Building Care, Connection and Confidence at Whitefield Primary School

What would your school look like without a list of rules? Whitefield Primary, in one of the most deprived parts of Liverpool, tried consequences, time-outs and missed playtimes, and found they didn't work for its children or its staff. So it swapped them for three values, care, connection and confidence, and built a trauma-informed approach on them.

The headteacher and deputy explain how that works day to day. Children choose their own trusted adult, who might not be on the pastoral team. Every adult, from governors to lunchtime staff, is trained the same way. Families come in to learn the Zones of Regulation so home and school use the same language, and a daily half-hour of play, with teachers joining in, has cut behaviour incidents.

Some of it is a long-term change of culture. Some of it you could start next week.