Did Years 11 and 13 just leave school for the last time?”

On the day the first lockdown took effect, I remember turning to a colleague and asking this.

All the staff had gathered on the street outside the main gate to say goodbye to our students, because we didn’t know when we’d see them again. The atmosphere was sombre, but I was sure that almost all of them would be back before the summer term was out.

Boy, was I wrong.

One year on, our profession has proven itself to be agile, creative and responsive, and we should be proud of this. I hope we can maintain this approach in the coming months. I am sure we will with regards to the curriculum, but will we do the same when it comes to rules around behaviour?

As schools were preparing to return earlier this month, I was hoping that no one would come straight out with the “you’d better turn up properly dressed or else” line, but sadly I was naive. I saw examples of schools sending out advice about how to measure students’ feet at home during lockdown to make sure they still had the appropriate footwear once they were allowed back to class, and making it clear that there would be sanctions for uniform infringements.

Schools reopening: Getting your approach to behaviour right

Is this what really matters right now? Yes, school uniform can be ordered online, but the increasingly popular branded gear (that is available from only one supplier at serious cost) might be out of reach for parents who have lost their jobs in the past year.

And if schools send children home for not being properly dressed, I’m going to have a hard time believing that they are really concerned about the future of a generation being destroyed because they’ve been out of school for so long. I hope schools find a different way of dealing with these issues.

There are lessons we can learn about how we respond to behaviour by looking at compliance with the wider lockdown rules. While some people have been bending, stretching and breaking national lockdown rules, the majority of people are supportive of the restrictions because they see the value in them, both to them personally and to the wider community. This is something we school leaders must take into account when thinking about our approach to behaviour over the coming months.

We are far more likely to secure compliance if we focus on the extrinsic motivation of students wanting to follow rules because they can see that such rules are of value to them. Draconian or petty rules can breed resentment and, given how keenly children can feel injustice, we should seek to avoid this where possible.

I am a big believer in justifying rules to our students. It is simply not enough for me to rely on appealing to the authority of my position. If we can’t or won’t justify our rules to our students, then we have to rely on the most basic of extrinsic motivators - reward and punishment - and it becomes so much harder to secure buy-in.

If this pandemic has taught us anything, it is that things work so much better when we all pull together - that means having sensible rules that students are willing to follow because they can see they are there for both their own and the greater good.

Jarlath O’Brien is the author of Better Behaviour: A Guide for Teachers, the second edition of which has just been published by Corwin Press

This article originally appeared in the 19 March 2021 issue under the headline “Behaviour buy-in beats laying down the law”