Views on behaviour in schools worsened in latest survey

Posted on August 31, 2025 by John Howson

It is rare for the DfE to publish research on a Saturday. This week it did so, presumably to allow the Secretary of State to do the rounds of the Sunday morning political shows. National Behaviour Survey: findings from academic year 2023 to 2024 The focus from Labour with the media seems initially to have been on attendance rather than behaviour, but that has changed with the announcement of behaviour and attendance hubs.

The reason may well be the deterioration in views about behaviour in schools reported in the last survey data collected in May 2024 when compared with the March 2023 data. It is difficult to remember that the data from May 2024 was collected under the previous Conservative government. (Figures in the table are percentages.)

QUESTION	GROUP	Mar-23	Dec-23	Mar-24	May-24
MY SCHOOL CALM & ORDERLY	Leadership	84	93	85	81
	Teachers	57	71	60	53
SAFE PLACE FOR PUPILS	Teachers	95	99	96	96
	Leadership	82	93	88	85
PUPILS RESPECT EACH OTHER	Leadership	88	96	90	88
PUPILS ENJOY SCHOOL	ALL PUPILS	75	81	76	73
FEEL SAFE	ALL PUPILS	57	65	61	57
BELONG	ALL PUPILS	43	45	53	49
PUPIL BEHAVIOUR VG or G	Leadership	82	90	81	72
	Teachers	55	69	55	46
	Pupils	43	43	35	40

In many key questions, such as whether the school is orderly and calm, and whether pupil behaviour is good or very good, the positive percentages have seen significant declines. It is not surpassing that leaders see pupils as better behaved than either their teachers or their pupils. It would be interesting to see how long those school leaders concerned about pupil behaviour had been in post. I doubt many long serving leaders would admit to anything other than schools where pupil behaviour is good.

It would also be interesting to know whether the 12% of pupils that said’ things were thrown in ‘mist lesson’, (albeit not aggressively) were being taught in schools were behaviour was perceived as not ‘good’ or ‘very good’.

Why might views on behaviour have dropped in the last year of the Conservative government? Might the issues with teacher shortages have finally begun to have an effect? Was any effect from teacher shortages compounded by deteriorating staffing levels and greater pupil numbers in secondary schools? Again, it would have been interesting to see some breakdown of the data by school types; free school meal percentages and number of pupils with EHCP. If the behaviour hubs are to have any effects, these are the types of questions that need to be asked.

A question might also be asked about the wisdom of axing Teaching Schools. The current government could do with a comprehensive and cost-effective professional development policy rather than leaving it to individual schools and those MATs that see it as a priority.

Earlier this month I wrote a post about discipline in schools Is discipline worse in schools? | John Howson The evidence for that post came from exclusions. As a result, I wasn’t unduly worried. This new data raises more cause for concern.

Are teachers losing control of classrooms?

Posted on July 2, 2025 by John Howson

A recurrent theme running through the recent DfE’s ‘Working lives of teachers and leaders: wave 3 Summary report November 2024’ Working lives of teachers and leaders: wave 3 – GOV.UK is that teachers seem less happy about pupil behaviour than in the previous reports.

In this report, 44% of leavers from teaching cited pupil behaviour as a reason, up from 32% in the previous study and a statically significant change compared to the 2024 study. Not yet at the level of ‘high workload’, cited by 84% this year, up from 80% last year and the top reason in both years.

Nor is it yet at the 47% level of those citing government initiatives/policy changes, although it is worth noting that eight per cent fewer leavers cited this reason this year compared with last year.

Other pressures and stress are still also at the top of leavers reasons for quitting, but dissatisfaction with pay, never near the top of the list of reasons fell by five per centage points to 34%. No doubt both the government and the professional associations will be looking closely at that figure as will be those advising the School Teachers Review Body. Conditions of service seem more of a concern than pay at this point in time.

The point about pupil behaviour is reinforced in the table showing the views about discipline deteriorating among both teachers and school leaders completing the survey. In the 2022 survey 18% of teachers and 5% of leaders said that pupil behaviour was either ‘poor’ or ‘very poor’. By the 2024 survey the reporting levels were 27% and 8%,

It would be interesting to know more about his change. Is it across all teachers and leaders; worse in the secondary sector than primary schools and what, if any, role has increased absence rates played in deteriorating views of pupil behaviour?

Perhaps more worrying was the findings that although

“around eight-in-ten (79%) leaders with teaching responsibilities reported that they felt always or mostly supported to deal with disruptive behaviour (consistent with the 80% in 2023 but lower than the 85% in 2022).”

But those bearing the brunt of classroom teaching, teachers with teaching responsibilities were less positive,

“with 49% reporting feeling always or mostly supported with dealing with disruptive behaviour (lower than the 52% in 2023 and 58% in 2022).”

Not surprisingly, there have been declines in those teachers and school leaders viewing classroom behaviour as very good over the same period.

Is this change a consequence of the deteriorating staffing situation in secondary schools in recent year, or is it a reflection of the debate about mobile phone use in the classroom? It would be interesting to know more about the types of school and ages of the teachers reporting the deterioration in pupil behaviour to see how widespread the decline is among teachers.

At these levels this is certainly a flashing amber light, but not yet a full-blown crisis, but all concerned will need to understand the reasons why classroom behaviour is deteriorating.

Opportunity for All?

Posted on March 28, 2022 by John Howson

The government published it Education White Paper today. They didn’t make it easy to find the whole document, but it can be accessed at Opportunity for all – Strong schools with great teachers for your child (publishing.service.gov.uk) For younger readers, it is called a White Paper because when such documents first appeared they had white covers. Later when documents with suggestions and not proposals appeared they were called Green Papers as they had a green cover.

Enough of the history, although it is worth looking back to the last education White Paper. It promised to look at returning in-year admissions to local authorities, but nothing happened. This time on page 53 there is a graphic that just says LAs will ‘manage’ in-year admissions. It is not clear where the management role will have sanctions to back it up. I hope so. If local authorities are provided with ‘backstop’ powers to direct in-year admissions that will be a step forward and should be put into place as soon as possible. The intention is summarised in paragraph 163. As a final safety net to cover rare circumstances where collaborative working breaks down, we will consult on a new backstop power for local authorities to direct trusts to admit children. Trusts would have the right to appeal this to the Schools Adjudicator. Please start the consultation as soon as possible – Time for Jacob’s Law | John Howson (wordpress.com)

The news in the White Paper that local authorities can run academy trusts is to be welcomed as correcting one of the wrongs of Mr Gove’s original 2010 Academies Act. However, in the spirit of strong schools, will schools in existing academy chains be able to make a transfer either to another chain or to a local authority trust, and will local authorities be able to include schools outside their boundaries in a Trust, such as Swindon schools in a Wiltshire trust or Blackpool schools in a Lancashire Trust? Will there need to be Chinese walls between an LA Trust officers and other officers with powers to direct Trust, as over admissions?

The White Paper downgrades Regional School Commissioners to Regional Directors, a less threatening title to local democracy. However, the amount of power local authorities can wield will depend upon funding. At least local trusts should have the same financial powers as the present trusts to manage central costs.

Perhaps the biggest change in policy terms in the White Paper is the ending of the freedom of parents to control the education of their children as paragraph 77 make clear, the government will also introduce legislation to establish a register for children not in school, exploring how this data should be used by local authorities and multi-agency teams to undertake their duties and support children’s education. The 1870 Act required parents to educate their children. The 2022 White Paper now also requires them to tell the authorities how they are doing that education. Will the next step be to ensure that all children receive high quality education of id the white Paper’s real time ‘Opportunity for all in state funded schools?

Overall, the White Paper is not as dramatic as it was thought it might be.

Teacher Conduct: maintaining high standards

Posted on February 22, 2021 by John Howson

With little by way of statistics to consider, I thought that I would pay a return visit to the Teacher Regulation Agency site, and see whether they were being kept busy dealing with cases of teacher misconduct. So far, in 2021, there have been 21 judgements reported by panels appointed by the Agency, of which 6 resulted in ‘No Oder’ being made, and the remainder in ‘Prohibition Notices’ being served on teachers.

Despite the huge imbalance between men and women in the teaching profession, almost exactly the same number of men and women have been the subject of hearing so far in 2021. However, four men compared with two women have had ‘No Order’ outcomes. Although many of these involved behaviour deemed unacceptable, in relation to the teacher standards, the level of infringement and the past history of the teacher seemed to justify the panel making a ‘No Order’ decision that was supported by the Secretary of State.

Teachers need to be aware that their private life, and who they live with matters in maintaining appropriate professional standards. There were a number of ‘Prohibition Orders’ made this year as a result of a teacher having a sex offender at their premises, and not reporting the fact to the school authorities.

A number of teachers also failed to either keep up their safeguarding training or to report incidents where a vulnerable child might have been at risk and as a result these teachers incurred a ban from teaching, including a headteacher.

A criminal conviction for an offence including a ‘Class A’ drug also lead to a ‘Prohibition Order’ against a teacher. Teachers also need to ensure that they don’t conceal incidents in their employment record when applying for a teaching post.

Sadly, the most common reason for banning a person from the teaching profession remains the development by a teacher of a relationship with a pupil or former pupil. This has been the most common reason so far in 2021 for male teachers being banned. In one case, the incident was ‘historic’ and related to events more than a decade ago and at a different school to where the teacher was working when the incident came to light.

Interestingly, there seem to be fewer contested hearings this year. It may well be that the length of time since the commission of the behaviour cited plus the weight of evidence makes it no longer worth a teacher contesting a hearing where case law would suggest the outcome was a ‘Prohibition Order’. Indeed, one suspects that many of these teachers will have left the profession for other work after being dismissed by their school.

I have long maintained that, if there are going to be these exacting standards for professional life that a teacher must adhere to, then the quid pro quo should be that the term ‘teacher’ is a reserved occupation. The fact that anyone can call themselves a teacher, presumably even if banned by the Teacher Regulation Agency, is an anomaly that needs correcting.

Isolation poor use of funding?

Posted on November 14, 2018 by John Howson

Regular readers of this blog will notice there has been something of an absence of posts during the first part of this month. This means that there has been no discussion of interesting reports such as the one by the Institute of Fiscal studies into how the distribution of funding has changed over time. https://www.ifs.org.uk/uploads/publications/bns/BN242.pdf That report makes for an interesting read, especially when compared with books about education funding written forty years ago, such as ‘depriving the deprived’ in which Prof Tony Travers took part as one of the team investigating education spending over the course of a year in Newham, in the context of the then government financing of education.

However, the education story that most moved me to return to this blog was the one from the BBC about how children can spend long periods in isolation https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-46044394 There are a group of children that a decade ago would have been locked up under Labour’s draconian policy of the period. This was a policy whether it was articulated or not that took several thousand young people off the streets and out of education and into Young Offenders Institutions.

With fewer young people coming into the criminal justice system these days, despite the increase in knife crime, it stands to reason that schools will retain more of these young people and will find their behaviour challenging. Behaviour management has always been the top concern of many schools and the teachers that work within them, despite the shift in funding. As schools were forced to focus on outputs and achievements and less on their social responsibilities, it seems obvious that some schools will look to the greatest good for the greatest number and methods that will allow teachers to teach as many pupils as possible by removing disruptive influences on the learning process.

What was missing for the BBC article was whether isolation was really a room on the road to exclusion or whether pupils were either rehabilitated back into mainstream education or moved to more appropriate settings. If I were a youngster forced to face the wall – albeit without the dunce’s cap of Victorian times – I might see rebelling further as a way to liberation and exclusion: anything might be better than such isolation.

With secondary schools often belonging to many different academy trusts or acting alone, it is difficult to see what body can manage the local solution to this problem. Next week at Oxfordshire’s Cabinet, I have a question – put before the BBC story – about how many pupils each secondary school has brought to the local Fair Access Panel over the past few years. This is to see how the balance of permanent exclusions is playing out across the county. I doubt that the measures announced recently by the DfE in relation to under-performing schools https://www.gov.uk/government/news/government-sets-out-plans-to-support-underperforming-schools will help tackle this problem: what is needed is concerted local action managed by a body with the long-term interests of all young people in an area. Now, I wonder what they might be.

The responsibility of us all

Posted on April 14, 2018 by John Howson

The following item was reported in several newspapers earlier this week, including The Daily Telegraph https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/04/11/child-stabbings-rise-63pc-amid-disturbing-trend-younger-knife/

NHS data shows a 63% increase over five years in the number of children aged 16 and under who have been treated for stab wounds in England. The largest increase (85%) between 2011/12 and 2016/17 was among 15-year-olds. The overall rise in the number of stabbings across England during the same period was 14%.

Now there may not be a correlation, but 15-year olds, and 15-year old young men in particular, have the highest rate of exclusions from our schools. After falling for many years, exclusions are also on the rise across much of England.

As those that know my life history will understand these two sets of statistics and particularly the one about knife crime have an especial resonance with me, as it was a teenager that stabbed me over 40 years ago in a rare act of serious and unprovoked violence that just happened to take place in a classroom in front of a group of children. As a result, knife crime has always been of special concern to me. I do view the recent upturn as a worrying trend.

Oxfordshire’s Cabinet will be discussing the County’s Education Scrutiny Committee report on exclusions in the county at their meeting next Tuesday. You can read the report in the Cabinet papers for 17^th April 2018 at www.oxfordshire.gov.uk at item 6. I always hope that young people engaged fully in education will be less likely to commit these acts of knife crime.

I am also sure that cutbacks in both the Youth Service budget and that of the Youth Offending Teams across the county, along with revisions to Probation, probably haven’t helped in the prevention of such crimes. As ever, cutbacks have consequences further down the line when the money is being well spent.

In this case, changes in the nature of the curriculum probably may also have played a part since practical subjects have also too often been replaced with additional classroom time that can make life more challenging for many teachers working with pupils that don’t appreciate their efforts.

I believe there needs to be a concerted effort on the part of all responsible to once again recognise the need for behaviour management and to do everything to research and investigate the causes of exclusions in their school. Generally, persistent disruptive behaviour is given as the reasons for the largest number of exclusions. Working out how to reduce these exclusions should help allow resources to then be focused on dealing with other reasons why pupils are excluded.

It doesn’t matter whether schools are maintained, voluntary added, academies or free schools, they all have a responsibility to tackle this problem of school children carrying and using knives. Teaching Schools, National Leaders of Education and of Governance and those responsible for both training new entrants into the profession as well as designing continuing professional development will also need to ensure that they continue to make behaviour management strategies a high priority.

Breakfast Clubs good: but not for all?

Posted on November 4, 2016 by John Howson

A coterie of key research organisations have collaborated in a small scale study of the effects of breakfast clubs in schools. The results of their research have been published today. https://www.ifs.org.uk/publications/8714

The headline on the IFS press release is ‘Breakfast clubs work their magic in disadvantaged English schools’. However, embedded in the text of the press summary is the observation that: “while relatively disadvantaged students (those eligible for free school meals) were more likely to attend the breakfast clubs, the intervention was more effective at raising the attainment of pupils from less disadvantaged backgrounds (those not eligible for free school meals). This suggests that support for school breakfast clubs might not reduce socio-economic gaps in pupil attainment.” For many this will be a disappointing outcome as it is always hoped that the breakfast will have benefits on learning: perhaps the results take time to trickle down or the sample of these pupils in the study produced this finding.

However, this finding raises the issue of cost effectiveness of this type of intervention. The report states that “gains in pupil achievement were delivered at relatively low cost. Dividing the costs by all pupils in the school, the intervention cost just £11.86 per eligible pupil over the course of the academic year. It also required 2.6 hours of staff time per eligible pupil per year. It should be noted, however, that the breakfast club take-up rates were relatively low – the average school’s take-up rate was between 13% and 52%. An increase in take-up would lead to higher costs, but also potentially higher impact on attainment.” There are, of course, other benefits, two of which are detailed below.

There did seem to be a positive gain in terms of attendance with “absence rates falling by almost one half-day per year. The effect was particularly strong for authorised absences, which are primarily due to ill health. This suggests that the breakfast club might have improved pupil health, although we did not find strong evidence to support this when looking at the average Body Mass Index of students in Year 6.” Sadly, late arrivals were not significantly encouraged by the offer of a before-school breakfast club to seemingly improve their arrival times. This is a disappointment, as it might have been hoped that the breakfast club would have helped encourage both attendance and an improvement in time-keeping. Perhaps the research didn’t cover a long enough period or the marketing to parents didn’t reach the groups that might benefit the most.

The other finding that teachers will welcome and that might be enough to encourage more schools down the road of breakfast clubs was that “Behaviour and concentration in the classroom improved substantially as a result of the breakfast club provision, suggesting that a better classroom learning environment is an important mechanism through which the intervention might improve attainment. The improvement in teachers’ assessments of their classroom learning environment was equivalent to moving a classroom from average ratings of behaviour and concentration to ratings in the top quarter of the schools in our sample.” Food aids learning, improves concentration and reduces bad behaviour. Great news for teachers.

Stupidity and criminality: a fine line?

Posted on September 4, 2015 by John Howson

The news that a teenage boy has been placed on the police national database for sharing a photograph of himself unclothed via an app he expected to destroy the photograph within seconds of its receipt raises interesting questions. Firstly, there is the issue of what is indecent? Had he taken a photo using the app on a nudist beach and shared it with someone else on the same beach would it have been indecent. Secondly, was the school suffering from large numbers of pupils sharing such photographs of others in a manner that was disrupting the life of the school, even if the photographs were taken outside of the school? If this was the case, were pupils told that taking and sending such photos, even on a self-destruct basis, was a breach of school rules?

Even if all the above were true, the boy seems to have been stupid. The person who stopped his photo self-destructing and then passed it on to others gratuitously seems to be much more culpable, as was anyone then passing it on to another person. However, what if the boy had painted an image of himself in a life class and then photographed it? Would that constitute a representation of art or an indecent image, even if forwarded to a third party?

The fact that the police officer appears to have said that she had been told by her superior to take action suggests this might not have been an isolated incident. Even so, did it merit what appears to be a deterrent sentence of inclusion as intelligence on the police computer with all that entails for enhanced DBS checks? Without knowing the full facts, it is difficult to answer that question other than in the abstract.

There was a suggestion during the coalition government that all of these teenage transgressions be wiped from the record at eighteen if there had been no further mis-behaviour. After all, most teenagers do silly things, some of which are not legal. I would support at least right the of an individual to have the ability to ask a court to take such action as a way forward. Presumably, the school will have to decide whether it includes reference to this event in any support it provides on an application form for a job, apprenticeship or university place?

The law does seem to be bearing down hard on teenagers at present even though I suspect that deterrent sentences have less effect on teenagers that on adults, as young people often act before thinking. In this case it raises the question of where does the criminal law operate in relation to institutions? I suspect the answer is that the rule of law is paramount and must always take precedence over the rules of an institution. However, there seems to be an issue of what happens with cases that fail to meet the charging threshold and are left to junior police officers to decide the outcome and consequences for the individual in such circumstances where they cannot have either a jury or a bench of magistrates decide on guilt or innocence. That seems to me to pose big risks as we have seen with the use of unfettered police bail in the past. It is why I have never favoured district judges sitting alone to decide on the issue of guilt or innocence except in the most clear cut motoring cases.

Grammar schools do not have a monopoly on good order and discipline

Posted on August 29, 2015 by John Howson

The piece by Sir Michael Wilshaw in today’s Daily Telegraph goes a long way to explain why I started life as a Liberal and became a founder member of the Liberal Democrats. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/11828052/Sir-Michael-Wilshaw-Any-head-worth-their-salt-should-stand-up-and-ban-mobiles.html

It is not that I am against his basic tenant that schools needed to be places of order and control, where every student is both encouraged and able to develop to the best of their abilities. Indeed, I do think that the degree of order and control expected in schools should be ingrained in pupils so as to extend beyond the school gates to include the manner in which young people go to and from school and I would certainly ban mobile phones from any classroom where I was a teacher.

Rather, my concerns are that the Chief inspector seems to equate the ideal standards of behaviour with grammar schools and by inference at least that teachers in other state schools have lower standards that Ofsted must inspect out of existence.

I am not sure what the business editor the Daily Telegraph thought if he read the piece over his cornflakes, but I wonder if he will get a call from the CBI on Tuesday asking where the skills businesses want such as self-reliance and confidence are to be found in the Wilshaw world of pupils sitting in serried rows and bowing and scraping whenever an adult enters the classroom. As a teacher I never saw the point of that unless the person entering was a really distinguished visitor. As the doors were at the back of the room, any class I was teaching didn’t notice a visitor until they were well into the room anyway, by which time standing up waste just a waste of time. Presumably Michael Wilshaw would make the wearing of academic gowns mandatory to distinguish teachers from teaching assistants and other support staff, even though they are all vital members of the team in a school.

In the grammar school I attended there were lots of examples of behaviour Michael Wilshaw won’t accept. At one point the sixth form excluded a teacher from a lesson by lining up the desks between the window and the door to prevent him entering; leaving him stranded in the corridor. At another time pupils set fire to waste bins in the playground. On the other hand the school had an outstanding record for drama and sport. I don’t know what HMI thought of the school because in those days reports weren’t made public; publication only started in the 1980s.

In my experience, as a pupil, a teacher and teacher trainer, it is the quality of the staff that makes a school. That is the reason why I spend so much time worrying about teacher supply. We need teaching to be a profession of choice that attracts high quality staff at all levels. It is in schools with poor quality staff that the invisible line between order and chaos edges ever closer to chaos. The same happens when teacher turnover in a school rises too quickly, as often happens when there are teacher shortages and plenty of job opportunities.

Mr Wilshaw is right to remind us that not all learning is fun, but wrong to select the examples he chooses. I recall a great lesson by one of my students teaching tables with a beanbag being thrown around the class. Answer the question and you got the chance to ask the next one to another pupil. I guess you can do the same with computers today and monitor where pupils regularly don’t give the correct answer. It was a stimulating learning experience and the pupils knew their tables.

If the Daily Telegraph piece is part of the Tory attempt to bring back grammar schools, then they should think again. The world has moved a long way from that of the 1940s, even if the Conservatives haven’t. Education is a right for all and not the privilege for the few.

Conflicting evidence on pupil behaviour?

Posted on August 5, 2013 by John Howson

Recently I pointed out that there had been a slight increase in the level of exclusions from schools, particularly in the primary sector. It therefore came as a bit of surprise to discover the results of a survey showing that teachers in general think pupil behaviour is improving. The data for the latter comes from the NfER Voice Survey and specifically the questions asked on behalf of the DfE. The analysis can be found at: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/210297/DFE-RR304.pdf

In view of the fact that half the profession is now under thirty-five the responses by age groups were especially interesting. Teachers in the younger age groups we less likely to report that behaviour was ‘very good’, only 20% of those under 25, and 21% of NQTs did so, compared with 40% of teachers aged over 50. Now the latter category will have included a number of heads and other school leaders, so perhaps it is not surprising that they think behaviour is better than do relatively new teachers. 88% of those teachers over 50 agreed that they felt equipped to manage pupil behaviour compared with just 73% of the under-25s, and 63% of NQTs; a worrying low figure for those just out of training. 37% of young teachers didn’t feel parents respected a teachers’ authority to discipline a pupil, compared with just 20% of teachers over 50 who felt that way. NQTs were also less likely than other teachers to use force either to remove a pupil from a classroom or to break up a fight. Interestingly, male teachers stated that they were also less likely to use force that did female teachers.

Compared with a previous survey in 2008 there was an increase of seven percentage points in teachers seeing behaviour as ‘good’ or ‘very good’. As this has been a period of stable staffing in schools, it may well be that after a period of turmoil pupils in general are becoming better behaved. Alternatively, acceptance of low level disruption is now such that after a few years what is acceptable becomes different to standards expected by new entrants to the profession. I suspect that there may be a bit of both at work in the responses.

Nevertheless ‘persistent disruptive behaviour’ is the main reason for pupils to be excluded from most schools so there still remains a bit of a mis-match between the two sets of statistics. I think in this case I am more likely to accept the evidence of the exclusions, based as they are on actual events rather than the answers to hypothetical questions posed as part of a survey. But it may be that a small number of pupils spoil the good behaviour shown by the majority.

However, I am sure most schools are full of better behaved pupils than when I started teaching in 1971. In those days, the key task for a new teacher in the area where I taught was keeping the pupils contained within the classroom. As ever, the better the lesson the more chance one had of achieving that result; only then could teaching and learning begin.

John Howson

Education and the numbers that affect what happens

Tag Archives: behaviour