The Nurturing Schools programme is based on the adoption of a whole-school approach to increase the emotional intelligence and relationships skills of children through four key constructs: increased self-awareness, maintaining appropriate expectations, increased empathy and positive discipline.
This evaluation was undertaken within Blackbird Academy Trust, an academy in East Oxfordshire consisting of three primary schools.
A pre/post measures design was used, assessing child behaviour and teacher-reported confidence before the introduction of the programme, and at three subsequent time points during the two academic years after the approach was adopted.
The results showed that teachers reported less challenging behaviour from children, and more prosocial behaviour, after adopting the Nurturing Schools Programme.
Findings for both behavioural difficulties and prosocial behaviour remained statistically significant when compared across school, gender and baseline. Although findings also suggested a positive trend in increasing self-efficacy, due to factors such as staff turnover, the sample of teachers tested across all time points is too small to reach statistical significance.
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