Usage

• Adding a behaviour incident & referring incidents to other staff members
• Editing and deleting behaviour incidents
• Dealing with referrals
• Managing house points
• Reporting on behaviour
• Printing behaviour certificates

Configuration

Basic configuration

If you are configuring behaviour in PARS for the first time, then you will need to create Grounds and Outcomes. These are the equivalent of Types and Outcomes in SIMS.

When adding a behaviour incident, a ground is what the pupil has done, and the outcome is what the staff member is going to do about it.

If you want to use the same Types and Outcomes as you have in SIMS, you should first go to the synchronise setup with SIMS page which allows you to copy the behaviour setup from PARS to SIMS or vice versa.

Now go to the behaviour preferences page. There are various global preferences which apply to all users.

Next you should go to the configure outcomes page. In PARS, points are attributed to the outcomes, not to the grounds (types).

For example: in SIMS, the behaviour Type "Great work" might be worth 5 points, and teachers could issue "verbal praise" or a "silver certificate". Either way the incident is worth 5 points. In PARS "Great work" is not worth any points. Instead the points come from the outcome, so "verbal praise" might be worth 3 points and "silver certificate" might be worth 6; in PARS it is the outcome that defines the magnitude of an incident.

Once you have configured your outcomes, you should next go to configure grounds. The grounds are what the pupil has done in a behaviour incident.

In PARS grounds and outcomes are categorised to make it easier and quicker for staff to enter behaviour incidents. When adding a behaviour incident, staff must choose the category first. They will then only see grounds and outcomes related to that category. The configure categories page explains how to set these up. Commonly used categories are:

• Attendance
• Behaviour & Attitude
• Equipment & Uniform
• Work
  
  

You should then go to the configure locations page. This allows you to import the list of classrooms from SIMS, and add any extra locations that are required.

Next go to configure events. Events are times of the day - PARS will automatically import the periods of the day from SIMS e.g. AM, P1, P2, etc. However you may wish to add extra events, such as "Before school", "After school", "Break time" and "Lunch time".

If you want behaviour incidents to writeback to SIMS, then you should go to synchronise setup with SIMS and make sure that all Grounds and Outcomes in PARS have been sent to SIMS.

Communicating about behaviour - alerts and referrals

PARS can be used to notify staff of behaviour within the school. There are two methods for doing this, behaviour alerts and behaviour referrals.

When a staff member records a behaviour incident, they can choose to refer it to another member of staff. This should only be done when the staff member who recorded the incident wants further action to be taken with it. The referral list (the list of people that staff can refer behaviour incidents to) is configured using the behaviour referrals page.
For example: a pupil has produced a fantastic piece of class work. The staff member who records this behaviour incident can only use the outcomes "verbal praise" or a "bronze certificate" (outcomes can be restricted, so that senior staff have access to higher magnitude outcomes). The staff member might refer this to the Head of Year, as they feel it deserves a Gold Certificate, which can only be issued by SLT.

Behaviour alerts are used to inform staff of behaviour issues within the school, where the staff are not expected to take further action within PARS. This might be to alert the form tutor is a pupil in their form group has received 5 or more positive incidents this week. Go tot he configure alerts page if you wish to set these up.

Behaviour information can also be sent via email, to either staff or parents. In order to do this, you will need to use a behaviour slip, which defines what information is shown in the email and how it looks. Behaviour slips can be created for you by our technicians (free of charge) and can be imported via the slip designer page.

There is a feature in PARS called an Assistance Request, which allows staff to send a message asking for immediate help. Sending an assistance request requires only two clicks from any page in PARS, but a recipient group must be created in advance. Go to the notice recipient group section of the group manager page to set this up.

Automatic behaviour points

When looking at a 'behaviour league table' (to see which pupils have the most positive behaviour points) many schools find that the best behaved pupils sit at the top of the table, closely followed by the worst behaved pupils. Many more pupils who rarely do anything wrong and quietly get on with their work (sometimes known as "unseen pupils" or "greys") sit at the bottom of the table as they are not frequently rewarded.

Rule based behaviours will issue automatic behaviour incidents when pupils hit certain criteria e.g. 100% attendance in a half term, or 0 negative incidents in a week. This is a fantastic way of fairly and consistently rewarding pupils who do the right thing.