Report offering advice on behaviour for teachers released

A behaviour expert has released guidance for teachers on how to deal with disruption in class.

Tom Bennett spent several months meeting classroom teachers and leaders from a variety of schools to identify successful strategies used to tackle disruptive behaviour.

His report, Creating a culture: how school leaders can optimise behaviour, concludes that while there is no ‘silver bullet’, there are a variety of strategies that can be used to tackle poor behaviour.

It also highlights that although standards of behaviour can be a challenge for schools, leadership is key to creating the right culture to tackle this issue.

The Department for Education has welcomed the report and will now use its findings to inform ongoing work to help and support schools to deal with this issue.

In response to the report, the government has set out a number of measures that are being taken forward to address the points raised.

These include: reforming National Professional Qualifications to equip school leaders with skills on how to deal with bad behaviour; encouraging providers to bid for funding from a pot of £75 million from the Teaching and Leadership Innovation Fund; and revising existing advice for schools including the mental health and behaviour guidance to ensure they support teachers and school leaders.

Bennett said: “How well students behave in school is crucial to how far they succeed, socially and academically. There are many tremendous schools doing a superb job, and some schools that could improve a great deal.

“I spoke to leaders of coastal schools, inner-city schools, rural, primary, secondary, alternative provision and asked them what they did.”

He continued: “Every school has different circumstances and challenges, but we found that some themes were almost universal: clear routines, robustly administered, high expectations and a focus on building a strong sense of identity and good relationships where children feel they belong, are safe, and are expected to do their best.

“That’s why I called it creating a culture. Because these things don’t happen by accident.”