What is Restorative Practice?
We use this across the school to make sure that we all work together as part of the school and wider community. The police, church groups and staff from other schools attended a workshop with all school staff to help develop this approach in our community.
‘The aim of restorative practices is to develop community and to manage conflict and tensions by repairing harm and building relationships.’
Restorative Practice in our school is based on five questions:
- What happened?
- What were you thinking about at the time?
- Who has been affected by what you did?
- In what way have they been affected?
- What needs to be done to make things right?
- The victim and perpetrator are brought together with others who have been affected by the incident. There is a facilitator – often an adult – but children are able to do this with practice.
- The meeting is based on a circle.
- All have to contribute – this often includes all those who have been affected.
- The first step is to reach an agreement as to ‘what’ happened – we call this ‘one story’
- All have to agree that they feel that it has been resolved and that the resolution is fair.