According to Mark Finnis, there’s one thing that should be at the heart of every school’s behaviour policy: relationships.

After decades working for local authorities as a youth worker, Finnis now trains schools in restorative practice - a behaviour approach that prioritises relationships above all else.

He is well aware that there are those in schools who see relational approaches to behaviour as a “soft” option. However, that simply isn’t the case, he argues.

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And actually, a report published by the Department for Education in 2014 backs him up: it gave whole-school restorative approaches the highest rating of effectiveness in terms of preventing bullying, with 97 per cent of schools rating these approaches as effective.

Behaviour management: Why restorative practice works

Here, Finnis, who is the director of L30 Relational Systems, explains to Tes how the approach can work in practice.

Tes: Most teachers will have heard of restorative justice, but how is restorative practice different?

Finnis: While restorative practice and restorative justice have similar values, beliefs, skills and practices, they aren’t the same thing.

Restorative justice is used when resolving conflict and repairing harm, whereas restorative practice is an underpinning ethos that builds and maintains healthy relationships. Put simply, restorative justice is what you do, whereas restorative practice is what you are.

It’s about using relationships to prevent behaviour incidents, rather than something you implement once an incident has happened.

In practice, we embed a framework that focuses on relationships: building and maintaining them through high challenge and high support.

Surely, teachers are already working to develop strong relationships with students. Is this not the case?

It would be really insulting to teachers to say they’ve never thought about relationships, but it’s about moving implicit practice to explicit.

Too often in schools, relationships aren’t the first priority. Restorative practice says that we need to connect with students, their families and colleagues first, and then teach second.

What needs to happen to move practice from implicit to explicit?

There are simple ways teachers can foster great relationships with their students: greeting them in the morning, saying goodbye at the end of the day, taking the time to learn something new about them, bragging about them to other teachers, and so on. 

As well as ensuring that you know them, let them into your world, too. I, for example, am a mad trainers collector, and in school I relate to children over a pair of trainers. It doesn’t have to be baring your soul - no teacher should feel pressured to share their private lives - but you won’t believe what you get back when you’re relatable.

Then, the next stage of restorative practice goes beyond relationships. It is about giving students high challenge with high support.

And what does that look like in practical terms?

When we say “challenge”, it’s about setting limits, outlining boundaries, defining expectations and explaining consequences. “Challenging” behaviours include asking tough questions, sharing responsibility, giving honest feedback and agreeing shared goals. In doing so, we aim to provide motivation, accountability and the energy to act. 

“Supporting” is about building self-belief, self-value and confidence, and being nurturing, compassionate, empathic and caring. Behaviours include showing an interest, making time to listen, suspending judgement, asking reflective questions, creating trust and recognising and expressing feelings. Key to restorative practice is ensuring that you are doing things with students, not to or for them.

The idea is that with the above in place, there should be fewer issues with behaviour. But what happens when something does go wrong?

The approach fosters better relationships, which, in turn, lead to better behaviour, but some students will need restorative conversations once an incident has happened.

Traditionally, when things go wrong, it’s about looking for someone to blame, determining what rule has been broken and then deciding which punishment fits the rule-breaking.

This is not how we do things. When things go wrong, we involve the person who did the deed and those who have been affected in a discussion, and ask them the following questions: what has happened? Who has been affected? How can we make things better? What can we learn from this experience? And how can we prevent a recurrence?

There are still consequences for poor behaviour, but the focus is on finding a resolution to understand the impact, meet people’s needs and move things forwards. In this way, you can be authoritative but not authoritarian. Working restoratively isn’t about having less authority but it is everything to do with how you exercise that authority.

How long would it take a school to fully adopt restorative practice?

It’s dependent on a number of factors. The first one is how strong the leadership is. Some people say they put relationships at the heart of everything but it’s just lip service. There needs to be a clear vision, extensive communication with staff and a clear training plan matched to an outcomes framework.

If you’ve got a really small primary school with 150 children and 15 to 20 staff, it’s much easier and you may only need a half-term or a full term. If you’re talking about a big secondary school with 1,500 to 2,000 students and 150 to 200 staff, then you might need to implement this in waves, focusing first on key roles and departments within the school.

It is a commitment, but it does bring about results.

What are those results? Is there evidence that this approach improves student outcomes?

Most people want to know if the approach reduces exclusions, raises attendance and raises attainment. And yes, we’ve seen schools move from “requires improvement” to “good” and “outstanding” under Ofsted.

We worked extensively with Carr Manor Community School in Leeds a few years ago, and as a result of embedding restorative practice, attendance rose by 3.5 per cent to 95 per cent, and fixed-term exclusions fell from 162 in the 2011-12 school year to only 14 for 2013-14.

The impact goes beyond those measures, though. These children know how to manage conflict - and that’s because relationships are at the heart of everything their school does.

And what about the impact on teachers?

You can’t put students first if you put teachers last. We don’t have data on this but, anecdotally, this approach fosters a great classroom environment, which means schools are both safe and inclusive and have a true sense of community. As a result, teachers thrive.

Mark Finnis will be one of the speakers at this year’s Bryanston Education Summit, supported by Tes. Find out more and book your tickets below: