Restorative justice in schools (usually called restorative practice) is a way of handling behaviour and conflict that asks who has been harmed and how to put it right, rather than which rule was broken and what the punishment should be. The person who caused the harm takes responsibility and helps repair it, usually through a structured conversation. Done well, it also builds relationships before anything goes wrong, so there’s less to repair.
That last part is easy to miss, and it’s why some schools decide it doesn’t work.
What is restorative justice in schools, in plain terms?
The name comes from criminal justice, where victims and offenders meet to agree how to make amends. Schools borrowed the idea and widened it. Molly MacLeod runs Gloucestershire County Council’s restorative practice team in education, and in her course on restorative practice she puts it simply: it’s about building, maintaining and repairing relationships.
Three ideas sit underneath it. Behaviour is communication, so instead of only punishing what you can see, you ask what need sits behind it. Everyone in a conflict has their own view of it. Molly’s team calls these the three truths: your truth, my truth and what actually happened. And accountability means putting things right, which is more than taking your punishment.
Her team started out using it to cut exclusions. Over six years it turned into a change of culture across the whole school, with staff and parents involved as well as pupils.
What restorative practice isn’t
Most of the scepticism is aimed at versions that aren’t restorative at all. It isn’t:
- one conversation after an incident, then back to business as usual
- making a child say sorry
- a box to tick before an exclusion
- the soft option
Owning what you did, face to face with someone you hurt, is hard and draining. And there are still consequences. A restorative school has them, and still excludes a pupil when it isn’t safe for them to be in school. The difference is that the consequence is meant to help the pupil learn and repair the damage.
It can’t sit alone as a behaviour management tool, either. Hold a restorative conversation with a pupil in the morning, then put them in isolation for being late in the afternoon, and you’ve sent two opposite messages.
What does restorative practice look like day to day?
Molly’s team uses a scenario in its training. Harry has a row with his parents before school and arrives late.
In a zero-tolerance school, he gets a lunchtime detention at the gate. Late to his first lesson, he’s told off in front of the class, answers back and gets an after-school detention. A minor scuffle in the canteen earns him an afternoon in isolation, and by the end of the day he’s been suspended. Nobody knows about the row at home.
In a restorative school, he’s welcomed when he arrives. His teacher has a word with him away from the class (praise in public, reprimand in private, an idea Molly credits to Paul Dix’s When the Adults Change, Everything Changes) and tries to find out what’s going on before deciding on any consequence. When the canteen scuffle happens, trained staff help the two pupils sort it out. His head of house rings home, and after school Harry, his parents and the head of house sit down to resolve the row that started it all.
Same boy, same day. One version pours petrol on the fire; the other, water.
A restorative conversation: the questions staff use
The structured version is often called restorative inquiry, and it comes from the restorative justice field. It takes everyone through the incident in a set order, asking each person a version of the same questions:
- What happened?
- What were you thinking at the time?
- What have you thought about since?
- Who has been affected, and how?
- What needs to happen to put it right?
The person who was harmed says how it affected them and what they need. Then the two agree what happens next.
Before any of that, the child has to be calm. Molly’s team uses Bruce Perry’s sequence of regulate, relate and reason, with a fourth step, repair, added by restorative practitioners. A pupil who is still furious can’t reflect on anything. They settle first, then connect with an adult they trust, then think it through. Only after that can they put things right.
Tone matters as much as the questions. When things heat up, Pooky Knightsmith suggests “slow, low and low” (slower pace, lower volume, lower pitch), plus a calm, repeated “I’m ready to listen when you’re ready to talk”. Molly’s own biggest lesson was to get curious: stop and ask “is that what I think happened, or should I ask what did happen?”, and listen more than you talk.
When is it the right tool, and when isn’t it?
Restorative conversations suit everyday conflicts: fallings-out, a lesson that went wrong between a teacher and a pupil, damage to property. They work between adults, and with parents, too.
They are not a substitute for your safeguarding procedures or your behaviour policy. If anything said in a restorative conversation makes you worried about a child’s safety, stop and pass it to your designated safeguarding lead, as Keeping Children Safe in Education and your school’s procedures require. Don’t try to resolve it in the room.
Complex or sensitive cases need extra care. Molly advises having at least two or three staff with advanced facilitation skills, and bringing in someone from outside the school when a conversation is difficult. Nobody should be pushed into a meeting with someone who has hurt them. If a pupil with SEND finds the conversation hard, adapt it. Her team uses visuals and simpler language.
What is relational practice in education?
Relational practice is the everyday half of the same idea. It builds the relationships that make repair possible.
In Improving Behaviour and Culture through Relational Practice, Pooky Knightsmith talks about small habits, not big programmes. Look past a child’s labels to their interests and strengths. Be calm, consistent and clear, so they know what to expect from you. Build trust in tiny moments, like a nod across the corridor, or telling a child something reminded you of them at the weekend.
She adds one more that matters for restorative work: when you get it wrong, say sorry. “I’m sorry” is one of the most powerful things an adult can say to a child, and it shows them a relationship can be mended.
How does a whole school make restorative practice stick?
Molly’s team began with repair after incidents. They found that the more energy schools put into building relationships, the fewer conflicts needed a formal conversation. The more you care about a relationship, the more willing you are to repair it.
What made the difference:
- Start with the head. Molly has seen schools with little training embed it fast because the head modelled it, and schools with lots of training where it never took off because leaders didn’t.
- Use circles with staff first, to talk and solve problems together, then with pupils.
- Train everybody, including lunchtime supervisors and pupils themselves.
- Rewrite the policies. A punitive behaviour policy alongside restorative conversations confuses pupils. Some schools now have a relationships policy instead.
- Involve the people affected by a change in deciding it, and tell parents what you’re doing.
- Visit a school that already does it well.
And give it time. An INSET day won’t make you a restorative school. The Gloucestershire schools have been at it for four or five years and say they’re still learning. If you’re a classroom teacher, start in your own room, with regular chances for pupils to name emotions and hear each other’s points of view. “Every conversation counts,” as Molly says. For more on this, see our behaviour topic page.
From Conflict to Calm: A Whole School Approach to Restorative Practice is Molly MacLeod’s account of six years of restorative work with Gloucestershire schools. It covers what restorative practice is and isn’t, why building relationships through circles does more than repairing them, and where to start whether you lead a school or teach one class. It’s for heads, behaviour leads, pastoral staff and teachers.