Understanding Behaviour

The SEND Code of Practice is explicit: behaviour is not itself a special educational need, and where a child's behaviour is causing concern, the school should look for an underlying cause. In practice that means the record should describe what is being investigated, not simply what happened.

Common underlying factors worth ruling in or out before anything else: speech, language and communication needs; working memory and processing demands; reading difficulty; hearing or vision; sensory differences; anxiety; attention difficulties; bereavement or family change; and safeguarding concerns. DfE guidance on mental health and behaviour and on behaviour in schools both point in this direction.

• Assess — a formulation in plain language: what we think is happening, based on what evidence, and what we are unsure about.
• Plan — few, specific, teachable adjustments; who does what; a review date; what success would look like.
• Do — held by the class teacher, supported rather than replaced by intervention.
• Review — honestly, including stopping what has not worked.

EEF implementation guidance is directly relevant here. Behaviour approaches most often fail not because they were the wrong choice but because they were adopted broadly, delivered inconsistently by untrained staff, and never reviewed. Fewer things, done properly.

• Teaching the missing skill explicitly — waiting, losing, asking for help, joining in — rather than sanctioning its absence.
• Adjusting how the behaviour policy is applied: timing, privacy, processing time, who speaks to the child, while the expectation itself stands.
• Named trusted adult with a defined check-in, and a plan for that adult's absence.
• Planned regulation break, agreed in advance and time-limited, distinct from removal as a sanction.
• Task and language adjustments so the demand is achievable.
• Planning the unstructured parts of the day, which generate a disproportionate share of incidents.
• A written, shared plan so supply staff, lunchtime staff and teaching assistants respond consistently.

Where behaviour is escalating towards suspension, the SEND question becomes urgent: is there an unmet need, has the graduated approach been applied, and have reasonable adjustments been made and recorded? DfE guidance expects both consistently applied expectations and adjustments for pupils with SEND.

Part-time timetables should be exceptional, time-limited, agreed with parents, reviewed regularly and paired with a plan to return to full-time education. Risk assessments and individual behaviour plans should be written with the family, name the early warning signs, and specify what adults do at each stage — including how the child is welcomed back.

• Frequency and, more importantly, intensity and recovery time.
• Time in class and access to the full curriculum, including the unstructured parts.
• Whether the plan is actually being delivered — checked, not assumed.
• Pupil view: is school more manageable than last term?
• Family view, and whether the relationship with school has improved.
• Staff confidence and consistency with this child.

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.