It’s not helpful to student teachers and NQTs to offer simplistic explanations and remedies for the problem of behaviour in schools. If it was simple and straightforward to sort out, it would not have been such a persistent problem over the past hundred and fifty years (see the ‘Unhelpful‘ page for some examples). There is research evidence which points to a wide range of variables influencing behaviour in schools. My own interest in behaviour in schools focuses to a considerable extent on the role played by the teaching and classroom management skills of the individual teacher. I worked for 19 years in a ‘challenging’ inner-city school in Manchester. Although we had quite a lot of pupils who found learning difficult, or who were not passionately committed to doing well in all their school subjects, some teachers were much more successful than others in establishing a calm and controlled working atmosphere in their classroom. This was one of the reasons behind the evolution of the 10 point scale. I could walk student teachers past the same group of pupils who would be at level 10 with some teachers, and levels 1-3 with others). Elliott (2009) has also focused on the role of teacher skills in improving classroom climate. Elliott argues that in spite of the complexity of the factors influencing classroom climate, it is the skills of the individual classroom teacher in teaching, and in managing pupil behaviour, that are the most influential determinant of the levels of control in the classroom. (Perhaps unsurprisingly, many of the teaching assistants that I interviewed pointed out the impact of the individual teacher on classroom climate).

However, others, notably the former Chief Inspector of Schools, Sir Michael Wilshaw, have tended to stress the importance of school leadership, and the role that heads and senior management teams play in establishing (what I call), ‘the right to learn’ in schools (Wilshaw, 2014, 2015). My own research at Robert Clack School Dagenham certainly persuaded me that a head who could wholeheartedly support all members of staff, make them feel confident that they would be supported, and get them all to act in a concerted and consistent manner to improve pupil behaviour, could have a major impact on standards of behaviour (Haydn, 2002). Although the myth of the ‘heroic leader’ model has been questioned by some (Kulz, 2017), the Bennett review of behaviour in English schools also argued that school leaders who are able to ‘create a culture’ (usefully defined as ‘the way we do things around here’) – that is understood and subscribed to by the whole school community, can have a big positive impact on standards of behaviour (Bennett, 2017).

Another important variable is the nature of the school intake. Some have argued that ‘poverty is no excuse’ and pointed out that some schools have achieved great success with lots of pupils from poor socio-economic backgrounds. The issue is not poverty per se. Of course lots of pupils from poor backgrounds are clever and do very well at school. The problem is where pupils have not been well socialised, who have behaviour and literacy problems before they even start school, and who have parents who are not committed to the general project of education, and do not support schools and teachers in their efforts to do their best for all the pupils in their care. Peter Mortimore, former director of the Institute of Education and a leading member of the school effectiveness and improvement movement points out that ‘Whilst some schools can succeed against the odds, the possibility of them all doing so, year in and year out, still appears remote, given that the long-term patterning of educational inequality has been strikingly consistent throughout the history of public education in most countries… We must be aware of the dangers of basing a national strategy for change on the efforts of outstanding individuals working in exceptional circumstances (Mortimore, 1999).  For a full version of the article, go to ‘Writing on classroom wall was ignored’, in ‘Links to other useful resources’.

Another variable is the quality of initial teacher education related to helping new teachers to deal effectively with pupil behaviour. The DfE’s annual review of NQT feedback on the quality of their training to manage behaviour (now, sadly no longer operating) reported wide variations in the extent to which NQTs felt that they had been well prepared in this facet of their teaching, both in terms of the quality of the training, and the amount of time devoted to this facet of their induction into the profession. Similarly, some schools have better whole-school support and development systems than others (Bennett, 2017, Ofsted, 2011).

The quality of pre-school education is also an influence on how well pupils adapt to life in classrooms (Davis-Kean, 2005). A fairly recent BBC report noted that many pupils were arriving at primary school in nappies, having not been toilet trained by their parents or carers (BBC, 2018). In 2010, the Children’s commissioner reported that around 50% of pupils starting primary school were not ‘school ready’ (Atkinson, 2010). Such pupils are not spread evenly around English schools. It is not ‘a level playing field’. Although people sometimes get fed up with comparisons with Finland, they do have free, universal high quality nursery education, provided by highly qualified teachers (See Education Finland, 2019, and Haywoode, 2014 for a brief summary).

Some commentators have argued that the quality and appropriateness of the school curriculum has an influence on pupil behaviour and attitudes to learning, going back, at least, to the work of Lawrence Stenhouse (1970), going through to John Elliott’s work on curriculum change (Elliott, 1998), through to recent Ofsted concern with the curriculum (Ofsted, 2019). This of course is complicated by the fact that there are different ideas about what constitutes a high quality and appropriate curriculum.

Another variable which has come into prominence over the past few years is the approach that schools take to pupils who are  in one way or another ‘difficult’ and liable to cause problems or/and exert a negative influence on the school’s record in public examinations. Some schools have proved to be more ethical than others in this respect. Some school leaders who have been lauded by politicians have subsequently been found to have achieved success by dubious and unethical means (Adams, 2019, Education Policy Institute, 2019, Nye and Thompson, 2018, Weale, 2019).

One other variable might be mentioned: the level of pupil peer support promoted by the culture of the school. A study by Saito et al. (2015) in Japanese junior high schools analysed factors that led to children’s positive behaviours at a junior high school in Japan, which experienced a dramatic turnaround after implementing school reform using Lesson Study for Learning Community (LSLC). The abstract of the paper states that ‘In this study, the results of a mixed-methods analysis show that if children receive psychological support they are likely to psychologically support others and, similarly, those who receive concrete help tend to offer concrete help to others. To foster learning cultures in which this happens, it is critical to engage the entire school in appropriate changes: for example, teachers’ positive attitudes towards children and learning are important factors encouraging children to support others’ (Saito et al., 2015: 1). In the UK similar patterns can be seen in a small number of schools who have placed great emphasis on encouraging pupils to support and ‘look out’ for each other. The Michaela School in London gets a lot of press attention for being ‘the strictest school in Britain’, but less attention is drawn to the school’s emphasis on pupils being kind to their peers and others. School 21 in London also gives prominence to moral and ethical values and the virtues of kindness to others (School 21, 2019), and Wright Robinson School in Manchester has won plaudits for the role of pupil collaboration and peer support in ‘turning round’ the fortunes of the school (Lee-Potter, 2018).

This is not a comprehensive list of variables that influence standards of pupil behaviour, I’ m sure there are many others, but it does make the point that there is more to it than just how good the head and the teachers are. Even though I think that the classroom skills of teachers are very important in securing good pupil behaviour, I am aware that there is more to it than that. It is further complicated by the fact that there is no consensus on the comparative importance of the various factors, or on what constitutes ‘best practice’. So when former Chief Inspector Sir Michael Wilshaw suggested that ‘It (managing pupil behaviour) isn’t rocket science. Children need to know the rules and teachers need to know they will be supported in enforcing them’ (Wilshaw, 2014), he is suggesting a simplistic solution to a difficult and complex problem.