wellbeing

Restorative practices

Restorative Practices encourage engagement and build pride, respect and responsibility in each individual student. Restorative practice seeks to repair relationships that have been damaged, including those damaged through bullying. It does this by bringing about a sense of remorse and restorative action on the part of the offender and forgiveness by the victim. Through the use of a restorative approach, Windsor Primary School supports people to take responsibility for their actions and repair any harm that has been done.

How you can help

Support our Restorative Practices policy by encouraging your children to:

• Try to see situations from the other person’s point of view

• Pay closer attention to what people say to them and show that they are actively listening

• Talk to others without sarcasm or put-downs

• Express their feelings more often

• Offer their support to other pupils through friendship or buddy program.

• Use the language of Restorative Practices when dealing with incidents: “Tell me what happened?” (Instead of blaming), “Who has been affected by this behaviour?”, “How can we repair the harm?”

Benefits

Restorative practices can help our whole school community by:

• Making it a safer, happier place where your children’s talents can be recognised an rewarded.

• Raising attendance.

• Providing greater opportunities for support and mediation when conflict occurs.

• Creating awareness of bullying behaviour and working towards a bully-free school.

How Does It Work?

Students involved in an incident all have an opportunity to talk about what happened in a conference.

Each student has an opportunity to express their feelings, discuss how they were harmed and how the harm could be repaired. We work through the conferencing process until we reach a point of agreement and a sense of fairness and justice from all involved.