CONTENT WARNING – Once again – this is a ramble – this topic is huge and I start to hit on issues that I could spend thousands of hours on (And still get nowhere!). That’s not the purpose of a blog though… Oh, and it’s about behaviour… As anyone who has a strong opinion knows – A foolish topic!

A recent Teacher Tapp survey asked – If you woke up tomorrow and were a fully-fledged Headteacher, what would be the first thing you’d change in your school?

No surprises when 42% said – Behaviour.

If I was forced to ‘Tsar’ over something, I think behaviour would be pretty much at the bottom of my ‘Tsaring’ list. You see, no one wins in a fight over behaviour. Even debating it can be pretty bruising. Behaviour is the sword upon which most head teachers live or die upon. It can make teaching a joy, impossible or at best constantly challenging. Get it right, and you are still checking the shadows, knowing it could change with the wind. Get it wrong… just don’t… getting it wrong is painfully messy and stressful for everybody. I know many headteachers who no longer walk the corridors over the fact that ‘behaviour’ was a fight they lost.

Personally, I hate the monopolistic and polarising behaviour discussions within education. I do not see behaviour as a one person show, or a one trick pony. After 20 years of headship I know that with behaviour you need to have a vision. Trawl through social media and you’ll find quite a lot of people with a vision who will tell you, in no uncertain terms, ‘how’ to do behaviour. There’s a ton of consultants, books, programs and videos telling us just that. In fact, there seem to be more people who do not have to lead a school lining up to show you how to do it, than are actually doing it..

What’s with all the ‘fighting’ talk you may ask? Why so aggravated an introduction? Bad first day back to school after the Easter Break OPH? Surely behaviour is about systems, consistency and clarity? Even your least experienced of teachers will tell you this.

I think the heart of the problem with changing behaviour is about the lack of understanding of how a vision works in practice. We can all have a vision for something but once you are accountable for making that vision work across complex structures, relationships and resources it all gets so much harder. It like the sofa football pundits shouting at the players for missing a volly. This is where I believe our ‘Behaviour Zsar’ is in an impossible position because you can advise but getting people to agree on one vision and implementing it is an impossible task at the scales we would expect. When have schools agreed on anything?

Behaviour in schools is not, and never will be, a one person show, even at 275 of your finest Australian dollars. Cheap dig aside, I have more respect than contempt for this. It is through standing up and having a vision that things are debated, challenged and change happens. I may not agree with Tom Bennet on many things, but I have never attended one of his sessions – so my ability to comment on it working or not is limited to social media snippets, and that is a picky little thing at best. I did ask a close colleague who attended a recent Bristol session and they said – it’s what you would expect, lots of common sense and in the flesh nowhere near as controversial.

Managing behaviour in a school is a complex issue that we seem to be unable to solve on a national scale. But, there are clear examples of schools where behaviour is good… What we may recognise in these good schools is some common threads.

Clarity of the vision – Everyone knows what the vision is

Consistency of the vision – Robust systems supporting the vision

Resources in place to support the vision – Investment in training, time and reflection

Simple stuff really. So why do so many teachers and experts feel that behaviour is a mess in our schools? That the only ones who have got it right are few and far between and according the Social Media treadmill – the strictest ones?

This is where I think we are getting it wrong regarding behavior –

  1. We often peddle ‘the only way is…’ approaches when every school is different. Education is a sucker for a band wagon and I often wonder if leaders (I include myself here) are strong enough to say ‘Not here!’ because I know my school context better than any of you ‘experts’. School leaders feel imposters at the best of times. So when BIG voices tell you how to do it… it takes a brave voice to say, “No!”
  2. Behaviour is often about teachers in the classroom and what they do. You can have the best teachers in the world, but if the systems and support are weak the most they can do fight the system and eventually fail. Where is the learning around adapting systems to differing contexts? Where is the sharing of knowledge for learning over the praising of outliers? Where is the nuance? So often, what is successful in a school can not be replicated for so many reasons… What I mean by this is we love a hero or a villain and we look at schools and behaviour very much through these tinted glasses. This creates pockets of – Oh this is how to do it… BUT its a few schools with a host of context different to others schools. We look for a blueprint for success when there isn’t one. I have worked in the Secondary, PRU and Primary sector – as well as Specialist Provision. They would all need different adaptions of the same vision. For example – That children are safe, happy and learning. The echo chambers are far too broad and I often hear people shouting loud about behaviour who have never worked in a Special School, a PRU or a Secondary. In fact quite often A School! They often still tell you how wrong you are and how their idea is the right one. Ultimately, the only people who matter when it comes to behaviour in our schools will be the people who can make the change that is needed.
  3. School leaders are under huge pressure NOT to suspend or exclude. They are made to feel like the problem… you didn’t do enough. You didn’t follow a graduated response… you haven’t done X or Y. This is thrown at them by people who are not running a school. This is a major problem. Leaders must listen to their teachers, their community… but who is listening to School Leaders?
  4. The education system is far too fragmented to reach a consensus. If we could hold the system to a joint accountability then we have much to mould. The reality is… it feels like everyone is in it for themselves. Why should I care that another school is struggling with behaviour when I have got a precarious balance in my school? I think education has become very polarised over the past decade or more (I wonder why?). There is no collective will, or desire to be one education system. I think behaviour can be tackled locally, but if we want to take behaviour off the national topic of debate; if we want a bigger impact – we need a far more national vision with a proper backbone of support. We need a brave government who can at one level engage with the profession and at another… earn its respect through understanding the multiple challenges a modern school is trying to overcome.

As I said in my book Lessons from the Head’s Office:

‘I believe that inclusion is not a free-for-all mishmash of acceptance. As school leaders we have to be very clear on what is acceptable and not acceptable in our schools. We owe this to the children, staff and community. It comes down to the rules that we put in place and making sure everyone understands then and rigorously adheres to them once they are set – otherwise what is the point of setting them in the first place?’

Chapter 4 – On Inclusion

At a time of recruitment challenge we need individuals to want to be teachers and teachers to want to be head teachers. Therefore, the fact that we even have to debate their safety makes this an absolute priority area for any government. That’s what we need. This is not about individuals but about a national vision for how we want our schools to operate safely. The heart of this issue isn’t what a behaviour Zsar did, or didn’t do. It is not about school leaders with different approaches to behaviour – it is about the clarity of the behaviour system we operate in within our National Schools. It is about morality, inclusion and the cornerstone for any educational debate. You should not have to be seen as ‘hard line’ if you suspend or exclude when you have followed your clearly set out vision and rules.

Leaders should not feel guilty for making the tough decision to suspend, or exclude. They should be held to account for the decision but trusted on it.

There is little trust. This is made worse as we fight teacher to teacher over this very issue.

I think this is where the biggest battle ground rages. Some leaders are sick of being told that they need to continue making concessions for individuals who cause huge issues within their school. Whilst I have sat on inclusion panels where the first ‘F Off’ has resulted in suspension and there is not a single bit of evidence that any support was ever in place for someone who was clearly struggling before the event. Deep down school leaders are sick of being told what to do about behaviour by people who have never led a school, or more importantly – their school…

I think that the truth is, the reason we don’t have more clarity nationally about what is acceptable, or not, is the only people that really understand the problems are the school leaders and teachers who are under constant fire dealing with behaviour fallout on a day to day basis.

Most schools do go above and beyond when they could follow the current suspension and exclusion process. Suspension and exclusion figure would be far higher than there are now if schools did not try to be inclusive. We do have a problem though… 42% of teachers (Teacher Tapp) make behaviour their number one priority. We have to get on top of behaviour nationally… not, school by school. This may be where Tom has faced his biggest barrier – we can influence, draw up our sides of the argument – but how do we make sustainable change in the system? Rallying cries to a cause are usually conflict-ridden which probably best describes our current debate on the subject. We need a place where we can safely discuss behaviour without feeling that we are gang fighting behind the Science Block.

*I am sure that Tom Bennet didn’t name himself ‘Behaviour Zsar’ and it’s one of those titles given to either set you up to fail, or look ridiculous.