Coping with PPP: Royal High School

Name: George Smugs
School: The Royal High School, Edinburgh
Council: Edinburgh City
Email: george.smuga@royalhigh.edin.sch.uk

Title: Corridor Code

Focus of Practice/Short Description

From 1991 through to August 1993 the school underwent a major PPP refurbishment with about half the school being re-built. This created a great deal of disruption to normal school life and severely restricted the amount of social space available to pupils. As a result pupils had to be given access in bad weather to corridors/space in teaching areas at break and lunch time. At one point the school lost its dining hall for over six months and had to use temporary facilities. In addition school movement rules changed almost monthly as contractors worked their way around the building. This resulted in a very unsettled school ethos with pupils having no clear and set guidelines on corridor/campus behaviour.

It was decided therefore to create a new corridor code to complement our already existing classroom code. This corridor code would be implemented in August 2003 to coincide with the completion of the refurbishment project and to ensure that the pupils got off to a new start with using their new building in a positive manner.

The classroom code was devised by a small working group of staff and was designed to be short, clear and easy to understand and in line with the established ethos of the school where the pupils were accustomed to being given a degree of responsibility for their use of the building and the campus.

The draft code was discussed by the four school pupil councils and amendments were suggested and incorporated into the final document. The code was also discussed by the School Board.

At the start of the new school session the code was explained to pupils at morning assemblies as part of a programme introducing pupils to the use of the new building. Laminated A3 copies of the code were produced for display in classrooms and around the corridors.

Why Was It Successful?

It is too early to evaluate any degree of success. We have aimed to give the code high profile so that it becomes part of the fabric of the school rather than just another document.

Early discussion with staff revealed an uncertainty over how to deal with pupils who were clearly and/or persistently breaching the code. A short simple sanction was devised whereby teachers could issue a ‘penalty slip’ to offenders who would take this to the office to collect a variation of the school standard punishment exercise form is monitored by the appropriate Year Head.

To date this has been successful in that it is easy for staff to administer and helps to keep the code in high profile. The use of it has been appropriate and has not been excessive with it being used for trivial offences.

Overall if the code is to be successful in the long run it has to be seen by pupils as contributing to a more civilised environment in the school. This will require not just a sanctions-based approach but also a long-term engagement with pupils on the benefits of continuing to keep their building and campus safe, clean and orderly. And this of course is the real challenge.