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SCHOOL POLICY STATEMENTS

 SCHOOL POLICY STATEMENTS

To be reviewed June 2021(School Improvement Plan)

 

In Uddingston Grammar School we follow the policies of South Lanarkshire Council Education Resources Department. Along with the other 16 mainstream and 3 ASN Secondary schools, we endeavour to make sure we adhere at all times to this corporate policy structure.

Within our own establishment, we have a number of ‘local’ policy statements and these are outlined below;

 

ANTI-BULLYING

HOMEWORK

COMPLAINTS

ICT – MOBILE TECHNOLOGY

LEARNING AND TEACHING

 

 

We also have full policies available to view in the School Office on;

Positive Behaviour and Discipline;

School Vision and Aims

As well as a number of other documents you may wish to view, here on the website or in school such as;

Our Annual School Survey

Our School Improvement Plan

Our Standards and Quality Report

Minutes from the Parent Council

Minutes from the Pupil Parliament

 

ANTI-BULLYING

In this section we will outline briefly:

our zero tolerance approach to bullying;

We are committed to our young people's social, physical, emotional and mental health and wellbeing. These underpin the hard work young people undertake every day and the achievements they reach.

Bullying should not be tolerated anywhere.  We aim to have an ethos which promotes mutual respect and celebrates diversity. Young people should;

 

  • Feel safe, happy, secure, nurtured and healthy;

 

  • Be respected and respect others regardless of gender, race, religion, sexual

orientation, disability and ability;

  • Be free from all forms of abuse, bullying and discrimination;

 

  • Grow in excellence, assisted and supported by the adults in our team;

 

  • Prepare for the challenges, responsibilities and experiences of life outwith school.

 

Our vision statement – Virtute Crescam – To grow in excellence is supported by our aims, our pillars of Responsibility; Equity; Resilience; Unity and Honesty. By promoting these we aim to disempower the bully and challenge his or her behaviour and beliefs.

Bullying can take many forms, and all impact directly on the mental and indeed physical health and wellbeing of young people and their families. 

 

 

Staff within the school foster and establish open, positive and supportive relationships where children and young people feel safe secure, listened to, and secure in their ability to discuss sensitive issues.

 

Approaches that can help prevent and deal with bullying are:

  • Our Rights Respecting School programme - education and awareness of rights;
  • Our Pupil Voice and parliament - pupil involvement and engagement;
  • Our HWB programme - mental, emotional and social health and wellbeing programmes and activities;
  • restorative approaches with Pupil Support and Senior Staff;
  • nurturing approaches and principles across the school;
  • personal support and additional support from our extended school-based team;
  • supporting parents and carers.

 

Staff, young people and carers are asked to look for possible signs such as;

  • changes in mood, behaviour or friendship groups
  • changes in appearance
  • changes in attendance patterns
  • emotional changes
  • changes in progress and/or attainment

If or when approached or when speaking with young people, staff should be reassuring, caring and supportive as this sensitive issue may be difficult for pupils to talk about.

Pupils must be made aware that confidentiality cannot be guaranteed. Disclosures

must be passed on to their Pupil Support Teacher or SLT member.

All reports of bullying must be taken seriously and sufficiently investigated with

appropriate action being taken once the investigation has concluded. These actions will be determined by the outcome of the investigation, and in line with the School discipline procedures and SLC discipline guidance. Incidents will be centrally recorded.

Young people and carers are encouraged to speak with us via the Pupil Support team to highlight any concerns they may have at any time, and we would seek to reasure them that we will treat all concerns seriously. We follow the same process for investigating any concern – we listen, record, interview all parties concerned individually, cross-reference where possible, refer to any historical information, before making any final decisions on the concern. Occasionally this takes some time – absences etc can delay any investigation, but we will work hard to ensure that during the investigation, relationships between young people are carefully managed and monitored.

After any investigation and outcome has been reported to the young people and their carers and any disciplinary processes have been carried out, we will seek to use a restorative approach to ensure ongoing relationships do not deteriorate.

 

 

HOMEWORK

What is the purpose of homework? It can lead to;

  • further consolidation of learning from the classroom;
  • Encouraging young people to take more responsibility for their learning and learner journey;
  • The opportunity for creativity and expression;
  • More frequent conversations at home about school;
  • Better time and task management;
  • Better preparation for summative assessments (tests)

 

Appropriate amounts of homework are identified and agreed for each year group, by individual staff and Departments. Homework is issued on a regular basis.

Homework should be differentiated to meet the needs and abilities of individual pupils and it should be challenging but achievable. If it is not, simply ask your young person to let his or her teacher or Pupil Support teacher know this.

All homework is monitored by department staff using a variety of methods:

Homework is regularly discussed at departmental meetings to ensure uniformity of

approach by staff.

Homework jotters are monitored at points identified in the Monitoring Calendar to ensure an appropriate standard; this will be done within the Department and may be sampled by the SLT.

Pupils are aware that they ALWAYS have homework; even if a specific task is not allocated; they are expected to review work done in class (reading over notes, answers) in preparation for the next lesson. Not all homework has to be written down – simply reading the next chapter to be better prepared is valuable homework.

 

In S1 and S2, teachers should check that homework is accurately recorded within homework diaries, Teachers should be as explicit as possible (e.g.when the work is due in etc).

Staff should give appropriate feedback on homework tasks.

Staff should always inform their PT or the relevant pupil Support Teacher or year head DHT if they have concerns about homework returns.

Staff should provide opportunities to assist young people in homework completion should it be required.

Staff should ensure an appropriate timescale and sign posted resources are made available for completion of homework.

In Lower School, the Broad General Education Phase of school, homework will most often be about school-task completion. As we move into the Senior School – Senior Phase (when they get their Senior tie), pupils undertake SQA certificate courses, such as N4, N5 and Highers, they are required to make coursework submissions to the SQA for assessment purposes. Such assignments have very specific SQA deadlines, and Subject or Pupil Support Principal Teachers should contact parents directly by phone or letter is a pupil fails to submit such SQA coursework by the due date.

 

COMPLAINTS

We always aim to ensure that our young people, our staff, our curriculum and our ethos is of the highest quality. However, we recognise that at times we all fall short of what should be expected. At such times you may feel you wish to register a complaint or concern with us. We follow SLC’s guidelines on complaints as well as having our own processes and expectations of our service.

If you feel you wish to raise a complaint or concern with us we have the following aims;

Phone – we aim to answer in 5 rings after you select your option;

Visitors – we aim to speak with a visitor within 2 minutes

Letters – we aim to respond within 2 working days if a telephone number is included, or within a week if an address is supplied;

E-mails – we aim to respond within 2 working days

After a concern or complaint has been raised, we will investigate it and contact you with a timeline to outline our actions as appropriate.

Actions depend on the nature and circumstances around the complaint or concern. If at any time you are not satisfied with how we deal with a complaint, we are able to signpost you to the SLC link in our Headquarters who will then revisit this.

Please do not hesitate to contact us if you feel you have a complaint or concern. Please do not assume we know about your complaint or concern, just drop us a line and we will do our best to action it as soon as possible.

 

 

ICT/MOBILE TECHNOLOGY

As part of our broader curriculum, we have developed digital literacy classes in the BGE (Lower School). Within these and our PSHE programme, we teach you people about the most safe and appropriate use of ICT/Mobile technologies (smartphones, tablets, desktops, chromebooks etc).

All young people are given lessons on what CEOP is and how and why they may use this service.

All young people have frequent re-inforcement lessons via yeargroup assemblies about the most appropriate use of this technology.

The Pupil Parliament and RRS groups have agreed with the staff in the school a BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) programme – mobile devices may be used in class with the permission of the teacher – they can only be used to assist in research or for other functionality eg accessing Google classrooms etc

All young people are made aware of the issues around the use of camera’s and photography within the school.

Mobile devices may be confiscated for the duration of the day if we believe that their use has not been approved or has been inappropriate. Carers may become involved in some of these circumstances. Devices will be re-issued to the young person or their carer at the end of the school day should this be the case.

We are very aware that technology changes faster than often our ability to adapt to it, and as such we adopt a common-sense approach and deal with any such issues as and when they arise.

Connectivity and social interaction is to be welcomed, however, young people are all made aware of their own responsibilities not only to themselves but to others regarding usage of such technology.

As a school it is our aim to become a fully digital learning environment in the future and so alongside our Pupil teams, staff teams and Parent Council, we will constantly review and revise how we adapt to this changing landscape.

 

LEARNING AND TEACHING

The curriculum is the total experience a young person has in school. It is the opportunities provided to learn and grow in different, challenging and stimulating ways.

The purpose of the curriculum, planned on this basis, is to make sure that learners acquire the four capacities of Curriculum for Excellence to be:

 

  • successful learners.
  • confident individuals.
  • effective contributors.
  • responsible citizens.

To develop these 4 capacities, our learning and teaching is built on;

  • an inclusive approach in classroom and across the school;
  • a clear focus on learner journeys and pathways for individuals;
  • Improvement in attainment, particularly in literacy and numeracy
  • Closing the attainment gap between the most and least disadvantaged children and young people
  • Improvement in children and young people's health and wellbeing
  • Improvement in employability skills and sustained, positive school-leaver destinations for all young people
  • Greater personalisation and choice within the curriculum and through the curriculum

 

Good quality learning and teaching requires careful and consistent planning, working together as staff, young people and carers, to set priorities for individual learners, to monitor and review these and to adapt as necessary. It requires Pupil Support, classroom teachers, SDS, Social Work, NHS as well as the leadership teams of the school, to work together to support an individual learner in their journey through the curriculum.

We track and monitor progress termly, act on the data we receive, moderate and verify this data and use this to have learner conversations. We use differentiation (VIT young people have bespoke programmes), a nurturing approach, AiFL, different pedagogies and styles, as well as different forms of assessment and achievement capture to ensure that our young people achieve all they are capable of.

This is monitored, reviewed and revised through our School Professional Working Groups (pedagogy), our extensive classroom observation schedule, our Parent Council, our Pupil Parliament, our Annual Survey, our Parental Consultation events, our Departmental DHT links as well as though Pupil Voice groups. This is always an evolving process and has to be to reflect the different young people and staff we have in our community.