Kiri O’Flynn is worried. She is the deputy head of the City of Birmingham School, a pupil referral unit in Birmingham, and she says that more key stage 1 children seem to be struggling in mainstream schools than in previous years.
“We’re seeing lots and lots of Year 1s being excluded, and they’ve had no real school or even nursery experience,” she says.
O’Flynn is not the only one to have noticed this change. Other KS1 teachers are also reporting that they are facing increased levels of disruptive behaviour.
Catherine Sargent, an assistant head for KS1 in the West Midlands, says that behaviour has been worse this year, particularly in Year 1.
“We’ve had quite a bit of physical behaviour: children hurting children and, unfortunately, children hurting staff as well. We’ve had things like destruction of school property, and we’ve seen a lot of it, particularly with our younger children,” she says. “Most of this behaviour is happening in Year 1, but we do have some in reception, and Year 2 as well.”
More teaching and learning:
It’s hard to say exactly how common this pattern is across the country but, in April 2021, a report from the Education Endowment Foundation found that in 76 per cent of schools, the autumn 2020 cohort of children needed “more support” than previous years’ cohorts.
The same report found that once the school year started, 96 per cent of parents thought their child had settled in well and 85 per cent did not report any concerns about how their child was coping in school.
These findings, however, don’t tally with some of the anecdotal evidence coming from teachers.
Abi Miranda is the head of early years foundation stage (EYFS) at the Anna Freud Centre, a child mental health research, training and treatment centre in London. She confirms that plenty of teachers in the schools she has worked with are reporting concerns about how well KS1 pupils have settled in.
So, why is this happening? The answer is perhaps obvious: the pandemic.
“Typically, children would have had the opportunity to learn basic skills like turn-taking, sharing and separating from their adult caregivers, as well emotional regulation skills in early years settings. But the pandemic has led to limited opportunities for socialising with other children, extended family members, neighbours, and people in the community,” says Miranda.
Social distancing has also had an effect. Children have developed an “in-built defence mechanism” against close proximity to others, she adds. Being put in a classroom and encouraged to play with others can therefore cause a lot of anxiety, which, in turn, can lead to disruptive behaviour.
Back to basics
So, what can schools do to address the problem? According to Miranda, going back to basics is key: although children might be in Year 1 or 2, they’ve missed out on essential building blocks from EYFS around personal, social and emotional development, she says, and this needs to be explicitly addressed.
In terms of what that might look like in practice, Aleisha Clarke, assistant director for evidence at the Early Intervention Foundation, suggests there are plenty of evidence-based strategies for teachers to draw on.
She separates social skills into two categories: communication and relationships.
“For communication, it’s about supporting them to engage in conversations, and providing opportunities during the day for children to learn how to take turns through conversations and through activities,” she explains.
Listening skills are also really important: teachers should demonstrate active listening and get the children to act out the tenets of good listening - such as facing the person you’re listening to and not fidgeting - in role-play scenarios.
Alongside this, she adds, to build relationship skills, teachers should support children to make and keep friends - you can’t rely on children to automatically be able to do this on their own.
“Teacher praise is hugely important: when you identify scenarios where they are getting on with a friend, they are being supportive of another person, they’re being kind, make sure you acknowledge it,” says Clarke.
“Teachers should reinforce positive behaviour, rather than remove a child from the classroom and home in on ‘negative’ behaviours.”
Circle time can be a useful opportunity to develop relationships, too. Clarke suggests asking children to go around the circle and give a compliment to the child on their left, for example.
All of this should then go hand in hand with building emotional skills, she adds.
“Some children have difficulties in understanding their built-up anger and end up lashing out,” she explains. “If they’re unable to verbally explain or regulate that emotion, it’s very difficult for them.”
To mitigate this, teachers need to give children the language to articulate how they’re feeling. This can be done through modelling, Clarke says.
“For example, a teacher could say to a child: ‘I see that you pushed Ricky. You seem to be feeling angry about something. Can you tell me what it is?’”
She also advises encouraging children to solve problems through generating their own solutions. If a child has taken another child’s toy, ask the first child what they think they can do about this. “Initially, you can generate solutions for them but, over time, they will start to think of them for themselves,” says Clarke.
All of these strategies should be embedded within everyday contexts rather than being taught in isolation, she stresses.
How to manage a crisis point
But what about more difficult scenarios, where a child’s behaviour has already reached crisis point? Sargent suggests that there are structural solutions that schools can try here, such as reduced timetables.
If a child is struggling to stay in the classroom for the full school day, teachers at her school can agree a schedule with parents, which sees the child come into school for just the mornings or even an hour a day to begin with. If parents can’t have their children at home for long periods, the child may have one-on-one support with a teaching assistant outside of the classroom.
“We had a child in Year 2 for whom this approach proved really successful: he was suspended, brought back on a reduced timetable and, with support from parents, class teachers and support staff, he has now settled in really well and is in class full-time,” Sargent explains.
In this type of scenario, it is key that parents are involved, says Polly Crowther, an evidence leader in education at East London Research School, specialising in early years education. If children are at risk of exclusion, for example, a conversation between a parent and staff member should be happening every day, she suggests.
“Parents know much more about their children than teachers do, so it’s really important to be listening and learning from them about what strategies can be put in place, and then what’s working and what’s not,” she says.
Schools should not be expected to do all of this work alone, though, stresses Claudia Coussins, senior programme manager in Anna Freud’s early years programme.
She says that there are initiatives under way to join the dots of support around a child. For example, the Anna Freud Centre is leading the creation of a national network of family hubs, funded by the Department for Education.
“It depends where you are in the country but, overall, we are seeing a shift to more integrated services looking at family mental health and wellbeing as a whole,” she says.
“A practical takeaway I’d really stress for teachers is to think about the integrated services in your local area, and utilise them for support. We know schools have really tight capacity, and there are other people who can help to understand the reasons behind behaviour.”
However, such services vary across the UK and, with many schools stretched for resources, teachers may have the desire to implement all of the above but simply not the time, funding or connections.
And when behaviour escalates, sometimes schools are left with little choice but to suspend pupils, says Sargent.
“When you get to the point of physical harm coming to children and adults, it’s a sticking point,” she says. “In all honesty, what do you do when a child is kicking a teacher or pulling their hair?”
Avoiding exclusion is key
Finding ways to address such behaviour isn’t easy but it is important, says Miranda. After all, if children aren’t coping emotionally, they aren’t going to make progress academically.
It’s not only about academic success. She points towards the wealth of research highlighting the long-term effects of being excluded from school at an early age.
“These outcomes aren’t just around education and their potential to achieve GCSEs but their mental health, too,” she says.
Admittedly, a lack of resources may be an issue, and there may indeed be situations where exclusion is the only option. But explicitly teaching the personal, social and emotional building blocks that some children have missed out on is arguably something that all KS1 teachers can try - and, in doing so, they can help to give every child the best possible start to their schooling.
