Gentle Guidance: How to Understand, Inspire and Empower Your Kids

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Leading behaviour expert Marie Gentles is heading to Beacon Hill Academy in the West Midlands – where in the aftermath of the Covid pandemic, some of the pupils are struggling. Marie has a longstanding successful career in education and has significant experience in her field in both Alternative Provision and in the mainstream sector. Marie is a Behaviour Advisor for the Government and was previously a Headteacher of an Outstanding Primary Pupil Referral Unit (PRU) and Social Emotional and Mental Health (SEMH) provision. Marie’s work has sparked media interest and she has partaken in two 2 part BBC TV documentaries to document her work. NIKKI- Thank you so much Marie. Thank you Jayliyah, thank you Gemma. Jayliyah I hope this doesn’t sound really naff coming from an old bird, but I felt really proud, I feel really proud of you.

LUCY- It’s hard finding the right people. And when you have the wrong people that is an incredibly isolating experience.JAMES- Well, I would suggest it’s one of two things: the government are very clear they want to support more disabled people to get into work; which totally laud, very supportive of. You don’t actually need to change the WCA to do that, but maybe we could talk about that in a second. The other reason is that we have a budget coming up in November, we’re going into election year next year, the government spend needs to come down and this is one of the ways budgets and disability benefits that you can reduce spend. So, cynically I would say it’s being rushed through ahead of a budget mid-November with a view to making some savings. Ideally, Oscar wouldn’t get to the point that he is being disruptive and requiring behaviour management strategies. If sensory circuits which focus onAlerting, Organising andCalming activities were implemented on a regular basisthroughout the day, he would be more regulated and ready for learning. An Occupational Therapist (OT) could be consulted to observe, assess, and design an appropriate plan.

LUCY- Yeah, and they think it’s like someone being your mum. They’re actually just my mates that help me. Although it’s hard and it can be a challenge to find the right person, I wish we didn’t think of carers as awful things. Because I think if we recognise that it can be great we would possibly fund it better and train people better. But for his long-term growth, the building of his relationship with Milligan was perhaps the key to his progression. NIKKI- Right. We should also mention at this point, James, that we did ask the Minister for Disabled People, Tom Pursglove to come on and talk about this, but he did decline. So, it’s probably just worth mentioning that there. Have you heard from people who are really concerned about these proposed changes, James?EMMA- What sort of different ways in terms of dating in general have meant disabled men have bad experiences and disabled women?

Teach First believe thatbehaviour is an important component of school cultureand that when behaviour improves in general across a school, it has a positive impact on pupil achievement, as well as staff satisfaction and retention.Ensuring good behaviour is an important priority for allteachers andleaders - andcan be a barrieror an opportunityto a lot of other prioritiesand improvements. Work with the school, to understand why they do not want to attend. What is the behaviour communicating? Is it anxiety, worry, fear, inability to access the curriculum? Then once the need has been identified you can support them to meet the need. Gentles’ father, Geoffrey, a BT engineer on shift work for most of his career, instilled self-belief in his children. For him that meant the belief that they could go to university and be successful professionals. Across the UK children and young people are struggling with their education as the long term impact of Covid is starting to show. With child mental health problems on the rise and record numbers missing from school, concerns have been raised about declining standards of behaviour and hours of education lost. They have a choice when they feel anxious or angry, and we teach them they're in control of those choices.”NIKKI- Child mental health problems are on the rise. Record numbers have been missing from school, and concerns have been raised about declining standards of behaviour in the classroom. A brand new BBC TV series called Helping Our Teens has spent time filming inside Beacon Hill School in Dudley in the West Midlands. There leading UK child behaviour expert, Marie Gentles OBE, has been helping students at risk of permanent exclusion, or those who need emotional support. And Marie is with us now. Hello Marie. In a new BBC Two series, Helping Our Teens, leading behaviour expert Marie Gentles goes to Beacon Hill Academy in the West Midlands to see if her compassionate technique can transform behaviour to ensure students thrive at school. She said: "After Marie heard about what Oliver has gone through she told the school and the programme she had to help him, I don't know what would have happened if she had not helped us." JAYLIYAH- She kept giving me a lot of good advice and she kept speaking to the teachers about what they’d need to do, and then they started to listen to her and me. And now it’s going good.

I did feel shame because there were incidents where Cruz was hitting other children at school, or maybe breaking their pencil, or ripping up some work. Don’t Exclude Me (BBC Two) followed Oscar and two other children at a school in Southend-on-Sea. The headteacher had called in Marie Gentles, whose time running a pupil referral unit had convinced her that exclusions were not the answer. This time, the voice at the other end of the phone explains, his behaviour is putting himself in danger.I wanted to say, ‘I'm with you, I understand, if someone was doing what Cruz was doing to my kid I would feel the same’. Because we don’t, she says, we still treat the behavioural and the academic separately. “We get visitors who’ll look at our timetable and they’ll say that’s great, but we can’t do that at our school because the behaviour isn’t good enough. That’s where it’s gone wrong.” I absolutely adored him,” the deputy head and Key Stage 2 teacher says. “You could tell he had an amazing mum and family.