School-Wide Positive Behaviour Support

St Brigid’s College has adopted School-Wide Positive Behaviour Support (SWPBS) as a framework of intervention practices and organisational systems for establishing the social culture, learning and teaching environment and individual behaviour supports needed to achieve academic and social success for all students.

SWPBS requires commitment by the whole school community. All SWPBS schools implement seven essential features. The seven essential components of the SWPBS are:

1. Leadership

The leadership team leads the school through a process of developing and gaining consensus on beliefs, expectations and procedures along with a written plan. This full staff involvement in the process is crucial.

2. Defining expected behaviour

Just as schools rely on the direction provided by their academic curriculums, success with student behaviour support begins with clear behavioural expectations – a behavioural curriculum. These expectations are a vision of responsible student behaviour and social competence. Staff, students and parents were involved in the development of the St Brigid’s College Behaviour Matrix of Expected Behaviours in 2022/23.

3. Teaching expected behaviour

Systematic teaching of the expected behaviours becomes a routine part of the school day. This teaching uses the same methods as teaching academic skills through modelling, practice and feedback.

4. Encouraging expected behaviours

Staff provide regular feedback to students about their behavioural progress. Creating a school culture where expected behaviours are the norm requires staff positively interacting with students more frequently when they have engaged in appropriate behaviour than when the student is demonstrating unproductive behaviour. St Brigid’s College uses a commendation system to encourage and acknowledge students displaying the expected behaviours.

5. Raising engagement – school practices

These practices impact academic engagement and ultimately student achievement while ensuring a positive and welcoming learning environment. They represent the facets of classroom teaching under the teacher’s control that have been identified as evidence-based practices to maximise engagement for all students.

6. Responses to inappropriate behaviour

Inappropriate behaviour requires feedback and should be viewed as a teaching opportunity. The same calm instructional approach used when students make academic errors should be used to correct behavioural errors. The development of a continuum of responses to misbehaviour provides staff with the tools to effectively respond. Click here to view our SWPBS Behaviour Flowchart.

7. Ongoing monitoring

The use of data focuses a school’s efforts by identifying areas in need of improvement as well as those operating well, and keeps the effort alive by providing feedback or knowledge of results that promote consistent implementation and renewal. Data is used to monitor student behaviour and the SWPBS implementation process.