Why we choose Restorative Practice at BCPS
By Tony Cross, Principal – Byron Community Primary School
If you've spent any time at Byron Community Primary School, you've probably noticed something. When conflict happens between children (and it does, because children are human) the response isn't a trip to the principal's office and a consequence handed down from above. It's a conversation. Sometimes uncomfortable, often surprisingly moving, and almost always productive.
That approach has a name: Restorative Practice. And after years of living it here at BCPS, I want to share what it actually means, where it comes from, and why we believe it is the right way to support children to grow.
What Restorative Practice is not
It's worth starting here, because there's a common misconception. Restorative Practice is not soft. It is not letting children off the hook. It is not the absence of accountability. If anything, it asks more of children than traditional consequence-based approaches. It asks them to stay in the discomfort of what happened, to understand the impact of their actions on another person, and to take genuine responsibility for repair. That is harder than a detention. Much harder.
The roundabout and the traffic light
A while ago at a conference I had the privilege of learning from Adam Voigt, one of Australia's leading voices on school culture and Restorative Practice. Adam offered a metaphor that has stayed with me ever since.
He described two ways a school can manage behaviour. The first is the traffic light model: rules, signals, stop and go, compliance enforced from the outside. It works, in a mechanical sense. But it doesn't build anything. The moment the light is gone, drivers do what they like.
The second is the roundabout model. No one is telling you what to do at every moment. Instead, you are expected to read the situation, consider others, and make a good decision. It requires more of you. But it also develops something in you. It builds genuine capacity for judgement.
Restorative Practice is the roundabout. We are not trying to produce children who behave well when an adult is watching. We are trying to develop young people who understand why certain things cause harm, who feel the weight of that, and who know how to make things right.
Learning from Kerry Sellen and Restorative Journeys
Our practice has been shaped and deepened over time through our connection with Kerry Sellen and Restorative Journeys. Kerry is one of the most thoughtful practitioners in this space in Australia, and her work has helped us move beyond Restorative Practice as a set of scripts or procedures and toward something more genuinely relational.
What Kerry brings is an understanding that restorative conversations are not just a technique for resolving incidents. They are an expression of a belief about people: that everyone involved in a conflict has a story worth hearing, that harm is best understood through the eyes of those who experienced it, and that repair is only real when it is freely chosen rather than imposed.
That has changed the way we have conversations at BCPS. Not just between children, but between adults and children, between teachers and families, and within our staff team. Restorative language and restorative thinking have become part of how we operate, not just what we do when something goes wrong.
What this looks like for your child
In practice, when something happens between children at BCPS, here is what you can expect. We will take it seriously. We will make sure everyone involved has the chance to speak and to be heard. We will ask questions that help children understand the impact of what happened, not just who was right and who was wrong. And we will work toward an agreement about how things can be repaired and what might need to be different going forward.
Your child will be supported through that process. It is not adversarial. It is not about finding a winner. It is about helping children develop the skills to navigate difficulty with integrity, because that is something they will need for the rest of their lives.
Why it fits who we are
BCPS is a small, close community. We cannot afford to manage conflict in ways that leave people feeling shamed, excluded, or unheard. The families here know each other. The children grow up together across seven years of primary school. The relationships are long and they matter deeply.
Restorative Practice fits that reality. It says: this community is worth preserving, and the way we respond to harm either builds that community or erodes it. We choose to build it.
Adam Voigt talks about Restorative Practice 2.0, the idea that true restorative culture is not just about the formal conversations we have after incidents, but about the quality of relationship that exists before anything goes wrong. The stronger the connection, the easier repair becomes. That is something we invest in every day at BCPS, in the classroom, on the oval, and at the gate in the morning.
If your child comes home and tells you they had a restorative conversation today, that is a good thing. It means something real happened, and it was taken seriously. It means your child was given the chance to be honest, to listen, and to grow.
We are grateful to Adam Voigt for the ideas that shaped our approach, and to Kerry Sellen and Restorative Journeys for the ongoing work that continues to deepen it. And we are grateful to our BCPS community, children, families, and staff alike, for being the kind of people who take this work seriously.
Because ultimately, Restorative Practice is not a behaviour management strategy. It is a statement about the kind of community we want to be.
Tony Cross is the Principal of Byron Community Primary School, a small independent community school in the heart of Byron Bay. BCPS welcomes enquiries from families who share a belief that childhood is worth getting right.