Earlham Primary School

At Earlham Primary School, we expect the highest standards of behaviour and we make a point of acknowledging, praising and rewarding behaviour that is good. We understand the importance of ‘feeling safe’ in promoting social engagement and learning. Our focus is to ensure that all children feel safe within the school and develop positive, trusting relationships with all members of the school community. We aim to actively promote high self-esteem and high aspirations for all children, through an ethos that values every child.

We understand behaviour neuro-scientifically as a communication of unmet need or as an adapted, defensive stress or trauma response. The understanding that children learn best within positive, trusting relationships informs our approach to managing and changing behaviour and we expect staff to work to identify the need and provide developmentally appropriate support to remove these barriers to successful engagement in school life. 

There is a growing body of research and understanding of the impact of Childhood Adversity on long term mental and physical health and the protective factors that mitigate the potential impact. It is our aim to maximise the protective factors of school by creating an environment of safety that has strong, positive. supportive relationships at its heart.

Whole School Approach

We have embraced a wider definition of trauma to encompass any event that is experienced as frightening, painful or out of control, characterised by there being no one available to support or mitigate the impact of traumatic toxic stress. As such, even the day-to-day exposure to events such as divorce, loss of a loved one, illness within the family, preparing for an exam, moving house can be experienced as traumatic.  Children and adults can be affected by toxic stress. Providing an environment that has safety, connection and compassion at its heart ensures that our school environments never unwittingly re-traumatise any of our community members and act to maximise protective factors through the conscious use of our relationships.

Our behaviour and relationship policy reflect a trauma informed approach and our rewards and sanctions are both developmentally and trauma-informed. We do not operate a ‘zero tolerance’ or ‘one size fits all’ approach to distressed behaviour, however, we have high expectations of behaviour for all and rigorous support is offered to those having difficulty meeting those expectations.

Our aim is to support children to make sense of their experience, find ways to manage their emotions and feelings and ensure that they maintain the capacity to learn, despite difficult events that may happen for them.

We believe that our parents know their children best and we are committed to working in partnership to identify the best ways of providing support for your child within school. We aim to develop positive, non-judgemental working alliances with all our parents.