Staff development network
The reading this week is a summary of the National behaviour survey from the UK Department for Education. Published this year, it looks at behaviour trends from 2022-2023.
The survey asks leaders, teachers and students about behaviour and reveals some interesting differences in perceptions. Essentially, if you are a school leader, behaviour is probably worse than you think.
Key points:
- 84% of school leaders reported that their school had been calm and orderly ‘every day’ or ‘most days’ in the past week versus 59% of teachers.
- 82% of school leaders reported that pupil behaviour was either ‘very good’ or ‘good’ in the past week versus 55% of teachers.
- 43% of pupils said that behaviour had been ‘very good’ or ‘good’ in the past week. Comparing across survey waves, this is a decrease for all groups compared to June 2022.
- The proportion of school leaders and teachers that disagreed that parents were generally supportive of the school’s behaviour rules increased from 15% in June 2022 to 20% in May 2023.
- On average, teachers reported that for every 30 minutes of lesson time, 7 minutes were lost due to misbehaviour. That’s almost a whole term of learning each year!
- Just under a third of school teachers (31%) and just over a fifth of school leaders (22%) felt they could not personally access training and development support for behaviour management relevant to their experience and needs.
What you can do
- School leaders need systems to measure behaviour in their school. This can be done through behaviour sampling, surveys or by collating reporting data.
- The trends in the data from 2022 to 2023 suggested declining perceptions of behaviour. Ask your staff, is behaviour in our school better or worse than 5 years ago.
- Acknowledge that bad behaviour is bad for learning.
- Teachers need access to high quality behaviour management training.
Happy coaching,
Mark
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