Restorative journey in Singapore schools : Fostering student voice initiatives through circle processes

Restorative practices (RP) were first piloted in Singapore schools in 2005 with the hope of developing restorative schools using a whole school approach. The success of creating restorative schools seems like a far fetch idea in view of the slow growth in adopting it as a good practice. Starting as a behaviour management tool in schools, renewed efforts by schools in adopting RP give hope in recent times in building restorative schools. This paper firstly highlights the concept of restorative justice (RJ) and its relation to criminal justice in Singapore. It then describes the use of RP in several schools in the country. The paper seeks to document possible reasons for the lack of prevalence in accepting restorative philosophy as well as adopting RP through literature review and anecdotal evidences.