Task 5b

Task 5b

In Task 5a I made a listed and explained some of the code of practice that guide the ethical framework at my school. For this task I re-read the staff handbook to refresh my knowledge. 

I found that the majority of the codes of practice I abide by and reinforce at school, but it was beneficial to re-visit them in depth.

The Governors

I started by looking at the message from the governing body, which outlines their expectations from the school for the coming year. 

The message also acknowledges the improvements that have been made, in particular the improved behaviour and as result an enhanced learning experience of our students. 

The role of the governors is vital in; overseeing the School Development Plan, holding the school accountable for the pupil progress, financial integrity and school improvement.  (School handbook). 

As the governing body derive the areas in which we must focus each year, how we should go about improving them and have the ability to intervene they could be considered as the guardians of the ethical framework within our organisation.

My department/team

My department was set up in response to students who were unable to participate effectively in classes within the main school. The Team’s aim is to reintegrate the students back into the main school. 

There are two groups of students who are referred to the Team, as stated in Team framework:

·       Persistent truants and school refusers;

·       Students whose behaviour has become so destructive to the learning of other students, or who represent such significant health and safety risks in classroom setting, that they require an alternative provision.

Inclusion is central to the aim of the Team and is best addressed in the three steps in the Teams framework in the school handbook; contact, engagement and reintegration.

Contact- The team makes contact with students, and parents/carers and work together to design an individualised programme for the student. 

Working with the parent/carer to make arrangements as to where and how long the student’s sessions will be.

Some students are taught on or off-site and access vocational courses. The Team are in contact with other agencies such social service, FIP and YOT/ISSP.

Having close contact with the students is important as it presents us with the opportunity to get to know the students and families we work with well. 

Most importantly, getting to know the students intimately informs us how best to support them.

Engagement – Some of the students are so disengaged with education that we have to visit them outside of school grounds. 

We aim to engage them with the programme/curriculum encouraging them to progress to learning on-site and, with the support of their tutor, pinpoint lessons in the main school the student can go on to attend.

Reintegration – After discussion between the student, parent/carer and subject teacher, the student will finally access one or two lessons in the main school with support from our team. 

Access increases as the students develop strategies to manage their behaviour in the classroom setting.

I mainly work with KS4, which is the last year of secondary school education. 

As well as helping them attain their GCSE’s I support them emotionally with their anxieties about leaving school, going to college, what results they will achieve and what will life without the support and consistency of school will be like. 

A large part of my role is to inform and support them and their parents/cares during this process.

Vision statement of the school

The vision statement of our school really stresses the importance that is placed on ensuring that the students have a good ethical framework. 

The students we have will not necessarily excel academically, but can give a lot to society by being guided into a more moralistically healthy way of being than they may have previously experienced. 

I have highlighted the areas of the vision statement of the school where I think this really stands out below:

“[School name] is a school where all members of the community feel emotionally and physically safe. Boundaries are clear and this helps staff maintain an intuitive, nurturing and emotionally available relationship with the children and young people entrusted to their care. 

The environment contains resources that are attuned to developing the therapeutic approach needed when working with traumatised and unattached children.

Opportunities for academic, sporting, vocational and social growth are offered throughout the school. The School is at the centre of vibrant, multi-agency network that offers solutions and support to the pupils, their families and the community they live in.

The care and education offered by the school ensures that the children who progress and graduate from the school have the skills and self-belief in themselves, care for others, gain long-term employment and lead adult lives that are happy, healthy and fulfilled”. 

I feel really motivated by our vision statement as it emphasis the trust that the school has in us to nurture our students into having good moral values that improve their self-belief, respect and their happiness.

One way in which I have included an aspect of the statement into my work process is by offering painting and drawing sessions that encourage emotive discussions and response, taking a more therapeutic teaching approach.

Behaviour Policy

I feel I have a good understanding of the behaviour policy, as it is in-line with the assumptions I made in task 5a. 

The policy emphasises that we need to have a good understand of the emotional needs of students that we work with to be able to respond to their behaviour appropriately.

Our students have difficulties with attachment, trust and have very low self-esteem. The school recognises this by adopting an approach that understands their difficulties and helps them realise their full potential by using strategies that work therapeutically.

Here is a list of some of the general principles approaches that they use:

·       A nurturing approach that involves caring, consistent, empathic, non-retaliatory and boundaries relationships between staff and pupils.

·       Recognising that pupils may have early-years needs (e.g. play) that are unmet and need to be provided before they can progress. This may mean providing support, which is appropriate to their emotional/social age rather than their calendar age.

·       Having cleary-communicated expectations of pupils’ behaviour.

·       Developing pupils’ abilities to understand and communicate about their emotions.

·       A positive approach with a focus on praising and rewarding good behaviour, recognise and developing strengths and abilities and helping pupils to develop an improved perception of themselves.

·       Ensuring that pupils always feel wanted and supported despite their behaviour – firm expectation around behaviour without shaming or further damaging self-esteem.

·       Acting as appropriate role-models for our pupils. Being aware of our verbal and body language as well  as our emotional reactions to the pupils and how we respond to them. Being responsible about seeking support when needed.

·       Providing good attachments for our pupils whilst being sensitive to and supporting when needed.

·       Providing good attachments for our pupils whilst being sensitive to and supporting relationships between parents/carers and their children.

·        Providing opportunities for specialist therapeutic input where needed.

·       Providing opportunities for pupils to demonstrate maturity and responsibility as they progress up the school.

Safeguarding and Child protection

Safeguarding is very important aspects of our work in the school; we must insure students are safe from harm at all times. This is highlighted in the school Safeguarding and Child protection policy;

“The school recognise their responsibilities and duties to report Child Protection concerns to the Social Department and to assist Social Service in Child Protection enquiries and in supporting Children in Need. 

The schools will raise Child Protection concerns with parents/ carers at appropriate opportunity. 

The schools will insure that all staff are given the opportunity to attend appropriate training in Child Protection issues, as recommended in the guidance.”

It is interesting to read back to my opening section in 5a, as I write about duty of care [safeguarding] in a very emotive way. 

I think this shows that I put a great deal of moral importance in ensuring that this area of my work is fulfilled, as I can empathise with the students and consider it my moral duty not to fail them.

Task 5a

At my work place we are responsible for the duty of care of the students. This duty requires that we are not negligent in providing students with a good quality education to prepare them for their future. 

The students I work with have severe learning and behavioural difficulties and are referred to our department, within the specialist school, when they have been deemed too destructive to attend mainstream school. 

These students have been let down in the past by people around them, be it at home or within an educational setting, not fulfilling their duty of care. 

To succeed in my role I must possess the ethical views that drive my ambition to fulfil my role in providing care, support and education to the young people in the whole hearted belief that they can have a positive future.

I come from a background where a morally void Apartheid Legislation restricted education. This experience has undoubtedly influenced my moral view that everyone deserves the right to access education despite their background and their physical and behavioural challenges. 

The young people I work with often have home and care environments that have not provided them with a strong sense of right and wrong. 

For these students to go on to live within society, and not on the fringes of, our role is also to guide them in the learning and adopting of a good ethical value system.

I work in a small team of likeminded people who support the challenging students in small groups, one to one sessions and in off-site environments. Due to the vulnerability of the young people and the variety of teaching settings we adopt, we have many codes of practice and regulations that we work within.

The following is a list of areas that are effected by our codes of practice and regulations where ethics apply:

Learning:

As a school we have a legal duty to care and educate our students but, as the students lack in interpersonal and social skills, we must also teach them how to interact and communicate with others. 

 Achieving qualifications is imperative, but we must also equip the students with the skills to relate and work alongside other people so that they can intergrade in society and in a business environment. 

This is a very challenging part of my work as the some of my students have ADHD.

“Adolescents with ADHD are more likely to find it difficult in making and keeping friends due to their attentional deficits causing impairments in processing verbal and nonverbal language which is important for social skills and adolescent interaction; this may result in such adolescents being regarded by their peers as immature or as losers.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_skills

We grow up hearing our parents telling us what is acceptable for us to do and what is not acceptable for us to do. Therefore, we often learn the difference between right and wrong from our parents. 

The students at our school do not come from conventional homes and most often have had multiple guardians in care. 

Therefore, they often do not have a clear sense of right and wrong which is inevitably why they have ended up being referred to us. 

I believe it is our moral duty to discuss ethical values with the young people to give them a sense of awareness of their actions and to provide a positive framework for them to live by.

Attendance:

We are under a lot of pressure to maintain attendance levels so that the education authority does not question the school capability to engage the students and to work with the parents. 

If students do not attend then a key worker or member of staff will contact the student’s guardian by phone. If there is not a legitimate reason for the young persons absence, we visit the guardian and student in their home.

Unfortunately in some cases the parent or guardian does not assist in encouraging the young person into school. 

Abstaining from school is revered in the morality of the law as it is an illegal offence, but some times an adult who is responsible for the care and welfare of a child does not deem it immoral to deny them of an education.

Respect and communication

Respect is fundamental to the ethics of the school and could not work effectively without it. Mutual respect between the parents, staff members and students is essential to a healthy working relationship. 

Although it can be challenging to work with unsupportive parents or guardians, we must not show a lack of respect or be judgemental towards them as this can quickly lead to a breakdown of communication, which inevitable becomes detrimental to the student.

Members of staff must maintain a consistent and unified voice so that students are aware of what is expected of them.

The job entails working with students that come from very difficult backgrounds. The experiences that they have had to endure can be extremely distressing and immoral. It is important that we communicate and support each other as staff members when we are upset by a certain situation.

We do not discriminate and encourage the students to do the same. This can be difficult to communicate to a student at the age of 14-15 when being different can be something that they may be targeted for. We discourage this behaviour and have a strong anti-bulling ethos within the school.  

Inclusive

The school strives to be inclusive not only with the students, but also the parents. At the start of every year parents and students are invited to the school induction day. 

This gives them a chance to meet the staff and talk through the programme that the students will be following. 

There are also parent’s evenings, home visits, annual reviews, regular phone calls home and IEP reviews.

Some students struggle at different times of the day and when they are in certain environments. 

 It is therefore imbedded in the school’s practice to continually try to look for alternatives for these students. 

This may result in working on a one to one basis only, applying a reduced workload, an off-site programme and/or providing an off-site vocational provision. 

If a student is struggling it is important that we don’t give up on them, but that we seek alternative ways to engage them.

Nurture

A nurture programme is developed with each year group to provide a safe space for students to feel that they are part of a social group. 

They sit together with their classmate to eat food around the table with different activity devised by them together with staff members. 

This include providing a quit time at the start of every morning in which students are encouraged to read books and news papers. 

This is an important time in which we encourage discussion about the news topics. It is during this time that the students are able to express and form opinions with their peers and to hear opinions of adults outside their home environment. 

This opportunity allows the students to form a more rounded moral value system.

Behaviour

Most of our students struggle with controlling their behaviour, so all staff members are trained to deal with any eventuality.

 Our students have diverse needs and can be extremely demanding. 

It is important that we stay calm and patient and are understanding of their specific needs. 

Violent outbursts can happen in our volatile work place, so it is important to stay composed and not act in a way that would further escalate the situation. 

The students have different triggers that can insight an outburst. 

This kind of information is recorded on their statement profile, which we are encouraged to read before working with them.   

Creativity

Staff members need to be creative in the way that they respond to difficult situations. 

Our students find it difficult to express themselves verbally so we must apply different methods of engagement to enable them to communicate their thoughts and feelings.

I have started to use art as a tool of communication, which has provided an opportunity for students to express their issues in a non-aggressive way. 

This has also allowed me to get to know the students better in a more informal environment.

Session 2 Module 2

Session 2

The last session really helped me to gain a better understanding of exactly what module 2 entails and to asses at what stage I am in my research. The group started by discussing what stage they were at with their enquiry and the difficulties they were facing.

We moved on to discuss the meaning of ethics in small groups.  This involved making a listing of words that we associated with ethics. Here is a short list of some of those words and a summary of our discussion about them:

Honesty:  We discussed how being honest is an important ethical value in the exchange of information. We must be honest in our intent for gaining information and how we intend to use it. We also rely on the informant to gives us an honest response.  

Values:  Values are what we use to judge what we think is right or wrong. We questioned how much we were prepared to compromise our values to remain professional. The group also discussed how spirituality and cultural believes influence our values. Ethical values can be adapted over time and within different cultures of varying spiritual and cultural beliefs.  Adesola expressed this during the session by saying that “ethics don’t change, but how we approach them is influenced by time and geography”.

Rules: Rules are similar to values, but they are often put in place for a society to follow regardless of an individual’s ethical beliefs. Set rules are often a form of ethical guidance that controls our behaviour. These rules may influence how we conduct ourselves in a work environment or how we converse in certain cultural environments.

Ethics is an interesting and complex theme because it is part of a moral system which governs how we interact with other people. Our ethics influence the way in which we view the world and the standards we set as professionals.  

Definition of ethics

plural noun

·              1 [usually treated as plural] moral principles that govern a person’s behaviour or the conducting of an activity: medical ethics also enter into the question

·              2 [usually treated as singular] the branch of knowledge that deals with moral principles: neither metaphysics nor ethics is the home of religion

http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/ethics