Hormead CE First and Nursery School

The issues

The headteacher of this very small school, with less than 40 pupils, wanted to train Midday Supervisors because “lunchtimes and their skills were standing out as an area needing improvement”.

The solution

Small school training

As Hormead only employs two Midday Supervisors, Recipe for Change ran a half day positive behaviour session with five local schools. A total of 14 Midday Supervisors attended.

Behaviour policy

Discussions about the behaviour policy revealed that many of the Midday Supervisors were unaware of, or unclear about their own school rules. Recommend school rules and details about both rewards and sanctions are displayed on laminated cards attached to Midday Supervisor lanyards.

Lunchtime rewards

The training identified that some schools were much stronger than others on how they reward children at lunchtime. Some schools don’t have any rewards and others said they have a series of very effective rewards including table of the week and a Golden Book. Midday Supervisors were keen to visit the school with a strong rewards programme to share best practice.

Midday Supervisor role and importance

Many Midday Supervisors said they feel children don’t respect them and don’t listen. Recommend the following strategies to help children perceive Midday Supervisors as teachers and counsellors rather than cleaners and police officers.

1. Agree or partially agree with children if possible when managing lunchtime incidents and remind them of any school rules they aren’t following before involving school leaders.
2. Invite Midday Supervisors to meet with school council and discuss views and opinions on lunchtime provision.
3. Discuss lunchtime rules, rewards and sanction on a regular basis in school assemblies.

The Outcomes

Headteacher feedback

Already one of my MSAs has begun to tackle behaviour in a much more positive way. I will be recommending your services to other schools – it was brilliant value and the participants took a great deal away.

Midday Supervisor feedback

To evaluate the training all Midday Supervisors completed a brief questionnaire. Here is a full breakdown of all the questions and responses.

What aspect of the training was most useful?

• All of it was very useful with new ways at looking at how to work with children.
• To see different approaches and how to change your wording to change situations.
• Dealing with challenging behaviour.
• All the explanations were clear, fun and easy to understand.
• Partially agree to solve problems at lunchtime.
• Everything.
• How to be more assertive including saying thank you and positive phrasing in particular.
• Learning to be more direct when talking to children and getting the best behaviour by rewarding good behaviour.
• Learning where I was going wrong – e.g. saying please.

What aspect was least useful?

• None x11 responses.
• Found all useful.
• Could give more strategies about how we can speak with our headteacher.
• Could find no fault with Paul’s training.

Do you have any other comments?

• Learned so much from this course and was very informative.
• Thank you. I really found this useful.
• Gave us very good information. Found it very interesting. Thank you.
• Really enjoyed it - great to get information from other schools.
• Feel better about how to approach different situations.
• Very informative and well explained.

If your school is losing learning minutes in afternoon lessons because children are talking about unresolved lunchtime incidents and your Midday Supervisors are struggling to manage challenging behaviour then our Midday Supervisor training can help.