Pupil expectations

St Mary’s is a Catholic high school and as such our behaviour policy is rooted in gospel values. Jesus commanded us to “love one another”, Christian love is like that of a good parent, it values each individual and wants everyone to flourish and grow in the knowledge of God’s love, so that we can take our place in building his kingdom here on earth. In order to do this, Christian love sets boundaries whilst challenging us to be the best version of ourselves. It will always support us when we fail and offer the chance for forgiveness and redemption. 

We welcome all pupils into St Mary’s as God’s children and from our first encounter with them we have systems and processes in place to get to know them and their families. We teach our pupils routines and constantly reinforce expectations so that they understand what to expect in every classroom and therefore are not fearful of new environments. We reward and praise children to motivate them to excel and we teach them of God’s love so that they feel valued. Further details of our expectations and rewards can be found in the pupils’ planners.

Inevitably, for some children there will be difficulties and challenges during their time with us. When this happens, we will apply appropriate sanctions so that children understand their mistakes but we will also look for ways to support them to try to ensure that problems can be avoided in the future. Our policy provides an opportunity for sanctions to escalate and we see each layer of intervention as another opportunity to rectify behaviour. We believe in restorative justice and where appropriate, we will seek to resolve conflict between individuals by bringing them together in a controlled environment to explore solutions to problems. We will also look to create opportunities for pupils to repair damage for example in the case of vandalism. This is because we want to teach them to respect and value their learning environment.

If you have a routine concern about your child’s behaviour or the behaviour of another child at St Mary’s, you should first of all contact your child’s form tutor. For more complex or persistent issues our Heads of Year will be happy to help you and serious issues will be referred to our senior leadership team. For more details on our expectations please see our behaviour policy.