BOUNCE Approach®Restorative PracticeCPD CertifiedOn-DemandND-Affirming
Restorative Justice in Schools
Explore the shortcomings of traditional behaviour management and how Restorative Justice offers a transformative alternative — replacing punishment with accountability, empathy, and meaningful repair.
Traditional behaviour management systems rooted in control and compliance often trigger shame and defensive behaviour — the opposite of what schools are trying to achieve. This training contrasts those retributive approaches with restorative practices that foster genuine emotional growth, empathy, and relational repair, exploring the neuroscience behind punitive measures and why shame-based responses so rarely produce the outcomes we hope for.
You’ll leave with a clear understanding of what restorative justice looks like in practice — across classrooms, playgrounds, and wider school systems — and practical tools to begin applying it in your setting. Suitable for teachers, pastoral leads, SENCOs, and school leaders ready to move from reactive discipline toward a genuinely relational approach to behaviour.
Objectives
Learning Objectives
By the end of this training, you will be able to:
1
Describe the traditional approach to behaviour management
Understand what the traditional behaviour management model looks like in schools — including its relationship to Teachers’ Standards — and identify the assumptions about children and behaviour that underpin it.
2
Explain what restorative justice is and how it differs from traditional approaches
Describe the principles and values of restorative justice — and understand the fundamental shift in focus it requires, from punishment and compliance to accountability, repair, and relationship.
3
Understand the problem with punishment — the neuroscience
Explore what neuroscience tells us about how punishment affects the developing brain and nervous system — and why shame-based consequences often entrench the very patterns of behaviour they are designed to stop.
4
Describe what a restorative approach looks like in schools
Understand what restorative practice looks like in day-to-day school life — from individual conversations to whole-school culture — and leave with a clear picture of what the shift from traditional to restorative actually requires in practice.
