Complete review of government stance on behaviour
The Secretary of State for Education has accepted all the recommendations of the report on behaviour.
Sir Alan Steer has made his final report (link at the end of this piece) and Ed Balls, Children Schools and Families Secretary, welcomed all of his recommendations at a union conference.
The Government then committed itself to ”ensuring schools are supported and challenged to improve behaviour above “satisfactory”.”
Sir Alan Steer’s report “Learning Behaviour: Lesson Learned” says that there has been good progress in raising the standards of behaviour in schools with Ofsted reporting standards of behaviour good or outstanding in 93 per cent of primary schools and 72 per cent of secondary schools. Ofsted have also said that the number of schools inspected where behaviour is a significant concern is at the lowest levels recorded.
But Sir Alan Steer also says in his report that although most children, teachers and schools do very well to tackle bad behaviour, there is no room for complacency and bad behaviour cannot be left untouched.
As well as the publication of the Sir Alan Steer report and the Government response the Government has also published
• guidance for teachers on how to tackle cyber bullying. Ed Balls is launching guidance aimed at enabling school staff to prevent and tackle cyberbullying. The guidance describes the various forms cyberbullying can take, the various legal measures that can be used to tackle cyberbullying, and what steps the whole school community can take to tackle cyberbullying effectively. It advises school staff on best practice in terms of taking images and videos of pupils and on the use of mobile phones in the classroom as well as on issues such as how to protect their personal information online and ‘ friending ‘ pupils. The guidance also provides advice for school staff on how to respond to cyberbullying incidents and on how to have inappropriate material removed from websites:
• new guidance will be issued to help prevent bullying outside of school on journeys, in youth clubs, sports clubs, playgrounds, after school clubs, Children’s Homes and in Further Education colleges; and
• a new leaflet published jointly with NASUWT so that teachers and schools understand their powers.
Sir Alan Steer, in his recommendations on improving behaviour to above satisfactory, says schools should aim for the highest possible standards of pupil behaviour.
1. Where a school is rated by Ofsted as having ‘satisfactory’ standards of behaviour, this should be regarded by the school as indicating scope for further improvement. The Local Authority should see a judgment of satisfactory as being a trigger for additional support to help the school implement effective approaches.
2. Schools rated by Ofsted as having ‘Inadequate’ standards of behaviour have an urgent need for significant and speedy improvement. In almost all cases, they are placed by Ofsted in an improvement category. Where behaviour is graded as inadequate these schools must be prioritised for behaviour support from the Local Authority.
3. Behaviour improvement plans produced by schools should pay the closest regard to the guidance contained in the report produced by the Practitioners’ Group: Principles and Practice – What Works in Schools and to Ofsted publications on behaviour management practices.
4. DCSF should monitor the support provided, and where necessary supplement it, through the National Strategies intervention programme on school behaviour.
Steer also recommends as part of his final report that:
• the Government and partners need to improve the awareness of the wide range of powers that already exist;
• the Government should clearly outline the role of Children Trusts to schools so schools can better understand through guidance how they can engage with the Children’s trust and how this engagement will assist them in meeting the needs of the children;
• Behaviour and Attendance Partnerships should provide the Children’s Trust with an annual report on the standard of behaviour and attendance existing in the partnership;
• each Children’s Trust should identify how it will ensure the deliver of the full range of mental health and psychological well being services across the full spectrum of need;
• Sir Alan Steer believes that all schools should be required to have a Learning and Teaching Policy. He believes that good behaviour in schools is closely linked to classroom practice and identifies this as fundamental to behaviour improvement;
• There should be streamlining of requirements on schools: reducing and rationalising the number of written policies that schools are required to produce;
• the expertise of schools specialising in dealing with the most challenging pupils- particularly Pupil Referral Units and schools for pupils with Behavioural, Emotional and Social Difficulties School – should be given increased scope to contribute to the Training Schools Programme;
• the DCSF should not set targets on exclusion to local authorities, which would undermine the heads’ right to exclude. The DCSF should however consider how best to support and challenge those Local Authorities with disproportionately high exclusion levels;
• teachers need to know about the wide range of powers that already exist. The Government and professional associations need to work together to raise awareness and understanding of the range of powers among schools, parents, pupils and teachers, including in particular the statutory power to discipline;
• local authorities and schools should ensure that there is a more consistent use of Parenting Contracts to ensure that parents are challenged to tackle their children’s unreasonable behaviour. Schools should consider whether a parent’s actions are contributing to their child’s bad behaviour and offer a parenting contract to tackle this and to set out the support that will be available to the family;
• schools must develop effective strategies for pupils whose behaviour prevents the class from learning. This may include a withdrawal room or other alternative provision. Examples of best practice in the use of these methods should be provided to all schools; and
• independent appeals panels for exclusions should not be abolished.
1. All the documents can be found at: http://www.dcsf.gov.uk/behaviour
2. A new cyberbullying interactive for schools is launched. The interactive is a resource that can be used to follow up on the learning from the film ‘Let’s fight it together’. It uses the technology that children are using to put them in the school where a cyberbullying incident is taking place, and they have the chance to create their own character and make choices within this situation and get points depending on the decisions they make and these points will tell them how responsible a digital citizen they are. It is available on Childnet’s Digizen website together with lesson plans, http://www.digizen.org/cyberbullying for use.
3. 15% of teachers responding to a 2009 survey carried out by Teacher Support Network and The Association of Teachers and Lecturers reported they had been victims of cyber bullying.
4. DCSF statistics released on 24 June 2008 show that permanent exclusions is down by 7% to 8,680, a drop of 29% since 1997/98, and secondary school fixed period exclusions is up by 4% to 363,270. The drop in permanent exclusions and a slight increase in fixed term exclusions show that schools are using short but effective punishments to prevent problem behaviour.
5. Government is encouraging schools to work in partnership with the police and other agencies through Safer School Partnerships. The Youth Crime Action Plan said that every school will have a named police contact and also set a vision of SSPs becoming the norm rather than the exception in schools
6. The Education and Inspections Act 2006 confirms and clarifies the right of the school to impose disciplinary sanctions on a pupil when their conduct falls below the standard which could reasonably be expected of them. These disciplinary sanctions are actions which aim to make clear the boundaries of acceptable behaviour to the pupil and the school community.
7. Any lawful use of sanctions must be reasonable and proportionate to the circumstances of the case. In particular, the Act requires that account be taken of the pupil’s age, any special educational needs, any disability and any religious requirements affecting the pupil. Advice on the use of disciplinary sanctions is included in the Department’s School Discipline and Pupil Behaviour Policies – Guidance for Schools document.
8. There are four behaviour related clauses in the Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Bill currently before Parliament (i) to extend the current power to search for weapons to include alcohol, illegal drugs and stolen item; (ii) statutory requirement to record and report significant incidents of the use of force; (iii) new name for PRUs (short stay schools) and (iv) to make participation in Behaviour and Attendance Partnerships mandatory for secondary schools, academies and special schools.
The Steer report can be downloaded at
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