Head of Readiness for Learning

The vision for the post;

• Pupils – To increase a pupil’s readiness to learn, emotionally, academically and socially including in the classroom, outside the classroom and during social times such as meal times
• Families – Facilitate individual support to families if required/requested

• Staff – Offering support, strategies and solutions to all staff to help develop the pupil’s readiness to learn. Collate data and present it to different range of audiences,  including teaching and support staff, parents and carers and outside agencies

• Others – Ability to make a detailed contribution to CAHMS (Child and Adolescent Mental Health service) reports, annual reviews and other essential reviews

The benefits of the post are;

• To uphold the no exclusion policy for our school
• To maintain a high profile throughout the school, ensuring the smooth day to day running of the school promoting key strategies to secure excellence in the quality of the education provided
• To provide a safe, secure and well-organised environment that encourages the development of pupil’s as independent learners

• The availability of staff training which can be designed specifically to meet the needs of our school if trends change and allowing for instant responses to those changing circumstances
• To assist in the writing of individual pupil Risk Assessment and the individual pupil Positive Handling Plans.
• To provide support for all pupil’s inside and outside the classroom to enable them to access the curriculum fully
• The ability to track individual pupils behaviour trends, and thus impacting on their Risk Assessment as well as Positive Handling Plans
• The ability to monitor class and individual pupil’s behaviour and recording this in graph form. These can be used in Annual Reviews, Medication Reviews, meetings with parents/carers and with other outside agencies.
• The flexibility to support specific class groups or individual pupils who may be struggling with anxieties/stress that  may occur at any point during the school day
• To be present at parent/carers meetings and offer strategies and techniques to be able to offer more consistency in the way they manage and deal with their child’s behaviour. This will be consistent with school policy of managing behaviour.
• To provide  a positive role model for the development of pupil’s social behaviour and attitudes
• To significantly reduce behaviours in school that prevent learning taking place
• To visit classrooms, offer support and advice in ways to make the environment more conducive for learning.
• To ensure that all staff implement welfare and behaviour policies
• To support pupil’s in times of transition: on admission to the school and when preparing to leave school
• To facilitate In-Reach work, working with families before pupil’s placement within our school, learning about needs of pupils from families, social workers and their Out-Reach workers so the transition from school to school or home to school goes smoothly with minimal issues.
• To facilitate Out-Reach work including delivering Team Teach training to other schools within Oxfordshire. Training has been delivered to numerous schools around Oxfordshire including primary mainstream, 3 special schools and a charity-run residential school.
• To be directly available to pupils who have concerns about their behaviours and relationships in and out of school
• To maintain records of bullying, positive handling and racism and report this to senior management on a termly basis
• To provide INSET training to all staff in Team Teach, allowing continued guidance and support to all staff including teachers in de-escalation as well as positive handling.

Team Teach is a behaviour management technique which Woodeaton Manor School uses and its main focus is de-escalation strategies to prevent disruptive, disturbing, angry and aggressive behaviours in a manner that maintains positive relationships and provides safety for all. Team Teach has been embedded in Woodeaton since early 2009 and has seen significant reductions in behaviour incidents since it was implemented.

Prior to using Team Teach our number of behaviour incidents was recorded at 1867 for the academic year 2008-2009. In the first year of implementation using Team Teach our number of behaviour incidents decreased to 1308. In the academic year 2010-2011 our behaviour incidents decreased for the second year running to 930 showing a decrease of 49.8%. During our third year of using Team Teach, 25% of the school population was new to Woodeaton and this led to a slight rise in the number of recorded behaviour incidents to 1091 but this is still significantly below our previous behaviour management technique.