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.

Is discipline worse in schools?

Posted on August 12, 2025 by John Howson

It was interesting to hear Laura McInerney and Tom Bennett on the ‘Today’ programme on BBC Radio 4 this morning discussing whether or not behaviour was worse in schools these days than in the past. Both are experienced commentators, and Tom led a review in 2017 for the then government, about behaviour in schools. It is also interesting to see the BBC taking an interest in schools. The World at One last Sunday (also BBC Radio 4) devoted the whole of the programme to an analysis of the SEND issue. Interestingly, there was no government spokesperson available on Sunday, so they had to make do with the chair of the Education Select Committee.

The discussion this morning was around whether or not behaviour had worsened in schools, and if so, why? The usual suspects, covid and mobile phones were trotted out in support of discipline being worse in schools, along with families facing multiple challenges, but there were precious few facts.

One way of measuring the state of discipline in schools is by looking at the number of permanent exclusions each year by schools. The largest single reason each year for these exclusions is always ‘persistent disruptive behaviour’. So, this might be seen as a good proxy measure for how schools are faring in relation to discipline in the classrooms. Of course, this measure doesn’t pick up low level disruptive behaviour, but it is reasonable to assume that there is a correlation between the different levels of behaviour in schools.

Looking back over the past 30 years, the level of recorded permanent exclusions was 10,440 in 1998/99. The level fell to 5,040 in 2010/11. In the latest year, 2023/24 there were 10,885 permanent exclusions. On the face of it, discipline is getting worse again, but is only back to levels last seen at the end of the last century.

I would like to suggest to causes not mentioned on the ‘Today’ programme: teacher supply and school funding. Is there a causal relationship between the fact that permanent exclusions were at their lowest when schools were fully staffed, and had experienced a period of several years of significant funding by government. By contract, permanent exclusions seem to rise when there is difficulty staffing schools, and when funding is less than might be expected in a civilised society.

So, is the answer as simple as proper funding and staffing if you want fewer exclusions? The age and experience of the teaching force might also play a part. More experienced teachers, as I can testify from personal experience, are much less likely to face discipline issues then new entrants, especially if they are unqualified.

In the latest statistics on exclusions, 13 of the 25 local authorities with the lowest rates of permanent exclusions were London boroughs. This just adds more evidence to my thesis that if the rest of the country were funded like London, schooling would be in a much better place across the country. Although I was also pleased to see Oxfordshire in 10^th place overall for the lowest rate of permanent exclusions.

Reducing exclusions from schools

Posted on May 9, 2025 by John Howson

Reading the Youth Justice Board Bulletin this week alerted me to a new publication about a piece of research into exclusions by schools led by the University of Oxford. Equity-by-Design_Excluded-Lives.pdf The report contains the following in its conclusion

‘Addressing inequality in education requires a radical rethink that shifts the focus from accountability on school academic performance to accountability for the inclusion and wellbeing of the child in balance with achievement and attainment. We believe that ‘Equity by Design: Our Children, Our Responsibility’ contributes to this essential process’. (page 8)

The report also notes that ‘The challenge for schools in England and the current Labour government in its policy development is how to address issues of equity and inclusion in schools in a period of multiple pressures on school leaders and staff, their pupils, and available resources. These pressures are reflected in high and rising levels of exclusion that disproportionately affect vulnerable and marginalised children and their communities.’

All worthy stuff, but the lack of a focus on staffing in schools, especially in view of the interactions with adults being the most common reasons for an exclusion was a bit of a surprise to me.

‘Training from Initial Teacher Education/Initial Teacher Training to the National Professional Qualification for Headship should address inclusive and relational practice and its implications for teaching and learning, behaviour policies, and pastoral care, as relevant to the context, role, and stage of professional development of staff.’

I found their conclusions on staffing wordier that useful. I hope they meant that all staff need to be trained to be aware of circumstances that might escalate into an exclusion, and that training should be tailored to the circumstances of the school. It is important for schools to identify what percentage of exclusions result from interactions with non-teaching staff that don’t seem to rate a mention in the report.

Still, the support in the report for a collaborative approach that involved local authorities did cheer me up.

‘Local area collaborative infrastructure models.

In order to tackle what we identified as the somewhat fragmented middle tier, policy development should encourage and enable trusts, schools, AP, FE, LAs, Local Inclusion Boards, and Family Hubs to form local partnership ‘Inclusion Groups’ based on collaborative working and the sharing of learning with joint accountability for decisions.

The remit of these ‘Inclusion Groups’ would be to collaboratively identify local needs and to reconfigure where responsibilities should lie to address and meet these needs. By doing so they will be able to determine provision for individuals and decide on the overall approach and its implementation.

These Inclusion Groups should enable LAs to support and challenge schools/trusts as well as empower headteachers and other partners to request action. They should also develop family hubs and other co-location models and work with local communities and third sector partners. Their work should Reviews’ and they should report back to partners annually. Additionally, the role of education should be strengthened in local multi-agency safeguarding arrangements and partnerships.’

However, I am worried about the funding for such inclusion groups and who is to take responsibility for them in the fractured world of education that exists at the present time.

With exclusions at around their highest levels for two decades, there is clearly an issue to be tackled. Personally, I think the curriculum is the best place to start. Reviewing the Key Stage 4 offering so that it provides a relevant for all pupils and not just for those aiming to stay on at school into Key Stage 5 would be a good place to begin any changes. However, we may not have the teachers to offer any radically different curriculum at the present time.

Teachers work long hours in term-time

Posted on April 12, 2023 by John Howson

The DfE has now published their latest school leaders and teachers’ workload survey as part of their regular series of surveys about the working lives or teachers and school leaders. Working lives of teachers and leaders – wave 1 – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

On workload the key paragraphs are that

Average working hours for leaders in both primary and secondary schools remain substantially lower than they were in the 2016 Teacher Workload Survey (TWS) but are slightly higher than those reported in the 2019 TWS.

The average working hours for teachers were significantly lower than reported in the 2016 and 2019 TWS; however, this reduction was driven by reduced primary teacher hours specifically, while working hours for secondary teachers were not significantly different to those reported in the 2019 TWS.

In a similar pattern to that found in the Teacher Workload Surveys, secondary leaders reported working longer hours than primary leaders (58.3 vs. 56.2 for primary leaders), but secondary teachers reported working fewer hours than primary teachers (48.5 vs. 49.1 for primary teachers).

There were further notable differences by sub-groups of respondents. For full-time leaders, reported average hours were:

• Higher for leaders working in primary (57.2) or secondary (58.6) school than leaders working in special schools / PRU / AP (54.7)

• Higher among leaders working at academy schools (58.4) than those working in LA maintained schools (56.6).

For full-time teachers, reported average hours were:

• Higher for teachers working in primary (53.2) or secondary (51.2) schools than teachers working in special schools / PRU / AP (48.2)

• Higher for leading practitioners (54.4) and classroom teachers (52.4) than ECTs (49.9) and unqualified teachers (46.8)

Satisfaction with workload

Most teachers and leaders disagreed that their workload was acceptable (72%) and that they had sufficient control over it (62%).

This is a slight increase on the TWS 2019, where just under seven-in-ten (69%) of those surveyed disagreed their workload was acceptable, though it is a considerable decrease on the TWS 2016, where almost nine-in-ten (87%) disagreed.

Combined, over half (56%) of teachers and leaders thought that their workload was both unacceptable and that they did not have sufficient control over it.

Predictably, those who disagreed that their workload was acceptable reported higher working hours (an average of 51.6 for those who disagreed vs. an average of 43.7 for those who agreed).

More experienced teachers and leaders were also more likely to disagree that their workload was acceptable: 66% of those who had been qualified for up to 3 years disagreed with the statement compared to 73% who had been qualified for over 3 years.

Perhaps not surprisingly, head teachers and others on the Leadership Scale were more likely to report the use of flexible working arrangements, including working at home than were classroom teachers. However, it is not clear whether the question was confined to the normal working day or at any time? As there was also a question about PPA time taken off-site that may have subsumed some home working for non-school leaders.

Perhaps one of the least surprising findings was that teachers’ views on pupil behaviour were also correlated with school Ofsted rating31, as three quarters (75%) of those in schools with an outstanding Ofsted rating labelled pupil behaviour as good or ‘very good’, compared to just under three-in-ten (28%) of those in schools with special measures/with serious weaknesses.

This finding may correlate with higher staff turnover in schools this more adverse Ofsted ratings. Given that many schools won’t have had a rating for sometime now, this suggested the deep-seated nature of discipline issue sin some schools that are aggravated by any shortage of teachers in the system.

There are some disturbing percentages around the area of teacher well-being, but that’s for another post.

Overall, it is possible to see why teachers have joined in the general public sector display of industrial action and that although discipline isn’t the factor that it was a generation and more ago, other issues, such as marking and preparation frustrate and concern the present generation of teachers.

Firm but understanding

Posted on November 10, 2019 by John Howson

Teachers are graduates, and many that enter the profession come from backgrounds that are comfortable, although not well-off. By dint of being a graduate they have generally been successful at school and college; perhaps even more successful than some of those they have followed as teachers. I wonder, having failed ‘O’ level English and just scrapped maths, whether these day I would be allowed into the sixth form to gain 3Bs at ‘A’ level and a pass in the ‘special paper’ in geography?

Fortunately, not achieving at 16 need not the be all and end all, it was too often in my day, and there are those that become teachers after persevering at learning, sometimes well into adult life: I salute them. Indeed, we need to encourage more such learners as a potential source of new teachers.

Why am I writing this post? Well, for two reasons. Firstly my attention has been drawn to a range of books for new and early career teachers designed to help them navigate through their training year and first two years of teaching. The series has been launched by the National Association of School-Based Teacher Trainers (NASBTT). This blog recognises the excellent work teacher trainers and groups such as NASBTT undertake in preparing new entrants into the profession and increasingly with their concern for post-entry professional development. The first two books, in what will be a series, are now available to order at https://www.nasbtt.org.uk/essential-guides-early-career-teachers/

My second reason for this post is not unconnected to the first. In the past week, I have attended presentations by amongst other the CEO of Child Poverty Action Group; The Rees Centre on Children in Care, about exclusions among such children, and the report of the local Safeguarding Board for Children. I was also privileged to attend the local Music Services’ awards evening where more than 50 groups and individuals received awards for various aspects of music and musicality.

What is the significant of these events for new teachers? Many of the problems they face in the classroom come from children with backgrounds different to their own. Understanding that for instance many children in care lack self-esteem and self-confidence, and consequently are not so much ‘naughty’ or ‘ill-disciplined’ as emotionally challenged, and even seeking attention. It’s hard understanding as a teacher what it must be like to come home from school and find your belongings in bin bags and social worker waiting to take you to a new placement. Even if you can remain at the same school it’s tough; changing schools as well mid-term is even harder.

I know that one of the books yet to be published in the NASBTT series is about discipline. I hope another will help new teachers fully understand what some children bring with them to school each day. Whether they are in care; from families facing poverty; confronting safeguarding issues or even acting as a young carer, teachers need to be aware of what this can mean and how they should respond.

Too often, compared with say attitudes in Scotland, where exclusion rates are much lower, England has official documents couched in punitive language. Perhaps the new government, after the election, will look at this aspect of schooling. More cash is needed, but so is a recognition of what is driving the attitudes of so many children in our schools today. There is a place for compassion as much as for compulsion.

Reflections

Posted on March 29, 2017 by John Howson

There were two interesting stories this past week that in other circumstances might have gained more attention; the report into the future of work from PwC and the report to the DfE on behaviour in schools. However, along with the UCAS end of cycle report on ITT recruitment in 2015/16, the year of recruitment controls, they were overshadowed by the terrible events at Westminster.

The report on the future of work was good news for education and those that choose to educate future generations. However, I am not sure that I fully subscribe to the notion of a largely unchanged balance between people and capital in the form of technology in the learning process, but education, at least at the school level, will continue to be a people centred area of work. The understanding that further education has a key role to play post BREXIT is really good news but, after years of funding cuts, it will need to see a serious resource boost. No doubt the new Apprenticeship Ley will help, even as it sucks money out of schools in a merry-go-round of government money that does little for anyone, except the accountants.

The Bennett Report on behaviour says many sensible things, as I would expect from someone I once hired as a seminar presenter on the topic of managing behaviour. My own experience, many years ago, of teaching in a school where discipline needed firm management for learning to take place, is that creating order out of potential chaos is a prerequisite for any formal learning to take place. Informal learning takes place whatever the state of the environment, but it may not be what society wants and expects of its schools. I recall when Mike Tomlinson was sent into take control of a West Yorkshire school in the 1990s, he started by suspending a large number of pupils for a short time. Once control was regained, learning could restart effectively.

If we are moving away from the era of naked competition between schools, where it could be assumed at Westminster that schools with poor behaviour would be shunned by parents and eventually close, to a more realistic appraisal of the use of public assets, then investing in overcoming problems such a schools with challenging behaviour and lots of exclusions, as we now term suspensions, is a sensible way forward. How these funds are managed is still an interesting debate. How long before someone suggests funding local behaviour consultants? Could we start to see the re-birth of advisory and support services for local schools? Of course, MATs can provide these services, but many are too small and lack geographical coherence to tackle the issues in any one locality. Someone needs to coordinate the advice from good quality research with the training and development for teachers at all levels from classroom to the head’s study and the governor’s meeting.

This is a far more important issue that grammar schools. If the Prime Minister wanted to create a real and lasting legacy for herself in education, she would recognise the need to create a school system where all can learn together at all ages in an environment that meets the need of a post BREXIT world, where technology is changing the life chances of future generations.

Human Rights

Posted on August 3, 2015 by John Howson

There’s a great story in the Daily Mail today about a BBC programme to be shown on tuesday evening that follows a group of Chinese teachers when they spent four weeks teaching in a Hampshire comprehensive school. Result; teenagers need more discipline. That was pretty predicable.

But, the glorious line in the Daily Mail has the following quote from one of the teachers: ‘If the British Government really cut benefits down to force people to go to work they might see things in a different way.’ A Marxist Chinese teacher telling a Right Wing Tory government to cut benefits. I am indebted to LBC Radio for bringing this to my attention. Hopefully, they will also ask Jeremy Corbyn for his reaction. Does he support this Marxist line of ‘conform or lose benefits’?

At the heart of this debate that will no doubt make for great television in the same way as ‘tough young teachers’ and the Educating Children in various parts of England series did is the question of whether respect for authority is earned or implicit in our society? The great thing about selective schools and indeed, private schools is that a lack of respect for their values gets you slung out.

Even in the 1970s you had to earn the right to teach those teenagers that didn’t want to learn. There is a previous blog post I wrote two years ago in August 2013 celebrating the Newsom Report about secondary modern schools. This was a government report published over 60 years ago that recognised the need for teachers to acquire the skills necessary to teach in a culture where individualism is more important than uniformity.

I would also be interested to see the CBI’s reaction to the programme since they seem to want both intellectual ability and the softer skills of teamwork, personal confidence, leadership and other attributes that aren’t brought out easily by rote learning in large classes.

Perhaps at the heart of this debate is the classic British desire to look for the failures in our society and celebrate defeat rather than identify where our education system is doing well and consider how that success can be replicated.

There is certainly an issue with some aspects of authority in our school system as the DfE figures released last week on exclusions demonstrate with figures for the increase in exclusion of primary school pupils. So, will the next Tory announcement be, a loss of benefits if your child mis-behaves at school? I hope not because I suspect all that will happen is that parents of some of these children won’t send their children to school and they will fall further behind and then become even more troublesome on the days that they do attend.

Personally, I think we need to revisit the curriculum for teenagers and ensure we focus behaviour management strategies in training on dealing with teenagers that find singers more interesting that statistics and tablets more fun than tables.

Finally, I wonder what the Chinese word or symbol is for dumb insolence; perhaps they don’t have one.

Hawks, doves and the art of leadership

Posted on September 26, 2014 by John Howson

Watching the TV programme ‘Educating the East End’ on the day that Ofsted published its well trailed views on discipline in schools was illuminating, not so much for what happened on camera as for what was happening around the framed shots. If you put together that evidence with other programmes such as ‘tough young teachers’ and both ‘Educating Essex’ and Educating Yorkshire’ a pattern begins to emerge of what it is like teaching in these schools, especially for some teachers.

Overall one has to say that edited highlights of hours of filming that are needed to fill a brief to entertain, inform and educate in that order may not be entirely reflective of the norms of a school. Nevertheless, the lack of graffiti, clean, mostly litter free corridors, and open spaces and classroom where displays can exist without being totally trashed suggest that there is an overall sense of order in these schools, with leaders having a clear sense of direction and teachers and pupils having an understanding what is expected of them. These are not ‘blackboard jungles’ in the fictional sense of the term or as depicted in the 1960s and 1970s by TV series and films such as ‘Please Sir’ and the St Trinians films. But, they are places with large numbers of adolescents starting the change from childhood to adulthood in a society where respect for authority is rarely a feature of everyday life outside of school.

Each lesson witnesses the battle of the soap opera that exists in many classrooms and this is evident in the TV programmes. The average pupil still too often tunes in at the start, tunes out once they know the plot of the lesson that continues to run in the background and only tunes back in at the end, especially if homework is being set. In the meantime whether they participate effectively or do their own thing depends upon how well the teacher handles the most disaffected elements in the class.

What I hope the Chief Inspector is saying is that time on task, and hence learning, is closely related to the classroom environment and that in turn is set by the level of control over the lesson that the teacher exercises. In a school, the tone is set from the top. This is especially important in those parts of the country where we now have large numbers of relatively inexperienced teachers. The number of such teachers will grow over the next few years as pupil numbers expand and assuming funding remains stable.

Creating learning environments for all pupils took me five years to achieve as an untrained teacher in the 1970s. These days we should expect better results from the preparation courses as we know so much more about learning and society than in the 1970s when teachers were coping with the new world of non-selective secondary schools. My field these days is not teacher preparation, so I don’t feel qualified to say how we should prepare our teachers or even really how we would run schools on a daily basis, but I suspect the moving line between authority and anarchy still exists in many schools. Creating learning for all while not stifling individualism is a tough ask and I respect those leaders that achieve it whether by being hawks or doves.

John Howson

Education and the numbers that affect what happens

Tag Archives: discipline