lettings@attrust.org.uk

Safeguarding queries to wes-safe@attrust.org.uk

SEND queries to: opal.degville@attrust.org.uk