“Our message to you – If you’re not using Class Charts is, why not?” 

Jon Tait , Deputy Headteacher at Acklam Grange

This is his take on Class Charts and how the behaviour management software has helped Acklam Grange reduce fixed term exclusions from 4 per week to 2 in the whole of 6 months.

“We’ve been using Class Charts for about eighteen months now and to use Class Charts is a fantastic, dynamic digital seating plan bit of software than we also use to record our effort and behaviour scores as well.

The staff here think it’s fantastic because it’s a huge time saving bit of software, which obviously is educational and we get to increase the quality and also reduce the time. It’s something we were always looking at."

The best parts of Class Charts:

For us the best part of Class Charts is actually the artificial intelligence that’s in there. So with behaviour score we can input behaviour but because it’s on a seating plan it knows which students are sat next to each other, so it can tell that John and Peter are 85% more likely to get a behaviour point when they’re sat together, whereas when they’re apart, in Science they’re less likely so that’s fantastic.

But also the time saving tools are being able to re-order your seating plans at a click of a button distribute your gifted and talented students, cluster your pupil premium students or re-organise your seating plans in groups based on behaviour scores.

“Whatever you want to do, it’s so quick, two clicks of a button. It’s very very easy. So that’s been a huge time saver for us.”

Behaviour point of view:

We’re now, from a behaviour point of view actually analysing and recording so much more behaviour together and contextual behaviour than we were before. What I mean by that is that we’re not only saying that John has had a behaviour point in Science but now we’re saying where they are sat in the class, who they’re sat next to, what influence they’re having over somebody, what time it was and the analysis at the back end is so easy and we’re able to generate that bit of information very very easy and we’re able to use it for a really really good use.

It’s helped with behaviour hugely across the school as well and it’s one thing we’ve really used for the last 18 months to really focus our attention on making sure that the behaviour throughout the school is outstanding and it’s been absolutely brilliant to be able to do that.

You can create progress reports and anyone can do that, whether it’s head of faculty or it’s the head of year or it’s a senior leader or if it’s a classroom teacher depending on the permissions you give them, you can really get into the nitty gritty and for us as school leaders we want to make sure that we don’t just have the information but we do something with it and we do something about it and we’re certainly really empowering teachers with the information that we’ve got in Class Charts to do that.

“In terms of Class Charts as a supplier they have been fantastic in terms of customer service, we’ve really really enjoyed working with them and we’ve always found their customer service to be top notch.”

So our message to you, if you’re not using Class Charts is, why not. You know, get out there, have a look at it and we certainly believe from Acklam Grange school that it’s hugely changeable and it’s really made us far more analytical with our behaviour and my advice would be to go and get a trial and have a look at it and I’m sure you’ll all be helped from there.”

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