A survey involving more than 1,000 teachers also finds that one in four say the are looking to quit the chalkface because student behaviour has become so bad.
Indeed, 1 in 10 of the respondents estimate that they have to deal with a “disruptive incident” in class every five minutes.
When asked about their hopes for behaviour this year, 45% of the secondary respondents said they expected it to be worse. Other findings include:
- Challenges to teacher authority have increased (72%).
- There has been a rise in parental complaints about school behaviour policies (59%).
- Up to a fifth of students are routinely disregarding school rules (53%).
Around a third of the respondents (30%) said they are dealing with a “disruptive incident” in their class every 10 minutes, while 10% said this is happening every five minutes.
Disruptive incidents can range from chatter, an inability to sit still, disrespect to the teacher and/or other students, unauthorised mobile phone use – with social media the main cause according to the teachers – and answering back.
Challenges: The research found that chatter among students and student inattention are the most common disruptive behaviours in the classroom (source: The Bett Behaviour Report 2024)
The survey found that 87% of teachers think students are addicted to their phones and 88% think mobiles are a distraction for them.
Concerningly, 27% of the teachers surveyed said they are looking to leave the profession.
When it comes to the reasons behind the increasing issues, 75% of the teachers in the survey cited poor discipline at home, while 90% said that social media has had a negative impact on students’ attention spans.
In fact, attention is such an issue, that 39% of the teachers admitted to now changing lesson activities at least every 10 minutes to keep students engaged.
However, the survey also found that 41% of the secondary teachers responding believe that senior leaders do not apply the school behaviour policy consistently.
Asked what might be done to improve behaviour, the teachers suggested smaller class sizes, better senior leadership support, and better communication with parents.
The survey has been commissioned by the Bett education technology show and the report includes a commentary from Tom Bennett, a government behaviour advisor, who said that problems have increased since Covid.
He explained: "The reasons why children misbehave are often overlooked, but they are not hard to find: children learn their habits from their environments, and many children grow up in circumstances – through no fault of their own – that do not provide them with a rich and nurturing context in which to develop healthy social skills and positive ways to behave in institutional settings.
"I’ve visited around 1,100 schools in the last 10 years, solely looking at their behaviour climates, and there is definitely a very strong sense that since Covid, behaviour has become worse; I hear this in almost every school I have visited since the lockdowns.
"Why? Because when children spend a year or more out of the school culture, they can often lose the habit of how to conduct oneself in those environments and learn new habits instead; because many students became used to being at home, and not in the high expectation environment of a school; because parents can lose a sense of urgency to send children in on time, regularly, an expectation that has been built up as a cultural norm since the early 20th century.
“Lockdowns have hit the school attendance and behaviour cultures like a meteor and we are all still feeling the aftershock. "
- The Bett Behaviour Report 2024 is available as a free download via https://uk.bettshow.com/student-behaviour-report
- Bett takes place from January 22 to 24, 2025 in London. Visit https://uk.bettshow.com/