Furball, Waffles, Dexter, King Bob II, Cookie, Baby Bear. These are just some of the 50 or so cuddly, non-judgemental and ever-patient members of the teddy bear army that has recently been deployed to transform the culture in three West Lothian primary schools.

The primaries - St Joseph’s in Whitburn, St John the Baptist in Fauldhouse and Our Lady of Lourdes in Blackburn - refer to themselves as “the teddy bear schools”. They have teddy bear policies, as opposed to behaviour policies. And, yes, they have lots of stuffed bears. The three schools have teddies in their waiting rooms, in every classroom and in their nurseries.

In the nursery at St John the Baptist Primary, a giant bear lies prostrate on the floor in the “cuddle corner” and is clearly no stranger to affection - he is as flat as a pancake. Another huge teddy sits on a chair at the entrance to the school. Today, engulfed by the bear, a P5 boy slumps in a tracksuit (it’s health week), oozing anger and frustration and bouncing a football off his forehead. The bell has gone and the boy should be back in class, but he is clearly not ready to take part in lessons so has opted out.

In many ways, he represents what the teddy bears are here to fix: children whose troubles weigh them down to such a degree that they can’t come into a classroom and learn.

Behaviour charts in the vein of “Good to be Green” - where a traffic-light system is used to manage behaviour - have been abolished and now the attitude of the schools is that expectations have to be individualised. Just as English and maths lessons are differentiated to meet the needs of all children, they now believe that pupils are starting from different places when it comes to behaviour.

The headteachers talk about the recent past, when the traffic-light system was in full swing, as if they can hardly believe it happened; it led to children being regularly “shamed” with red cards against their names, which were visible for all to see.

“We thought that was a positive behaviour policy and that we were being fair,” recalls Frances Burns, headteacher of St Joseph’s. “If you behaved well, you were rewarded. And if you changed your behaviour, you could claw it back.”

The reality was that, by Monday lunchtime, some pupils had lost their golden time - usually an hour at the end of the week dedicated to fun activities - and had nothing more to lose. Meanwhile, the “three strikes and you’re out” policy for those who ended up with three red cards meant that the children who needed experiences, such as school trips, the most were often missing out. Then there was the administration - just keeping track of who had been on red and how many times was onerous, says St Joseph’s depute head Tricia Mooney. And there were also phone calls from angry parents to be fielded.

Dr Suzanne Zeedyk, a research scientist and prominent campaigner on adverse childhood experiences or ACEs, believes we are on the cusp of a major change in the way behaviour is managed in Scottish classrooms that will be akin to the abolishment of corporal punishment in the 1980s. She says punishment of pupils who behave badly is set to become a thing of the past and that, instead, teachers are going to become more “curious” about why some children misbehave.

Understanding, not punishing

If Zeedyk had her way, not only would behaviour charts be scrapped but shouting would also be banned in school and cuddling would be commonplace. Children need to be hugged and held but “we have ended up in a culture that is afraid to touch children”, she says. A good starting point, she believes, would be to make programmes such as Massage in Schools standard.

“In 1987, we were still strapping children in this country, and we are now horrified at that idea,” Zeedyk says. “We strapped them if they got a maths problem incorrect, if they were using their left hand to write or if their writing was messy, as well as for behaviour problems.

“Once upon a time, we thought we could punish them into not making mistakes. It does not take a lot to realise that probably did not work. But when the decision was taken [to abolish the belt], teachers all over the country did not know what to do - how would they manage behaviour if they did not use fear? Now, we are in the same kind of place.”

Change is coming, believes Zeedyk, because the ACEs movement has put a spotlight on the impact that experiences such as domestic abuse, parental mental health problems or poverty can have into adulthood. The key, though, is that if a child has one adult in their life whom they can confide in and who cares about them, then this can help them to cope.

“What the science shows is that if they have one adult in their life they trust, if they know that they exist in the world, they can go home to their chaotic household because they know the next morning Mrs Johnson will ask ‘How are you?’ and seem worried about you. You can get through the night knowing you will see her the next morning,” Zeedyk says.

She describes the West Lothian schools as “brave” and “courageous”.

“It’s easier to punish children and it takes less time,” she adds. “But what it does is it damages children and has long-term consequences. The children who misbehave the most are the children who come from the most-stressed households, where the adults don’t have the time or the emotional capacity to be interested in what they are feeling.

“If you wanted to be extreme - if you don’t have time to deal with the children who are most badly behaved - then let’s just not educate them because we are kidding ourselves if we think they are going to learn without our help.”

The teddy bear primaries have worked with Zeedyk to deliver professional development and make staff aware of ACEs and their impact, including holding screenings of Resilience, a US documentary about ACEs.

Meanwhile, pupils have received support to build the vocabulary required to express their emotions, and schools use the “kitbags” developed by the International Futures Forum - a global charity based in Scotland - to help them talk about their feelings. The kitbags contain, among other things, calming oil, finger puppets and a “talking stick” to allow the speaker who holds it to be heard.

The schools freely admit that the bears were conceived as a gimmick and a symbol to get across what they wanted to achieve. But the bear branding - which the head of Our Lady of Lourdes, Eileen Brennan, came up with - has been powerful. At her school, “bear buddies” act as befrienders at breaktime and wear bear caps, and there is also “T-mail” (or teddy mail) through which pupils can write to their class teddy about their problems anonymously. The class then attempts to resolve them collectively.

But, perhaps most important of all, wherever you look, in the guise of cuddly toys, there are reminders of what it is that the schools are trying to create: a welcoming, calm, loving environment in which all their children can thrive.

“It’s about compassion and kindness,” says Angela Gardner, head of St John the Baptist.

The schools have taken different approaches to deploying the bears. At St Joseph’s, for example, they arrived as refugees and the children had to earn them by creating an environment in their classroom that would make the toys feel safe and welcome.

Now, if a child with challenging behaviour in one of the primary schools is sent to the headteacher, the first thing they do is give them some space, then they have a conversation. This was tough to swallow at first for teaching staff, who were expecting the pupils to get a dressing down.

But, as Brennan says, supposing a colleague came into work with a face like fury and then proceeded to vent their anger by throwing their coffee cup in the staffroom sink. The automatic reaction would be to ask “What’s wrong?” And this is the approach that is now taken with pupils.

It is about listening to the pupils, the headteachers say - although if a child tipped over a bin in a temper, for example, they would still have to pick it up.

Sue Wards, a P5 teacher at St Joseph’s, says she hasn’t used behaviour charts in her classroom for more than a year.

If a child is presenting challenging behaviour now, she will give them some quiet time with the class teddy Furball, get the rest of the pupils on track with their work, and then go to speak with the child in question.

“Very often, it’s not a case of putting in consequences but of asking ‘What’s wrong?’ or ‘What happened?’,” Wards says. “You find out the story behind the child acting out. You are not automatically jumping on the bad behaviour and imposing consequences.”

Earlier this year, teaching union the Scottish Secondary Teachers’ Association backed a motion stating that restorative practice - a non-punitive approach to behaviour management - was increasing teacher workload and was “often ineffective in improving pupil behaviour”.

Delegates said that “conferencing” - which involves offenders and victims discussing the consequences of wrongdoing and deciding how best to repair the harm - was putting more pressure on staff and taking place during lessons, breaks and preparation periods when staff were supposed to be creating “rich learning experiences”.

Show you care

But Wards believes that if a teacher makes the time for these conversations, they will reap the rewards and reduce the extremes in pupil behaviour.

“It’s about building relationships,” she says. “They have to see we care and we’re not just going to shout if they do something wrong.”

She tells her pupils explicitly that they will be loved, cared for and looked after at school. If they do something wrong, the consequence tends to be that they have to sit with her at breaktime and talk about it: what happened, what went wrong and how they are going to fix it?

Cobhlaith Duffy, who also teaches at St Joseph’s, says that when the teddies arrived in school, she had to take a different approach with her more worldly wise P7s, some of whom, she points out, have been through more in their short lives than she has as an adult.

“I couldn’t tell these children - in particular, the children who are angry at their life circumstances - to cuddle the teddy bear and everything would be all right,” she says. “So, my focus hasn’t been on the teddy itself. It’s been on creating an empathetic and nurturing classroom.”

Duffy says she wondered how the pupils would respond when a child who had been disrespectful was not punished. But they have been understanding and she puts this down to the conversations the class has had about ACEs and the fact that “some children are going through more challenging times than others”.

They also read a story called The Fairest Teacher of Them All, in which the protagonist gives everyone the same amount of help, sets them the same work and gives them the same end-of-year report.

“As a result of that, they realised you can’t teach everyone the same because we are not all coming to the classroom with the same emotions and backgrounds,” Duffy explains.

Back at St John the Baptist, the children in Laurel Timmins’ P5 class describe their bear, Waffles, as a good listener; if they are worried, they talk to Waffles.

One girl says the bear is “like your own personal shield for your feelings”, adding: “Somehow he makes you feel better.”

Timmins says that she is “a big promoter of the bears”. They are a nice way to demonstrate how you treat people with respect and the pupils “love giving them hugs and getting their worries out”.

She adds: “It brings comfort to the most challenging kids in the school.”

For an adult, it can be difficult to accept that an inanimate object - albeit a cute one - can have such an impact. But, as Zeedyk points out, “Only adults think of teddy bears as ‘inanimate objects’ - children know the truth.”

Emma Seith is a reporter for Tes Scotland. She tweets @Emma_Seith

This article originally appeared in the 23 August 2019 issue under the headline “The bear necessities”