Background

Hipperholme Grammar School is an independent selective grammar school in the village of Hipperholme, near Halifax, in West Yorkshire.  In 1648 (the year the school considers to have been its founding year) Matthew Broadley, paymaster to Charles I, endowed a large sum of money to build a school on land donated by Samuel Sunderland of Coley Hall.  The school officially opened at its current site in 1661.   Originally a boy’s school, it became independent in the 1980s and began admitting girls at the same time.
Now with 330 pupils aged between 11 and 18 the school prides itself on maintaining traditional values with a progressive outlook.  It has achieved an exceptional pass rate in public examinations, and has a particular focus on sport withrepresentation at County and National level.   Hipperhome has been using SchoolBase since March 2007.  The testimonial below is from the Headmaster John Scarth.  It describes the way his school uses of one part of SchoolBase-  the Day Book.

Hipperholme’s experiences of using the Day Book

“The Day Book is a very useful tool within SB that allows teachers to communicate very easily and effectively about pupils.

We use the system to record any information about pupil’s behaviour or attitude that teachers have in the past recorded in a wide variety of different ways. The types of behaviour we record in Day Book covers things like: when a pupil fails to complete a homework, if they show poor behaviour during a lesson, fails to bring the correct equipment to a lesson or, from a positive point of view, if a pupil has performed particularly well in a lesson or has gained a high level of house points etc.

The system allows teachers to record each entry very quickly through series of drop down menus that are very easy to customise.

The strength of the system is that once recorded, it allows all other staff to see the entry very easily. This enables pastoral staff to review pupils in their care (House, year group, school section) extremely easily.

We have a meeting each week for senior staff when we review the Day Book entries for the preceding week and can agree any action that is required. For example, we recently noted that a growing number of pupils were being cited as not having handed in their homework, which enabled us to nip a potential problem in the bud.

Day Book also enables all staff to be aware of entries during a day and to praise/respond to pupils immediately. I like having ability to be able to praise pupils for good work in a particular lesson when I pass them in the corridor because I have seen their entry in Day Book. Equally, it is a timely reminder to some pupils that I can pull them up about their behaviour if I see that they haven’t behaved properly during a particular lesson.

As the system has become embedded in the school, pupils know that if they are entered in the Daybook that it will mean follow up action from senior staff and being recognized for their poor behaviour. Some pupils have tried to bargain with a teacher not to enter them in Daybook, preferring a lunchtime detention instead!

The Daybook has greatly facilitated our pastoral care system in the school by enabling swift, efficient communication and record keeping of issues. It enables prompt action on small issues that prevents these escalating into big problems.

If anyone would like to talk further about our use of Day Book, please do not hesitate to contact me”.

John Scarth
Headmaster
www.hgsf.org.uk