Rethinking school behaviour: The two missing pieces

A free guide for teachers and school leaders - and anyone interested in how to make people feel truly valued

Behaviour is the bottleneck

Few issues shape school life as powerfully as behaviour. It affects learning time, staff workload and morale, pupil safety, relationships with families, and the day-to-day emotional climate of a school. The core function of a school is teaching and learning, but behaviour is the bottleneck. As Jon Hutchinson has observed: ‘With great pupil behaviour, almost anything will work. Without it, almost nothing will.’

In recent years, many schools in England have adopted strict behaviour policies. In some cases, this has led to calmer classrooms and improved results. In others, progress has proven fragile, uneven or fleeting. Perhaps surprisingly, the research evidence is mixed on whether strict behaviour policies improve student learning outcomes.

The case for change is overwhelming

At the same time, a number of wider indicators should give us pause.

Pupil behaviour has overtaken workload as a top concern for primary teachers. Nearly half now cite poor pupil behaviour as one of their three main worries, a significant rise compared with just a few years ago. One in five teachers report having been hit by a pupil in the past year. Suspensions and permanent exclusions have risen sharply since the pandemic, reaching their highest levels for more than a decade.

Alongside this, the wider picture of pupil wellbeing is troubling. Around one in five children and young people aged 7–16 now meet the threshold for a probable mental health condition, almost double the proportion reported in 2017. Rates of persistent absence have also risen steeply and remain around double pre-pandemic levels, closely linked to emotional distress and disengagement from school.

Taken together, these trends paint an uncomfortable picture. In some schools, behaviour looks calmer on the surface. National surveys show that most school leaders now rate behaviour as good or very good, and teachers report high confidence in managing classrooms. And yet, beneath this apparent improvement sit rising sanctions, growing strain on staff, and increasing levels of distress among children and young people.

So what’s going on? What are we missing?

Together with Tara Elie, I’ve written a short guide that explores this question by looking beneath the surface of behaviour policy and practice. It brings together two sets of ideas that are rarely connected in the behaviour conversation, but which turn out to be deeply linked.

The first is the psychology of mattering: whether pupils and staff experience themselves as noticed, valued and able to contribute meaningfully within the life of the school. Mattering shapes how people relate to boundaries, how they respond to challenge, and how repair happens when things go wrong.

The second is implementation and improvement science, the growing body of evidence about how we can make the world a better place - and how to make those improvements last. Give or take the heat death of the Universe.

Taken together, these lenses help explain why behaviour policies that look good on paper can struggle under real-world conditions, and why apparent calm and order can sometimes mask deeper fragility. They also point towards more sustainable ways of building consistency, care and shared responsibility without relying on ever-increasing pressure or control.

The guide is a free 15-minute read, written for school leaders, teachers, pastoral teams and system leaders, as well as anyone who cares about creating school environments that are a bit more humane and enjoyable by making people feel truly valued.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this - whether you agree and whether there’s anything we’re missing…