Understanding Behaviour

"Behaviour is communication" is one of the most useful ideas in this area, and one of the most misused. It means that what a child does usually tells you something about what they need, what they can manage, or what has just happened. It does not mean that anything goes, or that boundaries are unkind.

Children generally behave well when they can. When they cannot, something is usually making it harder: tiredness, hunger, worry, an overwhelming environment, a demand beyond what they can currently do, a friendship that went wrong, a change at home, or simply being six. Looking for that is not making excuses — it is how you work out what would actually help.

Many children hold themselves together all day at school and let go at home. Parents describe glowing reports and impossible evenings, and are sometimes told it must be something they are doing. Usually it means the school day is costing more than it appears, and home is the safe place to release it.

It is worth telling school this is happening, even if — especially if — they see nothing. It is not a complaint; it is the piece of information they do not have.

Consequences work best when they are small, immediate, related to what happened, and delivered calmly. Escalating punishments tend to produce escalating behaviour, and a consequence given in anger usually teaches the child about your feelings rather than their choices.

• Small and soon beats big and later.
• Related to what happened where possible — help clear it up, fix it, or wait to try again.
• Predictable, so it is not a surprise.
• Followed by repair, not by a long silence.
• Never a withdrawal of warmth or belonging.

• Long explanations while your child is still overwhelmed.
• Threats you will not carry out.
• Public telling-off, which adds shame to whatever was already happening.
• Removing something they need — sleep, food, connection, the activity that regulates them.
• Assuming behaviour is deliberate manipulation; it very rarely is at primary age.
• Trying to fix everything at once. Pick the one thing that matters most this month.

• The same difficulty across home, school and elsewhere, over months.
• Anyone's safety is at risk.
• A sudden, marked change in a child who was previously settled.
• Behaviour alongside worries about learning, language, attention or sensory experience.
• You are exhausted, or family life is organised around avoiding a flashpoint.

Start with the class teacher and the school's SENDCO. A GP can advise where there are health concerns or a possible underlying difficulty. Many local authorities offer parenting or early help support — asking for it is a reasonable thing to do, not an admission of failure.

1. Department for EducationProfessional guidance
   Behaviour in schools: advice for headteachers and school staff (2024)

   The current DfE frame: clear routines and consistently applied expectations, alongside reasonable adjustments for pupils with SEND and consideration of whether unmet needs are driving behaviour.

2. Department for EducationStatutory guidance
   SEND Code of Practice: 0 to 25 years (2015)

   States that behaviour is not itself a category of special educational need — where a child's behaviour is a concern, an underlying need should be looked for.

3. Department for EducationProfessional guidance
   Mental health and behaviour in schools (2018)

   Non-statutory advice on recognising when behaviour reflects an underlying mental health or SEMH need, and where school support ends.

4. Education Endowment FoundationResearch summary
   Improving Behaviour in Schools — guidance report (2019, updated 2021)

   Six recommendations, including knowing pupils and their influences, teaching routines explicitly, and using targeted approaches for the small number who need them.

5. Education Endowment FoundationResearch summary
   Behaviour interventions — Teaching and Learning Toolkit

   Rated by the EEF as moderate impact for very low cost, on extensive evidence — with a strong caution that effects vary widely and depend on implementation.

6. Education Endowment FoundationResearch summary
   Special Educational Needs in Mainstream Schools — guidance report (2020, updated 2021)

   Sets out the 'five-a-day' teaching approaches and argues that high-quality teaching for all is the first response to additional need, including SEMH need.

7. Education Endowment FoundationResearch summary
   Improving Social and Emotional Learning in Primary Schools — guidance report (2019, updated 2021)

   Explicit teaching of social and emotional skills, reinforced across the day, is where much of the classroom behaviour evidence and the SEMH evidence overlap.

8. Education Endowment FoundationResearch summary
   Putting Evidence to Work: A School's Guide to Implementation (2019, updated 2024)

   Why behaviour approaches most often fail: adopted broadly, delivered thinly, never reviewed.

9. National Institute for Health and Care ExcellenceProfessional guidance
   Social, emotional and mental wellbeing in primary and secondary education (NG223) (2022)

   Whole-school approach, trusted relationships, and targeted support — the wellbeing counterpart to the behaviour guidance.

10. Department for EducationStatutory guidance
    Keeping children safe in education

    A change in behaviour can be an indicator of a safeguarding concern. Any behaviour discussion must sit inside this duty.

11. Anna FreudProfessional guidance
    Mentally Healthy Schools

    Quality-assured UK material on the relationship between behaviour, emotional need and school practice.