Revision of Towards A Non-Violent Society - Checkpoints for Schools
Towards a Non-Violent Society - Checkpoints For Schools was commissioned by the Forum on Children and Violence in response to the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation's report on Children and Violence (1995). It was launched in 1999 by Charles Clarke, then Minister for Schools. Since then, Checkpoints has developed into a series of publications, with a version for the pre-school sector, followed by Checkpoints for Young People for use in primary and secondary schools and adaptations in a number of associated publications.
Checkpoints provides a framework for the process of intervention where violence, bullying, anti-social behaviour or aggressive attitudes may be an issue. For the purposes of this series of publications, violence is defined as 'behaviour which causes physical or psychological harm'. The strategy has three main objectives: to raise awareness, to provide institutional self-audit and to offer supportive guidance. Checkpoints covers six aspects of school life, identified as: Home/School/Community, Values, Organisation, Environment, Curriculum and Training. Each checkpoint has ten simple statements to consider and the results can be plotted on a web diagram that visually illustrates the stage reached by a school in promoting non-violence. The resource complements the National Curriculum through PSHE, Citizenship and Parenting Education and particularly supports school initiatives such as 'circle-time' and the school council.
Checkpoints has attracted attention nationally and internationally. It was selected as the UK contribution to the European Commission's CONNECT UK-001 project Tackling Violence in Schools on a European-wide Basis which researched the adaptability of intervention schemes to different school systems (see Education and Culture Connect Initiative for the evaluation report). The NSPCC and Sport England have each included their own version of Checkpoints in major guidance publications for their respective members: First Check (2002) is a major publication from the NSPCC providing professional advice for all organisations that work with children and young people; Sport Check (2002) is a similar publication produced by Sport England. Checkpoints has also been translated into Norwegian and Japanese.
Anecdotal evidence from individual schools suggests that Checkpoints is useful in addressing the problems of violent behaviour including bullying, verbal aggression and physical assault. For example, one of the school said "We have lowered the incidence of confrontation and established a quiet, secure environment where everyone can learn and feel safe. Even our tough boys now admit to and talk about their problem".
An evaluation of Checkpoints has recently been carried out in a group of schools in Birmingham by Shaughnessy and Jennifer (2004) - Download a copy of the Executive Summary (PDF - 171kB). The focus of the study was to evaluate the effectiveness of Checkpoints in supporting children and young people and schools in promoting non-violence. The quantitative results suggest that Checkpoints is successfully addressing overt behaviours such as hitting, tripping or shouting, but is less successful in influencing emotions and internal processes such as feeling unhappy. The qualitative data also suggests that Checkpoints For Schools (Varnava, 2000) acts as a springboard for action on practical issues such as self-auditing, raising and increasing self-awareness.
These research findings together with feedback from users will inform a complete revision of Checkpoints.
For further details please contact:
Mr George Varnava
UK Observatory for the Promotion of Non-Violence
University of Surrey
European Institute of Health & Medical Sciences
Duke of Kent Building
Guildford
Surrey GU2 7TE
Tel: 01483 684613
