Tight, “no excuses” behaviour management systems are all the rage. They work for most pupils. Clear rules and routines provide boundaries that make children feel safe. And without them we can get classroom mayhem where no-one can learn.
But what about the children who don’t respond? What if a school finds that the same set of students end up sent out of class or put in detention, again and again?
It may be that the school needs a more nuanced approach to discipline, based on understanding that there are different reasons for misbehaviour.
Four students
Grant is 12. He rarely does what he’s asked to in class and constantly gets into fights at lunch and break. Nevertheless, he is seen as a leader and has plenty of friends. When something interests him, he can stick at it for hours.
Scott is often in trouble for fighting. He flares up easily and flies off the handle if anything winds him up. In class, he finds it hard to work in groups and gives up easily if he doesn’t see quick success with a task.
Conor is in many ways a model student. He generally works hard and gets on with teachers and other pupils. Sometimes, however, he seems to start the day off on the wrong foot and may end up swearing at a teacher or storming out of class.
Rhys is unpredictable. He sometimes has intense bursts of anger for no apparent reason. At other times he is withdrawn and listless. He is often involved in bullying and has followers rather than friends. Staff find him hard to reach.
Grant, Scott, Conor, and Rhys have all had many detentions and several fixed term exclusions since starting at secondary school. None of them have modified their behaviour as a result.
Four reasons for persistent behaviour problems
There are four main but overlapping reasons for behaviour problems, represented by these four pupils, and shown in this diagram:
Some children – those in the top circle – “can” behave appropriately, but don’t choose to. Grant probably falls into this group. He has the underpinning social and emotional capabilities he needs to succeed in school. He can get on with others and can motivate himself when he wants to.
But he is choosing not to apply these skills because the rewards for not doing so (like making peers laugh or getting out of a tedious lesson) outweigh those for behaving well – and are of more interest to him than any sanctions.
Detentions don’t bother him much. And fixed term exclusions even less, as he can spend time at home gaming and watching YouTube.
Scott, however, is different. He most likely falls into the second group of pupils – the bottom circle – those who “can’t” behave appropriately because they don’t know how.
Providing more rewards or adjusting the type of sanction won’t work for Scott, because he doesn’t know how to recognise and manage his feelings. He doesn’t know how to handle frustration or control his anger. Nor does he have the social skills needed for working in groups.
Conor falls into yet another group – the right-hand circle. He does not lack social and emotional skills but is under stress. Perhaps he is caring for a sick or disabled parent; perhaps he is witnessing domestic violence; perhaps he has experienced a bereavement. When life gets too much, he simply “loses it”.
Rhys – in the final circle on the left – loses it more often and more intensely. He has a short fuse and swings between moods in ways that are hard to understand. He has great difficulties forming any sort of relationship with adults or peers. It is very likely that he has experienced early attachment difficulties or trauma.
The actions required for each of these four types of learner are very different.
The children who can behave but choose not to
Children who can behave but choose not to are the ones who will respond to a no excuses policy with clear rules and routines, and a carefully tailored reward and sanction system within a framework that emphasises choice and pupil voice.
Grant could relatively easily change his behaviour if he is involved in working out the particular rewards and sanctions that would motivate him. As it is peer attention that drives him, his teachers might want to avoid using his name in reprimands: “I’m just going to wait while those at the back stop talking.” They might also want to tactically ignore minor misbehaviours and give more praise (privately, in the case of secondary students) for the behaviour they do want to see.
We might also note that the teenage brain is more responsive to rewards than punishments. In a fascinating experiment (Palminteri et al, 2016), volunteers aged 12 to 17 and 18 to 32 completed tasks in which they had to choose between abstract symbols. Each symbol was consistently associated with a fixed chance of a reward, punishment or no outcome. As the trial progressed, participants learnt which symbols were likely to lead to each outcome and adjusted their choices accordingly.
The results showed that adolescents and adults were equally good at learning to choose symbols associated with reward, but adolescents were less good at avoiding symbols associated with punishment.
The authors suggest that “a reward-based approach, rather than punishment, is more likely to be effective in adolescent learning”.
The children who can’t behave appropriately because they don’t know how to
The second group, children like Scott who lack fundamental social and emotional skills, are unlikely to respond to a standard behaviour management system in the long term. You can’t punish (or reward) a child into doing something they don’t know how to do.
If a child cannot read, we teach them to read; if they cannot work with others or manage their emotions, we similarly need to take on the task of teaching them.
These children – and it is a large group – need help to learn how to recognise, discuss and handle emotions (self-awareness, managing feelings), how to put themselves in other people’s shoes and “feel for and with them” (empathy), how to make and keep friends and work with others (social skills), and how to set themselves goals and work towards them even when the going gets tough.
This is called social and emotional learning, the evidence-based approach that is the subject of guidance I co-wrote for the Education Endowment Foundation, and of a chapter in my new book about closing the attainment gap for disadvantaged white pupils, Reaching the Unseen Children (2021).
The children who can behave but temporarily lose it when life gets too much
The third group, children who have the underlying social and emotional skills they need but have days when they seem to go to pieces, need responsive pastoral systems that recognise when they are under stress.
They need opportunities to check in for a quiet chat at the start of the day, a listening ear, and a place in school they can take themselves to when things get too much. Action may well need to be taken to try and sort the family stressors or events that are troubling them.
Again, there are lots more ideas for specific strategies (like emotional check-ins) in my book.
The children who can’t behave because of attachment issues/trauma
The last group are those children who tax behaviour systems the most. Many will never have felt loved or learned to regulate emotions through early interaction with a warm responsive adult. They may also have experienced significant trauma, so their nervous systems are in permanent trip-wire state; they don’t feel safe, so we need to help them feel safe in school and get them some specialist help.
Often, we think of trauma as a dramatic event like an earthquake, terrorism or an assault. But current definitions encompass any event, or series of events, that overwhelms a person’s capacity to cope and has a long-lasting impact on them – common for many pupils, particularly those brought up in poverty.
So, one good approach is to stop asking pupils the question: “What’s wrong with you?” and replace it with “Could you help me understand what’s happened to you?”
Because these children’s history often means they lack trust in adults, it is important to build a strong bond with at least one person in school, with a back-up adult the pupil knows well, to whom they can turn when they are upset. These children need “safe faces” as well as the calming places (safe spaces) we have already touched on.
No excuse for no excuses
No excuse policies are all very well – but not if they don’t work. My four reasons for persistent misbehaviour are fairly crude and of course overlap. No child will fall neatly into just one category, and I haven’t included other reasons for behaviour problems such as undiagnosed autism, situations where children misbehave to cover up the fact that they can’t do the work they are asked to do, or inadequate teaching.
Nevertheless, next time you find yourself sending a child out yet again from class or dealing with them when they are sent to you, it might be worth remembering Grant, Scott, Conor and Rhys – and remembering this poem by Josh Dickerson, which I came across on Twitter when researching my book. It speaks for itself.
‘Cos I Ain’t Got a Pencil
I woke myself upBecause we ain’t got an alarm clock
Dug in the dirty clothes basket,
Cause ain’t nobody washed my uniform
Brushed my hair and teeth in the dark,
Cause the lights ain’t on
Even got my baby sister ready,
Cause my mama wasn’t home.
Got us both to school on time,
To eat us a good breakfast.
Then when I got to class the teacher fussed
Cause I ain’t got no pencil.
- Jean Gross CBE is an independent consultant and author of many best-selling books and articles about children ‘s issues. She was formerly government’s Communication Champion for children and young people, and previously led the development of national approaches to behaviour and attendance. Her book, Reaching the Unseen Children: Practical strategies for closing stubborn gaps in disadvantaged groups (Routledge, 2021) is out now. Follow her on Twitter @JeanGrossCBE or visit www.jean-gross.com
Further information & resources
- Also by Jean Gross: Language and literacy: Closing the gap for disadvantaged white children, Seced, November 2021: https://bit.ly/3nzemZM
- Palminteri et al: The computational development of reinforcement learning during adolescence, PLoS Computational Biology (12,6), June 2016: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27322574/