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A daily survey app is being used to monitor behaviour in Bailiwick schools including tracking any problem areas.
The use of 'Teacher Tapp' was confirmed in the Scrutiny Management Committee hearing with Education, Sport, and Culture on Monday.
Deputy Yvonne Burford, President of the Scrutiny Management Committee had raised the issue of the reported "increasing frequency of behavioural issues in the classroom and the effect that has on teacher retention".
In responce, the ESC President cited Ofsted inspections and the Teacher Tapp surveys to show what Education is doing to support pupils and staff where behavioural issues are a problem.
Pictured (l-r): The Scrutiny panel for yesterday's ESC hearing comprised Deputy John Dyke, Vice President of Scrutiny Deputy Simon Fairclough, Mark Huntingdon, Scrutiny President Deputy Yvonne Burford, and Deputy Lindsay de Sausmarez.
"We know that through Ofsted, quality of behavior is assessed in terms of the work that they do, and we also have a Teacher Tapp survey so that we are able to ask staff members as well as parents for their views and perspectives on each individual setting and how people gauge behaviour within their school settings.
"We know that that is that there's an increasingly positive behavior for most schools, but we do know that there are areas pockets of behaviour within certain schools that still remains to be it's being tackled. There's a more consistent approach, but we still need to see improvement, and that will come over time."
The Director of Education, Nick Hynes said recent inspections have shown that behaviour in schools is favourable when compared to elsewhere.
"...there's two different sets of data and feedback which we can lean on here, which demonstrates the behaviour is improving and is predominantly 'good' in all of our education settings.
"If you look at the Ofsted inspections we've had across all of our schools, including the most recent re-inspections, (they) demonstrate that 100% of all of our schools and settings achieved 'Good' within inspections, and that's in comparison to 78% in secondary settings in England, and 94% of primary settings in England. So with regards to external inspection of the overall behaviour of our settings, our external inspector is saying behaviour is good.
"We also, because we understand that colleagues and teachers and staff working in schools are always going to say that where behaviour is not good, it does affect teaching and learning. So we were really keen this year and last year that we're actually taking feedback directly from teachers, from head teachers and from all staff who are working in schools, so that where they're seeing issues or areas of behaviour that need to be improved, we know about it."
Sophie Roughsedge, the Head of Education Operations explained that Teacher Tapp is a national survey tool, giving Guernsey's ESC a way of benchmarking local education settings against national survey results.
"I think it is worth noting that in both (primary and secondary settings), staff report that behaviour is significantly more positive than the benchmarks," she said.
"So the national benchmarks in terms of how content staff feel at work; which sort of goes back to our earlier question around retention, believing that behaviour is already good enough in their school, and levels of staff supervision, and low levels of violence, so, whilst it is understandable that people will raise concerns on this particular issue, we're definitely seeing a really improving picture, and a very positive picture, compared to our English comparator."
Mr Hynes also said that the Teacher Tapp surveys are offering revealing insights to ESC.
"Our most recent one from actually last Friday, was on behaviour, and the feedback we've got from that was predominantly really positive.
"...in every single one of our settings, if it wasn't already good, it has improved across different areas. And what we do is look at how content staff are at work, whether they believe behaviour is already good enough at school, levels of supervision, and the level of how behaviour is affecting learning, and in each of those different areas that's improved since the last Teacher Tapp survey that we did.
"That doesn't diminish the fact, as Deputy Dudley - Owen said, that there are individual cases of behaviour, as there will always be in all jurisdictions and all schools, which we need to deal with individually, where children and young people have individual needs and individual specific areas that they require additional support for."
Pictured top (l-r): Deputy Andrea Dudley-Owen and Nick Hynes.
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