How to create an effective culture of behaviour management at your school

This article is:

• About creating a whole-school culture of effective behaviour management. See our other article for behaviour management techniques and approaches in the classroom
• Based on guidance and best practice in the DfE’s non-statutory guidance on behaviour in schools

Start with your behaviour policy

Every school must have a behaviour policy. This is stated in paragraph 98 of Keeping Children Safe in Education (KCSIE). Find a model policy and examples of behaviour policies in our other article. 

You should include your behaviour expectations in your behaviour policy to make them clear to staff, pupils and parents/carers. Share your behaviour policy in your pupil and parent/carer welcome pack.

Make sure your policy is clear on:

• The roles and responsibilities of governors/trustees, the headteacher(s), staff, parents/carers and pupils
• School rules and routines
• Sanction and reward systems
• Staff training and development
• Specific staff roles and support for pupils with additional needs
• Banned items and mobile phones
• What measures the school takes to prevent child-on-child abuse, (bullying (including online), prejudice, racism, etc.

Your behaviour approach should aim to meet or exceed the national minimum expectations of behaviour. Find these listed on pages 6 and 7 of Behaviour in schools - advice for headteachers and school staff.

Beyond this, you're free to decide what 'acceptable' behaviour looks like for your school. 

Make sure you keep inclusivity in mind when updating your behaviour policy, and aim to remove conscious and unconscious bias and comply with equality law.

Use our behaviour policy consultation toolkit to consult with stakeholders on your response to sexism and sexual harassment in your policy.

Reflect and consult on what you want in your policy

Think about:

• How your behaviour standards reflect your school's values
• What successful behaviour looks like in your school and how you share this with key stakeholders  
• How you use routines and habits to reinforce and teach expected behaviours 
• How you adjust the standards and routines for pupils with additional needs 
• How you want teachers to respond to behaviour, both positive and negative

Reflect on your school’s values and develop your behaviour policy and approach based on those values. 

Help pupils navigate behaviour issues through restorative practice

Restorative approaches focus on resolving conflict and repairing harm by:

• Talking to everyone involved
• Getting pupils to explain their feelings and reasons for behaving the way they are

By asking questions, the goal is to reach a clear understanding of everyone’s feelings, and to find a resolution that everyone can agree to, with less of a focus on punishment and sanctions.

Teach pupils the skills to navigate conflict before it arises by understanding how their actions affect others. 

You can embed restorative practice in your whole-school approach to behaviour before incidents occur, reducing the need for behaviour management due to pupil conflict. However, you can also employ the approach when diffusing real-life behaviour incidents.

Embed restorative practice in your school by:

• Teaching about it in your PSHE curriculum (find resources on doing this below)
• Roleplaying, or using restorative methods to resolve conflict between fictional characters. This lets pupils practice the methods in a low-stakes situation where their emotions aren’t involved.
• For example, you could use restorative practice as a writing prompt in an English lesson by asking pupils to write apology letters from 2 conflicting characters
• Training staff on how to use restorative methods
• Including details of your approach in your behaviour policy, or anti-bullying policy, if you have one

Our associate expert, Nina Siddall-Ward, gave us this advice.

Prepare your staff to manage behaviour

Make sure staff understand the expected behaviour standards

Use our staff briefing materials to keep staff up to date and informed on the DfE's behaviour guidance.

Train staff on your school's behaviour management approach

You can do this during INSET days or send email reminders.

Help your staff brush up on how to manage challenging behaviour from pupils with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND) as well.

This means your staff will be able to implement your behaviour policy consistently and equitably, and respond to behaviour incidents in a way that is:

• Consistent
• Proportionate
• Fair
• Based on knowledge of a pupil's needs

Download our quizzes to check whether your staff understand your school's approach to behaviour and can apply your policy consistently.

Make sure staff communicate their expectations of pupils in every interaction

They can do this by:

• Modelling positive behaviour in interactions and setting an example to follow
• Acknowledging and praising behaviour that meets the expected standard
• Giving pupils clear reminders about what the consequences of their actions will be if they don't meet behaviour expectations
• Being clear, prompt and consistent in the use of sanctions and the enforcement of the behaviour policy

This will help create a predictable environment in which pupils know what the consequences of their actions will be. 

Consistently model and reinforce good behaviour

Encourage staff to model to pupils what positive relationships look like, through their own interactions with all members of the school community. 

Implement an effective behaviour curriculum

Teach pupils what good behaviour looks like – the DfE refers to this as a behaviour curriculum.

A behaviour curriculum should:

• Define what expected behaviour looks like in your school
• Be centred around the teaching of routines and habits

Define and share expected standards of behaviour

Make sure the definitions are clear and positive. Frame your curriculum around the good behaviour you want to see, instead of a list of prohibited behaviours.

Staff can reinforce this through the positive language they use with pupils. For example:

Use our example behaviour standards handout to inform your pupils, parents/carers and staff about the expected standard of behaviour in your school.

You can use our template to create your own behaviour standards. Consider including them in pupil planners or putting them on classroom walls. 

Implement effective routines

Decide what routines will support pupils to meet your behaviour standards. The routines should promote the values of your school, be easy to understand and easy to follow.

Consider these questions:

• What school routines do we already have?
• Are there any new routines we need to introduce to promote positive behaviours?
• Are our routines simple and easy to follow? Can all pupils understand them?
• Are behaviour routines being enforced consistently by all staff?

Explicitly teach your routines to pupils during an induction session or form time. This explicit instruction is especially important for new pupils, as they might not be familiar with the expectations and routines in your school. Consider running refresher inductions at suitable points throughout the year for all pupils.

Make sure staff check for understanding when teaching routines. If they're confident that pupils understand what's expected, they can be more confident in giving a sanction when routines aren't followed. 

To prompt pupils to follow your routines, put up displays that summarise what you expect from them, in the place where you want pupils to follow that particular routine.

For example, in the canteen you could put up a display that reminds pupils of their lunchtime routine and expected behaviours, with prompts such as: 

• I line up quietly to get my food
• I say 'please' and 'thank you' to the lunch staff
• I wait until I have finished my mouthful before I speak
• I clear away my tray when I'm finished 

Make these displays accessible to all pupils by using images as well as words. You might find it helpful to create social stories for pupils with higher needs.

Clearly plan your approach to rewards and sanctions

Provide positive reinforcement to pupils who meet the expected standards of the school behaviour culture. This might include:

• Verbal praise
• Communicating praise to parents and carers
• Certificates, prize ceremonies or special assemblies
• Positions of responsibility
• Whole-class or year group rewards

Respond predictably and promptly to misbehaviour

When responding to misbehaviour, staff should aim to:

• Maintain the culture of your school
• Restore a calm and safe environment in which all pupils can learn and thrive
• Prevent the misbehaviour from happening again

As a staff team, you could agree and share a script and phrases to use to de-escalate and restore calm when needed.

Your response to an incident of misbehaviour could aim to:

• Deter – sanctions can be useful for this. Read more about what you can and can't do with sanctions
• Protect – using protective measures, such as removing a pupil from a lesson, can keep pupils from hurting themselves or others
• Improve – support pupils to improve their behaviour to meet the behaviour standards using sanctions, reflective conversations or targeted pastoral support

Consider the context before resorting to a sanction

Changes in behaviour may be an indicator that a pupil is in need of help or protection.

Consider whether a pupil’s misbehaviour may be linked to:

• Them suffering, or being likely to suffer, significant harm
• Having an unidentified SEN or mental health need

If you have concerns, raise the issue with your designated safeguarding lead (DSL) or SENCO.

Remember that suspensions, exclusions and managed moves are a last resort in response to serious incidents, or a response to persistent poor behaviour, which has not improved following in-school sanctions and interventions.

Download our template letters to communicate behaviour incidents with parents and carers, to keep all stakeholders involved with behaviour incidents and responses. 

Proactively support pupils following a sanction

Make adjustments for pupils with additional needs

Adapt your routines where appropriate and reasonable. Make sure this is done proactively, and in a way that's sensitive to events that might be occurring outside of school.

For example, a pupil who has recently experienced a bereavement might need to be excused from a routine to give them time and space away from their peers.

You'll likely also need to proactively adapt your routines to meet the needs of pupils with SEND that can affect their behaviour.

Read more about this in our article on how to manage challenging behaviour from pupils with SEN.

Work with the LA to support pupils with an EHC plan

If a pupil with an education, health and care (EHC) plan is struggling to meet reasonable behaviour standards, contact the local authority (LA) in charge of the plan to discuss the pupil's behaviour.

If the pupil's behaviour is getting out of hand, request an emergency review of the EHC plan.

Learn more about the EHC plan review process.

Monitor and evaluate school behaviour

Make sure you have a reliable system for capturing behaviour data so you can check that your behaviour management is effective. 

Use our behaviour audit to identify the strengths, weaknesses and disparities in your approach to behaviour, and use this insight to create an action plan. 

Collect data from the following sources:

• Behaviour incident data, including data on removal from the classroom
• Attendance, permanent exclusion and suspension data
• Use of pupil support units, off-site directions and managed moves
• Incidents of searching, screening and confiscation
• Anonymous surveys for staff, pupils, governors or trustees, and other stakeholders on their perceptions and experiences of the school behaviour culture

Assign a skilled member of staff the responsibility of regularly and objectively analysing the data, to identify issues such as:

• Disproportionate use of sanctions against pupils with a protected characteristic, or a particular group of pupils
• Failure to offer appropriate support
• Factors contributing to misbehaviour