Research School Network: Improving Behaviour in Schools – 3 Takeaways from the Guidance Report Reflections on the EEF’s latest evidence summary

The EEF’s Improving Behaviour in Schools guidance report has just been released. In it, six evidence-informed recommendations have been made for school leaders, supporting them to build excellent behaviour in schools. As ever, it’s a comprehensive and practical report.

We’re holding a free twilight on Wednesday 10^th July to explore the recommendations. In the meantime, here are our initial takeaways:

Keep it simple and consistent

There are two recommendations which highlight the fact that improving behaviour is often a matter of simply ensuring that things are kept simple and consistent. Recommendation 4 is ​‘Use simple approaches as part of your regular routine’. And Recommendation 6 is simply ​‘consistency is key’.

For example, a list of simple strategies which ​‘have shown to be promising’ include starting the day with a breakfast, greeting pupils positively on entry to class, giving specific praise, building effective relationships and even using checklists to embed rigour. Such simple steps can be effective because they are easier to implement and often you see more complex programs failing because they are difficult to implement.

The school culture is something which, if consistent, can contribute to high standards of behaviour. The report cites ​‘Below the Radar’ a 2014 Ofsted report into low-level disruption in schools. In this document, ​“only a quarter of secondary and half of primary teachers agreed that the behaviour policy in their school was applied consistently by all staff.”

One of the schools visited by the authors of the report is Dixons Kings Academy, who place great emphasis on school culture and consistency. You can read about their approach to routines here.

Be proactive

While there are a number of reactive strategies to dealing with behaviour, there is much we can do to prevent poor behaviour and encourage positive behaviour. Much of this starts with staff in schools knowing their pupils well. Now, this isn’t the most ground-breaking revelation, but the report supports with some useful suggestions for how this should look. They ask: ​“Is it possible to structure your school such that someone knows each pupil, their strengths and interests? Can this be managed for some pupils, if not all?” The report then provides a number of strategies and frameworks to consider. There is useful information that some teachers may not be fully knowledgeable about e.g. the effect of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) on young people.

Another proactive strategy forms recommendation 2: Teach learning behaviours alongside managing behaviour – “…the research suggests that when children improve their learning behaviours, this skill set can improve both academic achievement and cognitive ability.” The Ellis and Tod conceptual framework considers a number of ways to think about developing pupils’ learning behaviours, their relationship with self, relationship with the curriculum and their relationship with others. It also asks you to think about emotional, social and cognitive learning behaviours. This recommendation links quite well with some of the ideas covered in the metacognition guidance report.

There are no simple answers

As with many aspects of education, the act of collating and synthesising the messages from the best available evidence leads to us realising how more scope there is for improving the knowledge base. And we see that the notion of ​‘what works’ is often tricky, with easy answers not forthcoming.

For example, let’s take an emotive and often controversial term: zero-tolerance. ​“In reality there is not strong evidence for or against ​‘zero tolerance’.” Part of this is that the term can mean different things to different people. It is also a difficult thing to conduct research to investigate. But schools which follow recommendations from the guidance report e.g. train teachers, maintain consistency, tailor approaches might be categorised as ​‘zero-tolerance’ or otherwise and still have consistently excellent behaviour. So the question isn’t ​‘does zero-tolerance work’? Rather, the question is whether your behaviour systems are aligned with the evidence and suitable for your context.

This idea of alignment with the evidence is important because there are many areas where the lack of certainty can be troublesome for schools. Any school designing a behaviour strategy for their school cannot consult a how-to-manual.

We would recommend using this guidance report to check whether what you are trying to do is aligned. Being clear about the active ingredients of what makes your system what it is. Then, use the Implementation guidance report to ensure that it is implemented effectively.