Restorative Practices

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Restorative Practices
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Restorative Practices (in parallel with
discipline system)

• St Columbas High School
• Pilot Phase April 06 December 06
• Maintenance and Development 07 -09
• Maureen McGlinchey Former Head Teacher

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Restorative Practices Pilot

• Relationship management strategy
• Restorative Practice is an approach to offending
  and inappropriate behaviour which puts repairing
  harm done to relationships and people over and
  above the need for assigning blame and dispensing
  punishment .

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The two main elements

• Individual Conference offered where the school
  considers a significant amount of harm has been
  done .
• Whole school staff offered in service training
  on restorative practices .
• 5 staff have been trained as conference
  facilitators and 34 have had basic skills
  training (39/58)

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Basic Skills Training

• 3 twilight sessions
• Background and philosophy
• Restorative Conversations prompt card
• Engage the person harmed
• Encourage taking responsibility for actions
• Restorative circles

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Mhairis circle

• After 2 sessions
• Impact on class behaviour

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Origami Exercise

• If youve been on the receiving end of harm ,
  what do you need to make things better ?
• When you have done something which has caused
  harm or upset to someone , what do you need to
  make things better ?
• When things go wrong in your school , how does
  your school deal with it ?

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Retributive Justice

• Rule breaking
• Blame or guilt
• Adversarial
• Punish to deter
• Impersonal
• Victims ignored
• Accountability being punished

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Restorative Justice

• Wrong doing or harm
• Problem solving
• Dialogue and negotiation
• Restitution / Reparation
• Interpersonal
• Victim empowered
• Accountability put things right

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Bullying Incident Kathleen

• Taking responsibility
• Working within formal discipline system

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Facilitators Training

• 4 days followed by regular network meetings
• Restorative Conversations
• Victim Awareness
• Support for persons harmed
• Shuttle dialogue
• Restorative meetings
• Restorative Conferencing
• Restorative Circles

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Shuttle Dialogue

• S1 pupil sprayed a pungent gas on a pupil from a
  nearby primary
• Both agreed to take part in process
• Consequences fear , missed medical appointments
  , loss of earnings
• Letter of apology

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Restorative Conference

• Eileens Story
• Face to face Conference
• Preparatory meetings
• Impact of Conference

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Community Building Circles

• To prevent conflict and resolve problems within
  the school community
• To develop a commitment to community , mutual
  respect , a willingness to listen to each other ,
  to restore relationships etc..
• To enable staff and students to work together to
  resolve conflicts in a win-win setting

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Community building circle

• Specific issue
• Paul - Facilitator

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Pupils Views What is good about circle time ?

• Helps people feel better about themselves
• Helps stop the behaviour and stops people
  disrupting the class
• Lets people speak their mind
• Get to say what you feel without being worried
  about getting bullied after school
• Gives you a chance to think about all the wrong
  things you are doing in class and how you can
  improve

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What difference does it make to your class ?

• It helps people to understand what they have done
  wrong
• Should do more of it so people can realise their
  behaviour is wrong
• We should do it in every class to help improve
  behaviour in all classes
• It helped people to stop misbehaving

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Evaluation Main Findings

• Individuals harmed satisfied with process
  helped to repair harm caused
• Persons responsible realised impact of their
  behaviour took responsibility agreed an
  action plan
• Number of staff using restorative approach
  doubled
• Majority of staff considered restorative
  practices to be an effective and more helpful
  strategy for dealing with incidents where pupils
  had harmed another person

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Main Findings

• Pupils did not report a reduction in incidents
  involving harm although teachers reported fewer
  removals from class
• Reduction in exclusions no of exclusions per
  1000 pupils down by 24 on the previous year

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Recommendations and Action

• SCHOOL
• Continue use of conferences and shuttle dialogues
• Training opportunities for staff in basic skills
  and in the use of circles
• PSHE Weekly - Circle time in every class to
  discuss issues
• AUTHORITY- WDC
• Set up EA facilitators network
• Extend Restorative Practices to other schools in
  WDC
• Evaluate longer term impact