Warwick Academy's principal has introduced a scheme rewarding students for good behaviour.

Under the seven-week-old "Positive Discipline'' programme, students are monitored and rewards and sanctions are immediately handed out at the 336-year-old school.

Principal Robert Lennox yesterday told Hamilton Rotarians at their weekly luncheon at Pier Six that he believed what happened in a school directly related to students' behaviour outside.

"We are social educators as well as academic educators,'' he said.

A married father of four with two children at Warwick Academy, Mr. Lennox's most recent assignment was at a comprehensive school for some 1,400 students where he implemented the Positive Discipline scheme which was later adopted by the UK education inspectorate.

Yesterday he stressed that he believed in strong discipline with the understanding that youngsters were not full adults, which he said he saw as a key mistake of the progressives of the 1960s.

He also insisted that if a disciplinary code was not understandable and flexible, then it could not develop in richness or flexibility.

"Sometimes you need to make an exception,'' he said. "You can gain in respect for being flexible.'' Therefore, he explained that the Positive Discipline scheme included input from students and staff.

"Everyone benefits from involvement, good sense, clarity and firmness,'' Mr.

Lennox said.

Adopted from the American approach called "Assertive Discipline'', Warwick Academy's code of conduct emphasises positive rewards that gives the silent majority influence on a minority of students.

Noting that in his experience discipline was essential, youngsters needed security, and the best form of discipline was self-discipline, Mr. Lennox explained that Positive Discipline centred around six classroom rules with a cumulative reward schedule.

Good classroom performance is rewarded in each lesson with an R for Reward.

Students who accumulate 15 Rs receive a bronze certificate. Those who earn 30 receive a silver and a gold certificate is given to those who earn 60 rewards.

A Diploma of excellence is reserved for students who accumulate 90 rewards.

And students with the most diplomas earn Special Awards.

While Mr. Lennox did not describe the Special Awards, he noted that each reward also brought points for the student's (sports) house and recreational games.

And he said the Bank of Bermuda funded the administrative costs and contributed toward the Special Awards.

"It is different from other schemes which don't seem to be working,'' Mr.

Lennox said of the new scheme.

"You might ask why Warwick Academy would need such a scheme? And my answer would be that you can always improve. Such schemes have brought clarity to disciplinary procedures.'' Since the implementation of the scheme, the school has given out some 1,400 commendations per week and Mr. Lennox noted that "detentions seem more effective''.

Under the scheme, there are sanctions that range from five-minute detentions to one-hour head teacher detentions, he added.

This, he said, has brought clarity to the disciplinary procedures and fewer questions from parents.

Asked about his views on corporal punishment, Mr. Lennox said he had never used it during his nine years as the principal of two "robust'' schools in England.

"I'm not of the view that it is altogether wrong,'' he said. "But when I was a deputy (at a school in the UK) I did not find it any more effective than other brands of discipline.'' "If my thesis is right on positive discipline,'' he added, "I won't have to use it.''