In this five-part series for SecEd, I’m sharing a road-map for inclusion – a way to build more equity in education so that schools might become engines for social change. Part of that road-map is my ABC:
- A is for Attendance.
- B is for Behaviours.
- C is for Community.
In parts two and three, I tackled the A of attendance. This time I will turn to the B of behaviours.
B is for Behaviours
A reminder: once learners are attending, we need them to develop appropriate behaviours for learning. Note the plural – because this stage is two-fold:
- First, learners need to be helped to conduct themselves appropriately and to comply with our rules and expectations.
- Second, learners need to be helped to develop positive attitudes to learning and a raft of behaviours for learning so that they can access an increasingly challenging curriculum, actively engage with their studies, and make good progress.
“Attitudes to learning” include being resilient and determined, having self-esteem and a belief in your ability to get better with hard work and effort, as well as having a plan for the future which provides a source of motivation and a sense of purpose.
“Behaviours for learning” take many forms but include study skills such as note-taking and independent research, debate and discussion, self- and peer-assessment, and metacognition and self-regulation.
Creating a culture of good behaviours requires:
- A whole school culture which promotes good behaviour.
- A classroom environment which is conducive to learning.
- Skilled staff able to respond effectively to incidences of poor behaviour.
- Pastoral support for learners’ social and emotional needs.
- A clear system of consequences which is consistently applied.
- A programme of personal development to foster learners’ independence.
In this article, I would like to focus on the first of these requirements.
SecEd Series: Equity in schools
- Article 1: An ABC for building equity and addressing disadvantage in your school: Published September 2
- Article 2: The ABC of equity in schools: A is for attendance: Published September 11
- Article 3: The ABC of equity in schools: A is for attendance: Published September 17
- Article 4: The ABC of equity in schools: B is for behaviour: This article
- Article 5: The ABC of equity in schools: C is for community: Published October 2
Whole-school culture
Culture comes from the top. Put simply, a culture is “the way we do things around here”. Culture is consistency. If every stakeholder involved in a school is to perpetuate their school’s culture – to live and breathe their school’s values – then they need to know what that culture looks like in practice and why that culture is important to everyone.
This involves identifying a set of social norms, habits and routines which make the culture concrete, then practising those norms until they become automatic for all. It means constantly repeating and reinforcing those norms. And it means making sure every learner can conform to those norms – making reasonable adjustments where necessary.
I have already advocated “flipping the conversation” around attendance. I have suggested we promote the benefits of good attendance rather than talk in deficit terms about absences.
I apply the same logic here: our culture should be a positive force for good, it should foster a sense of belonging, it should articulate what every member of the school community has in common and what binds them in common cause.
It should also be future-focused, concentrated on the attributes that learners need in order to be prepared for the next stages of their lives. It should be a source of enrichment, of personal development, not simply a system of sanctions. It should, in short, be about the dos not the don’ts, the coulds not the shoulds.
Calm, safe, supportive
When it comes to promoting a culture of positive behaviour, the goal is to provide a calm, safe and supportive environment which protects learners from disruption and which learners want to attend and in which they can learn and thrive.
Good behaviour is central to a good education. Where behaviour is poor, learners suffer from lost learning and are more likely to experience anxiety, bullying, and distress. Similarly, the prevalence of poor behaviour negatively affects teachers’ health and wellbeing, and, for some, it is the reason they quit the profession.
Not only is good behaviour important in school, but it is also a door to future success. Being taught how to behave appropriately is a valuable skill that will help learners succeed in their future lives including in the workplace.
To create the culture in practice, schools need to be clear about which behaviours are permitted and which are prohibited. Further, schools need to set out the values, attitudes, and beliefs they wish to promote as well as the social norms and routines they wish to replicate throughout their school community.
The behaviour policy
A school’s behaviour policy is a crucial starting point for setting out this culture and a means of communicating that culture to learners, staff, and parents and families. But a behaviour policy is of little use if it remains a policy; rather, it must be translated into practice and that means ensuring every member of staff follows the policy for every learner, albeit with pragmatism and humanity.
The best behaviour policies, I think, are founded on a set of shared values, the attributes you want every learner to adopt and exhibit; the behaviours that will help learners to become happy, healthy and moral people.
Those values might include dignity and respect, honesty and integrity, kindness and empathy, trust and diligence, resilience and determination – I could go on.
But what is important is that those values are grounded in reality and realised through daily actions. What does it mean to treat people with dignity and respect? What does this look like in tangible terms that learners would understand and be able to emulate? What does it mean to be honest and to act with integrity?
High standards and clear rules should reflect the values of the school and outline the expectations and consequences of behaviour for everyone.
As a minimum, I suggest that a school’s behaviour policy includes information on the following:
- Purpose: What are the underlying objectives of the policy, what are its aims, how will it help create a calm, safe, and supportive environment in which all learners can thrive?
- People: Who are the key members of staff responsible for behaviour, including senior leaders and governors, and what are their roles?
- Process: What are the school systems and social norms underpinning your approach to behaviour? This includes, though is not limited to, your expectations and rules, the habits and routines you expect to see replicated throughout your school, and the consequences (rewards and sanctions) that will apply when learners do or do not obey your expectations and norms.
- Professional development: What support are staff given in their induction and through on-going training to understand the school policy and to develop a set of skills that enable them to manage behaviour effectively?
- Progression: How do you support learners’ transitions, including when they transfer schools, so they are inducted and re-inducted into your behaviour systems, rules, and routines?
- Pastoral care: What do you do to support learners’ social and emotional needs and personal development, including helping those learners with additional needs where those needs might affect their behaviour? What reasonable adjustments do you make to ensure every learner, no matter their additional and different needs, are helped to meet high expectations and engage in school routines?
- Protection: What do you do to protect learners from harm, including child-on-child abuse? What do you do to prevent abuse from happening and how do you respond to incidents of such abuse when they inevitably arise from time to time?
- Permitted and prohibited: What do you encourage and what do you ban?
Further, I suggest that your behaviour policy should be underpinned by the following principles:
- Accessible: It is easy to gain access to and it is easily understood by all stakeholders. Where is your policy kept and how easily can parents and families find it and find what they are looking for? How accessible is the language used in the policy and what reasonable adjustments do you make to help those for whom English is an additional language and those with visual impairments to understand it?
- Aligned: Your behaviour policy does not sit in isolation but rather is linked to other relevant school policies and procedures including your safeguarding policy, your staff development policy, and your SEND policy. Do all these policies “talk to each other” and complement each other? Are the messages they convey coherent?
- All-inclusive: Your behaviour policy contains sufficient detail to be meaningful and to ensure it can be implemented consistently by all staff at all times. The policy also needs to foster a sense of belonging, it needs to be the result of consultation so every member of your school community feels they own it and understand it and feels it will do good.
A good behaviour policy provides predictability – both in terms of your expectations and the consequences learners will face if they do not meet those expectations.
Learners – and their families – need to know what is permitted and what is prohibited, and why, and they need to know what will happen if they do something that is prohibited. It is about transparency; it is about being open and honest. And surely these are values that we want to replicate throughout our school community, too?
The behaviour curriculum
High expectations should pervade all aspects of school life, and this includes, not just our behaviour management systems, but also how learners are explicitly taught to behave appropriately.
A behaviour curriculum defines the expected behaviours in school, rather than only a list of prohibited behaviours. A behaviour curriculum articulates what good behaviours look like.
While a behaviour curriculum does not need to be exhaustive, it does need to represent the key habits and routines – or social norms – required of all learners all the time.
Reasonable adjustments should be made to a school’s social norms for those learners who have additional and different needs, including those with a protected characteristic under the Equality Act 2010.
These adjustments should be proportionate and ensure all learners can meet the school’s expectations. Reasonable adjustments are about ensuring equity and fairness, not about lowering expectations or permitting unacceptable behaviours. The adjustments may be temporary or fixed, they may be planned, or they may be proactive.
The hidden behaviour curriculum
Just as there is a planned curriculum and a hidden curriculum, so too are there planned and hidden versions of the behaviour curriculum. The planned behaviour curriculum is what is set out in documents and delivered to learners in a structured way, the hidden behaviour curriculum is what learners are taught in unstructured ways through the behaviour, attitudes and values exhibited by all the staff who work in the school.
As such, all staff – not just teachers – have an important role to play in, not only establishing clear boundaries of acceptable learner behaviour, but in modelling the behaviour they expect to see from others. Learners need to see – not just be taught about – good habits.
In short, all staff should communicate the school’s values and follow the school’s agreed social norms in every interaction with colleagues and learners.
Next time
Next week, in part five of this five-part series, I will turn to the C in my ABC – community (return here for the link).
- Matt Bromley is an education journalist, author, and advisor with 25 years’ experience in teaching and leadership including as a secondary school headteacher. He remains a practising teacher. Matt is the author of numerous books on education and co-host of the award-winning SecEd Podcast. Find him on X @mj_bromley. Read his previous articles for SecEd via www.sec-ed.co.uk/authors/matt-bromley