Restorative practice

• conflict has damaged relationships
• harm has occurred between peers or between adults and young people
• punitive responses are creating repeated cycles without repair
• people involved are able and willing to reflect on impact
• relationships need rebuilding after an incident
• the setting wants to examine how its everyday responses handle relationships and harm

Approach type: Practice approach
Primary purpose: Relationships
Other intended aims: Participation · Behaviour and safety · Wellbeing
Scope: Individual · Group · Classroom · Whole setting
Tier: Universal → targeted

These fields describe the practice family and intended use. Whole-school trial findings do not establish effects for every individual, group or classroom application.

• forcing an apology
• making people sit together immediately after an incident
• requiring forgiveness
• asking the harmed person to take equal responsibility
• replacing safeguarding or consequences where these remain necessary
• a scripted conversation used regardless of readiness

The adult changes the response to harm: address immediate safety, hear accounts separately, make communication accessible and explore what each person wants to happen next. Explain the process and its limits, including confidentiality and safeguarding responsibilities. Do not promise that all information can remain private.

Participation must be voluntary in substance. A pupil should be able to decline a restorative meeting or personal disclosure without losing ordinary support or access. Explain decisions that are already fixed rather than presenting them as jointly agreed. Whole-class attendance does not imply consent to disclose emotions or personal events.

For a formal process, unresolved basic facts or unwillingness to participate may make that process unsuitable; adults must still investigate concerns and provide appropriate support through other routes. A restorative meeting is not a substitute for establishing what happened or responding to safeguarding concerns.

This is a constructed illustration, not a reported case or an observed outcome.

Two pupils have had a serious argument.

Immediately after the incident, adults first address safety and practical support. They offer time, space and an accessible way to communicate. They do not require a calm appearance, an apology or a discussion before providing support.

Later, each is supported to understand:

• what happened
• what they experienced
• how others were affected
• what responsibility they can genuinely take
• whether and how repair might happen

A joint conversation is only an option if each person freely wants it and preparation identifies an appropriate, sufficiently safe process. Either pupil can choose separate communication or decline. Adults must not turn disagreement about the facts into a demand to admit their preferred account.

A possible agreement might concern returning a possession or changing how contact happens. A meeting, apology or completed task would not by itself show repair. Review would ask each pupil, separately if needed, whether the agreement was wanted, whether adult actions happened and whether their safety and access improved. No successful outcome is assumed here.

Safety and readiness

Assess willingness, safety and communication access with each participant. Offer preparation and support; pause or stop if the process cannot be made workable. Readiness is not a test of verbal fluency or emotional presentation.

Voice

Those affected need a usable, voluntary opportunity to describe their experience, privately or through their chosen communication where appropriate. They need not disclose feelings publicly.

Impact

The process explores what changed for other people, not only which rule was broken.

Responsibility

People are supported to take realistic responsibility for their own actions.

Repair

Explore what, if anything, the people affected want to change. Repair may mean safer boundaries or ending contact; renewed trust, forgiveness and renewed relationship are not required.

Reintegration

A difficult event should not permanently define someone's place in the community. Reintegration must also respect others’ boundaries and continued safety; it is not a right to renewed personal contact.

Restorative work may involve:

• individual preparation
• written reflection
• separate conversations
• small restorative meetings
• mediated discussion
• whole-class community practice
• practical acts of repair

Not every situation requires a face-to-face meeting. Writing, drawing, augmentative and alternative communication (AAC), a trusted communication partner or several short exchanges may offer routes to contribute. Check that the support represents the person’s own account. These are proposed access arrangements; the studies below do not establish that every adaptation reproduces a tested programme.

Restorative principles can inform ordinary school culture.

Complex or high-impact harm needs an appropriately competent facilitator, case-specific risk assessment and the relevant specialist/safeguarding response. Training attendance alone does not establish competence or safe delivery. The Restorative Justice Council (RJC) code provides standards for its registered providers; it is not a universal registration rule for ordinary school conversations. RJC code.

Restorative processes should not replace safeguarding procedures or specialist responses where these are required.

Punishment can mark that a rule has been broken without necessarily repairing the relationship or developing understanding of impact.

The proposed rationale is to create structured opportunities to understand impact, take responsibility and consider what happens next. These opportunities must be checked in the actual interaction. Trials of whole-school packages do not isolate perspective-taking or reconnection as the mechanism of any observed effect.

• attention to relationships and impact
• responsibility that reflects each person’s actual actions
• opportunities for the harmed person to influence the response
• practical change rather than administrative closure
• attention to belonging without forced contact

These are intended features, not guaranteed benefits. Fewer discipline records do not establish less shame, meaningful accountability or a sense of repair.

Not all relationships should be restored.

Not all harmed people want contact with the person who harmed them.

Do not assume restorative practice can resolve situations involving:

• coercion
• abuse
• significant power imbalance
• ongoing threat

• never force participation
• do not demand immediate apologies
• avoid implying all parties contributed equally
• do not use a restorative meeting simply to close an incident administratively
• regulate and prepare before attempting repair
• protect the right of harmed people not to participate

1. ensure immediate safety
2. allow enough time for regulation
3. understand each person's perspective separately
4. assess readiness and appropriateness
5. identify the impact
6. support realistic responsibility
7. agree meaningful repair where possible
8. review each person’s experience, agreed adult changes, safety, boundaries and access; stop or revise an unwanted or unhelpful process

The comparative evidence concerns specified school programmes. It does not establish one effect for the whole restorative family. Pittsburgh’s Pursuing Equitable Restorative Communities (PERC) trial had mixed outcomes, including worse middle-grade achievement; the Maine trial found no clear allocation benefit on its student-reported outcomes. PERC; Maine trial.

Learning Together’s small bullying benefit concerns a package that also included school decision-making and social and emotional learning (SEL). Morningside’s incident-record finding did not translate into an overall suspension benefit in the same cohort. Learning Together; incidents report; suspension report.

Chicago adds favourable quasi-experimental evidence, with assumptions about how adopting and comparison schools would otherwise have changed. It is not a randomised replication. Chicago study.

Lower suspension or incident counts cannot alone demonstrate that a young person felt heard, that harm stopped or that participation was voluntary. SEND-specific voice and access need explicit review; a scoping study identifies gaps in this literature. Procter-Legg.

Phoenix therefore retains restorative practice as a defined family with programme-specific evidence and explicit participation conditions. No generic certainty grade, guarantee of safety or automatic recommendation follows from these findings.

This review retains the source-specific findings and limits of the September 2026 review. This is a targeted review, not an exhaustive systematic review, a formal evidence grade or a completed specialist consultation. It does not determine which support is right for an individual young person.

These tags describe the content and a particular application’s aims; they are not efficacy grades or professional ownership labels.

Direct focus: 03 Communication & connection — accounts of impact, relationships and negotiated responses are central.

Conditional connections: 01 Emotional life & regulation when distress, readiness and supported recovery affect participation; 06 Agency, safety & participation when agency, boundaries, safety or access are explicit aims and review outcomes; routine consent safeguards alone do not establish this connection.

• E099 Difficulty resolving disagreements and repairing relationships — When disagreement or harm has left people deciding what should happen next. Repair need not involve apology, forgiveness or renewed contact.

• E095 Difficulty recognising and maintaining personal boundaries — When the situation involves touch, privacy, possessions, personal space or unwanted contact. Each person’s boundaries matter; do not treat the harmed person’s refusal as a deficit.

These are specific reading connections after review of both texts. A linked presentation does not mean restorative practice is indicated for that person.