If there’s one area that schools need a perennial focus on, it’s behaviour. That’s why the proposed new guidance from the Department for Education on behaviour and exclusions, published last week, is so welcome.
A consultation on this revised guidance is open until the end of March. But what should teachers and school leaders take from the document? And what impact can they expect it to have on their daily practice?
Here are three areas it is worth paying particular attention to.
The DfE’s updated guidance on behaviour in schools
The importance of a behaviour curriculum
The first thing to point out is the focus on proactive steps that leaders can take to refine their school cultures. Behaviour policies, and their implementation, often focus on the negative behaviours that will not be tolerated. However, the guidance also encourages leaders to focus on positive behaviour, which can become easily overlooked.
It touches on the importance of having a “behaviour curriculum” that “defines the expected behaviours in school, rather than only a list of prohibited behaviour”. This curriculum should be “centred on what successful behaviour looks like and defining it clearly for all parties”. The guidance gives the example of the expectation that pupils will line up outside classrooms quietly before lessons.
One clear takeaway from the guidance, then, is that school leaders should consider their own behaviour curriculum. Whether yours is explicit or not, you will already have one: it’s embedded in every message (explicit or implicit) that you send to your students.
In order to review your existing behaviour curriculum and how you might need to develop it, I’d suggest considering the following questions:
- What behaviours do we want our students to develop as model citizens?
- What is the gap between where we want our students to be, and where they are currently?
- What whole-school routines do we use as a school? Do we teach these explicitly, as well as model, refine and sanction as appropriate?
- Where are the areas that we don’t have routines? Could we strengthen our whole-school standards by creating these routines and crafting the atmosphere ourselves?
- How often do school leaders talk about behaviour with the school body?
- What behaviours do we explicitly teach our students?
- What provision do our students need as they enter into our school in Year 7?
- How should this provision develop over the course of their education?
Conversations around this topic are often illuminating, and can reveal gaps in provision.
We hear a lot in education about the “Matthew Effect”. In a nutshell, this is the idea that “the rich get richer and the poor get poorer”. We are used to hearing about this effect in relation to things like vocabulary, cultural capital or subject knowledge - those pupils who are rich in prior knowledge develop more efficiently and to a higher level than those who have a lower prior knowledge.
But the Matthew Effect also applies to behaviour. Those who haven’t been taught what is necessary are the ones who need that teaching the most.
This should therefore be a central consideration when devising a behaviour curriculum.
Support for suspension and exclusion
Another point in the guidance that stands out to me is around sanctions, suspensions and exclusions. There is a notable change in vocabulary here, with the phrase “fixed-term exclusion” being replaced by “suspension”.
This is likely to help with the confusion that exists around exclusions. Too often, the terms “permanent” and “fixed-term” exclusions are misunderstood and conflated, leading to them being used incorrectly by those not working directly in schools.
However, perhaps the most controversial aspect of the guidance in this area is around no-exclusion policies. In the midst of a debate that has become increasingly polarised, with attempts to vilify the act of exclusion, this guidance lays out that headteachers should have the ability to exclude where necessary.
Yet it also states that “schools and local authorities should not adopt a ‘no-exclusion’ policy as an end in itself”.
Of course, no headteacher ever wants to exclude, but they have legal responsibilities under Keeping Children Safe in Education (KCSIE) to ensure that children are kept safe in school.
Implicit in the guidance is the fact that, in the current system, permanent exclusion may be the only way to do this and to give some young people the specialist support that they need.
While this may be true, it is somewhat disappointing to me that we find ourselves here as a profession. Schools should not be in a situation where the only way that they can find the right support is through the expensive and time-consuming process of permanent exclusion.
It would be more beneficial to ensure that different avenues are available for all students who need them: this might mean improving access to agencies such as child and adolescent mental health services (Camhs) and other local services - from drug and alcohol support to counselling - or further developing alternative-provision offers, which are often currently underfunded and oversubscribed.
Removing students from lessons
Another area within the guidance that needs to be refined is around removing students from classrooms. The guidance makes it clear that schools can and should remove students from classrooms when their behaviour disrupts the learning of others, though it points out that this should be “a serious sanction and only used when necessary”.
Further clarification on “when necessary” might support school leaders to more effectively define what this means in practice: does it mean simply disrupting learning on more than one occasion? Or does it mean ongoing disruption after a range of warnings and sanctions?
The guidance shouldn’t be overly prescriptive here, but leaders would benefit from more clarity on what constitutes “serious disruption” to learning, so that they can tailor their behaviour policies accordingly.
Overall, though, while there are areas that need more work, this is a really positive publication that very clearly supports school leaders to do what is in the best interests of their schools and their students.
Amy Forrester is an English teacher and director of behaviour at Cockermouth School in Cumbria
