Sharing is caring: why centralised detentions might just save your sanity

Train spotters have their niche, I have mine. Over the last ten
years I must have been in over 150 schools to look at their behaviour systems.
What started off as a few consults became a habit. I get asked to work with
schools that want to tighten up, reboot or buff their policies and practices.
Sometimes it’s a check-up, and sometimes it’s an autopsy. It’s always a
privilege.
I’ve found that some strategies are highly contextual, and some graft nicely on to a wide set of circumstances. It’s not often you can recommend a strategy blind to a school, because as Dylan Wiliam says ‘Everything works somewhere and nothing works everywhere.’ But if we’re smart we can try to establish as many best-bets, highly-probables and ‘this works a lot’ as we can. Like an aspirin, most people feel better, and a few feel worse. But we still prescribe aspirin.
And one of the most successful strategies I’ve seen used by schools, and especially by schools that have very effective school behaviour systems,…
I’ve found that some strategies are highly contextual, and some graft nicely on to a wide set of circumstances. It’s not often you can recommend a strategy blind to a school, because as Dylan Wiliam says ‘Everything works somewhere and nothing works everywhere.’ But if we’re smart we can try to establish as many best-bets, highly-probables and ‘this works a lot’ as we can. Like an aspirin, most people feel better, and a few feel worse. But we still prescribe aspirin.
And one of the most successful strategies I’ve seen used by schools, and especially by schools that have very effective school behaviour systems,…