The first thing you realise when you begin teaching is, if the students won’t behave, you can’t teach, and the students won’t learn. No matter how well you plan your curriculum, or design your lessons, student behaviour is fundamental to the success of everyone in the room.
 
When I started to teach, I was desperate for my children to learn, but challenging behaviour made it extremely difficult and it only took a few students determined to disrupt and dismantle the whole lesson. But when I looked for answers to this problem, I found that while everyone wanted to help, few people knew what to do. 
 
Later I found it wasn’t just me: there was a deficit in the skills and strategies throughout a lot of the school sector. Every generation of teachers, it seemed, had to rediscover for themselves what worked best in managing behaviour, often taking years to develop the necessary skills.
 
But there is a huge amount of experience and wisdom spread throughout the sector, waiting to be mined, distilled and disseminated.
 
When I wrote my report Creating a Culture in 2016, I found that many of the schools that had managed to engineer fantastic behaviour – despite challenging circumstances –  were often focusing on the same things, such as consistency, high expectations, routines and behaviour curriculums.
 
They knew how to achieve them reliably and regularly. Rather than simply reacting to poor behaviour, they understood that students often needed to be taught how to behave and build powerful, positive habits. And they understood that staff needed to be trained to do this.
 
I also saw how schools could become the conscious architects of their own cultures, rather than simply hoping students behaved, and reacting when they didn’t.

It became obvious how important it is that students knew how they were expected to behave and then supported to achieve it, wherever they were starting from, just like any other subject they might learn.
 
They need to receive constant feedback on what they do well, and how they can improve it. They need fair and compassionate school structures that are reliable, and therefore inspire trust and allegiance. They need commonly understood routines and rituals to help generate a sense of shared community and values. And crucially, they need to feel safe, valued, and a sense of purpose in what they do.
 
When teachers and school leaders understand this, not only do we see fewer extreme incidents, like fighting, but so-called low-level disruption recedes, as students understand the habits that will make them successful and enjoy their benefits.
 
Teachers become free to teach in ways that help all to thrive, not merely a fortunate few. And because misbehaviour becomes increasingly abnormal, we see less of the behaviour that often lead to exclusions, which means schools become more inclusive and nurturing.
 
Too many teachers manage despite, rather than because of, the behaviour in their classrooms. When staff are trained in the most effective techniques and strategies, then they can spend more time teaching, planning and reflecting rather than simply dealing with the constant fall-out of misbehaviour.
 
Which is why I’m excited about this ambitious and essential project that aims to identify the best ways of dealing with disruptive behaviour in schools. For the first time in memory, behaviour is being addressed directly in a structural, national way.
 
There is so much we can share between ourselves that means we can benefit from the examples of schools that are not merely the beneficiaries of fortunate intakes, but who have developed prudent, scalable strategies for making a difference.

I’ve seen myself what a difference a structured approach to behaviour management can make in even the most challenging schools, and I’ve seen the countless benefits this has for students and staff anywhere and everywhere.
 
This is urgent work: too many students are harrowed by poor behaviour, too many teachers leave because of it and too many students need help they aren’t getting to be better.
 
This programme may very well be one of the most significant strategies for public good we have seen in decades, and I’m really keen to get started so we can begin helping the ones who can really benefit from it.

Tom Bennett was a teacher in the East End of London for 10 years. He is now the government’s behaviour tsar, and the director and founder of ResearchED, a grassroots, teacher-led project that aims to make teachers research-literate