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Conduct Quotes...

"Once the students realised I could create reports and graphs of their behaviour with a few clicks they were stunned"

"It is such a great tool, one that all teachers should have."

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St Anthony's School

St Anthony's is an 11-18 all girls' comprehensive school founded over 100 years ago. The school, which is a Technology College and Beacon school, is situated in Sunderland. It has over 1350 students and 90 teaching staff. Last year the Deputy Head requested a system that would allow senior members of staff to monitor student behaviour on a student-by-student basis identifying any serious incidents. At the last inspection in 2003 Inspectors commented upon, "the happy and secure environment where pupils develop academically".
 

"The Deputy Head required an improved electronic database that could give us an up to date view of all incidents happening in school. The existing information management system would not allow us to input the information we needed...", Bob Ratcliffe, Assistant Head Teacher (e-learning) St Anthony's.

Bob Ratcliffe, Assistant Head Teacher at St Anthony's, was faced with the challenge of setting up this system. He investigated using the existing information management systems, but the solutions were not only very expensive (up to £15,000 a year for the MIS) but also cumbersome and restrictive.

"We needed a system that would allow us to track specific incidents relating to individual pupils. We already currently use FileMaker within the school for data tracking, reports and administrative purposes, so we knew that this would have the flexibility to allow us to create a system that would meet our needs" explains Ratcliffe.

After a discussion with the Deputy Head, the agreement was that a database was needed that would allow them to create fields that could contain photographs, names of students, description of incidents, the staff member involved and the action taken.

In addition one of the most important tools required by St Anthony's school was the ability to generate an automatic letter after a pupil had been reported to be involved in three similar incidents. This would allow the school to ensure parents are better informed and the school could manage behaviour levels and track trends of activity.

Bob Ratcliffe, although being the Assistant Head Teacher and the IT Pro at St Anthony's felt this challenge was too big to tackle on his own and wanted to get advice from a fellow teacher that had experienced a similar challenge. He approached Andy Marsh, a fellow teacher and developer FileMaker Solutions Alliance members 3 Square Associates (www.3squareassociates.com), to discuss the best software to use to solve this problem. Andy Marsh had previously helped Bob tackle other ICT challenges within the school.

Using FileMaker technology, 3 Square Associates have developed software called 'Conduct Behaviour Management' that was initially trialled at Croxteth Community Comprehensive, Liverpool to record, monitor, track, analyse and report on student conduct and behaviour. The system can record both positive and negative behaviours and notify parents using letter, email or mobile phone text message, although St Anthony's requirements were based on recording bad behaviour.

Andy Marsh commented, "Conduct was developed to enable teachers to track, record and analyse behaviour incidents and, at the same time, improve parental communication. A school like St Anthony's, which has over 1300 pupils and 85 teachers needs a system that can be a central resource of information otherwise incidents can occur and other teachers may not be aware of this."

Since the database has been implemented, the Deputy Head can now keep a record of incidents creating a profile of each student and their behaviour throughout their time at the school. She can also search the database by a number of categories including time of day, subject and location, which allows the school to identify trends in where trouble occurs. This helps to ensure more staff and support can be allocated to the areas of greatest need.

The decision to choose a FileMaker based software program was a result of the schools previous success in using FileMaker to monitor, track and report on pupil progress for reporting.

Bob Ratcliffe comments, "When I first started using Conduct I realised its potential in the use of tracking and monitoring student data. One of the most challenging aspects of creating a solution is satisfying the needs of all parties. I felt using FileMaker would be able to meet the requirements of the deputy head in tracking bad behaviour in the school."

With the help from Andy Marsh, Ratcliffe plans to implement a further FileMaker package in the coming months that will allow teachers at St Anthony's to track the submission of work by sixth form students.

Ratcliffe explains, "It is currently quite difficult tracking students that have submitted work on time. A-Levels are demanding and students need to be on top of work. We therefore want to ensure we have identified problems early on to prevent students from falling behind."

The new system will allow teachers to input notes when students have not handed in work on time and allows teachers within different departments to view to see if this is a common theme for the student. This will then allow the Pastoral leaders or tutors to speak to the pupil and parents about tackling this problem.



A teachers view

When I qualified as a teacher I struggled to control the students. When you go to university they don't really give you the skills to cope with the unruly students, you have to learn this yourself over time and with experience. We have a good 'sanctions' system in school that is used effectively by the more experienced teachers, teachers who know the system and the students. As a new teacher I used this system and of course my classroom management got better, but the system was still not good enough for me, there were too many times when students got away with minor incidents or incidents were not written up by members of staff. Then of course when I wanted to find a certain students behaviour record it was a nightmare having to trawl through pages and pages of information I had written up using my word processor. Not a very good system.
I looked around on the Internet for a behaviour system, I needed something that was simple and quick to use, something I could use to simply log incidents there and then in the classroom. I found a few systems but many of them seemed complex, too difficult to set up and very very expensive. I came across Conduct and I downloaded a demo version. Once I started using it I realised it was perfect for my needs and very easy to use! Being able to set it up however you want was a bonus as I set it to work in conjunction with our current rewards/sanctions system. I started to use Conduct straight away and very quickly built up a lot of entries. Once the students realised I could create reports and graphs of their behaviour with a few clicks they were stunned. We had nothing in school that could do this so easily. I could sit on my computer and create a report or a chart of a student or even a class within seconds. This was perfect for parents evening when you wanted to show parents their child's behaviour record. Suffice to say the behaviour in class became a lot better, but more pleasing is that I now get students asking to be placed in the log for positive behaviour. I am so pleased with the turn around in my classes attitude, and it is all down to using Conduct software. The first thing I do when I get into class in the morning is load Conduct onto the interactive board, I use it religiously to record and monitor the students behaviour. It is such a great tool, one that all teachers should have. It has certainly made my life a lot easier with the students and I am a lot more organised. Thank you very much for great software.