Pastoral Support Programmes

Middlesbrough Schools have demonstrated a real willingness to work with pupils displaying challenging behaviour and their parents on a range of strategies intended to help avoid exclusions from school. The LA wishes to encourage all schools to continue to work in partnership with parents in a positive and supportive way using all of the mechanisms available.

All schools work hard to engage with parents at some point whether this is at the Discipline Committee stage when reviewing exclusions or at the preventative stage where it is possible that there is a multi-agency approach to dealing with challenging behaviour of pupils. These meetings are often referred to as Pastoral Support Programme meetings (PSPs) or Care Plan meetings.

These meetings provide an opportunity to acknowledge positive factors relating to the child in addition to ideas regarding how to address behavioural difficulties being presented by the child. Representatives from School and other relevant professionals/agencies attend these meetings in School with parents/carers. Those present discuss a wide range of possible strategies which may be implemented to have a positive impact upon the situation. In most cases, the child is present for at least part of the meeting and realistic targets for improvement are agreed with pupil and the parent/carer. Review meetings are held every few weeks to monitor the child's progress.

The Department for Education has recently announced a consultation exercise on proposed new guidance relating to behaviour in schools and all related LA guidance will be reviewed once final guidance is issued by Department for Education later this summer (see link: guidance documents  published for consultation only)

The document download links below include a suggested template for an initial PSP meeting plus some current LA guidance about PSP’s and Parenting Contracts which will be reviewed, in addition to current LA guidance on use of exclusion, before the start of the Autumn term 2011.

In the meantime, for more information regarding PSPs, advice on use of exclusion and alternatives to the use of exclusion, please contact David Ball, Pupil Support tel. 01642 201828.

Downloadable documents in this section: