POSITIVE RELATIONSHIP SCHOOL POLICY

Rationale

(Article 28 Every child has the right to a good quality education)

At St Gerardine we aim to provide an environment that enables children to experience challenges, succeed in their learning, and have a sense that learning can be fun and relevant to their lives. We want all children to become independent and enthusiastic learners with a willingness to take risks. From the earliest opportunity, children at St Gerardine will be encouraged to build respectful relationships, make responsible choices, develop resilience and demonstrate kindness to themselves and others in readiness for them taking their place in society.  At the heart of productive, high quality teaching and learning opportunities is exemplary behaviour. Our Positive Relationships Policy echoes our core values and guides staff and children to teach respectful behaviour, manage dysregulated behaviour and provide interventions that support both staff and children to develop positive social, emotional, and learning behaviours.

‘Social and emotional competencies have been found to be a more significant determinant of academic achievement than IQ’                                                                                                                                                                                    (Duckworth and Seligman 2005)

 ‘School based programmes of social and emotional learning therefore has the potential to help young people acquire the skills they need to make good academic progress.’

(British Educational Research Journal 2013) .

 

   

Bullying

The school has the following written statement on bullying which forms part of our Promoting Positive Behaviour Policy:

 

We believe that children learn best when they feel happy and secure and that they have the right to feel safe and secure both in school and on their way to and from school.

 

Bullying can be defined as the unjustified, prolonged display of aggressive physical, verbal, emotional/psychological, prejudice-based or cyber behaviour on the part of one individual or group toward another. Much harmless childhood play may appear aggressive in its nature and this is quite normal. However, aggression becomes unacceptable when it is used to torment, to inflict pain or to humiliate others.

 

It is not an argument or disagreement between people, or the breaking up of friends, although this may be the cause of bullying later.

 

The problem of bullying can only be addressed if the school knows it is happening, so we need to know.  Parents who are concerned about any incident should get in touch with the school immediately.

 

Procedures

 

• Victims of bullying, onlookers or parents should report incidents to a member of staff.  This can be done in complete confidence and everyone will receive a sympathetic hearing.
• All reports of bullying will be investigated.
   
  In many cases the problem is resolved at this stage if the incident is found to be a more general behaviour problem.
   
  However if bullying is happening the following procedures apply:

• The Head Teacher will be informed of all incidents of bullying and will become involved as necessary.
• Incidents of bullying will be recorded on SEEMiS and in the school’s bullying file.
• Parents of victims will be informed of the investigation and the outcome.
• Parents of bullies will be informed of incidents and will be given an opportunity to discuss their child's behaviour and any sanctions imposed.
   
  We do not have many incidents of bullying in our school, but even one is one too many. We expect the co-operation of all parents and children in our efforts to stamp out any bullying in our school.

 

	St Gerardine School Anti Bullying Policy	[pdf 415KB]
	St Gerardine School Relationship Policy Aug 22	[pdf 908KB]
	Moray Council Anti Bullying Policy	[pdf 8MB]
	Anti-Bullying Leaflet St Gerardine	[docx 869KB]