Understanding Behaviour

One incident tells you very little. Ten incidents with the same shape tell you almost everything. The most useful classroom question is when this happens: which lesson, which part of the lesson, which task type, which grouping, which adult, which time of day, and what happened immediately before.

• Always at the start of independent writing? Look at task demand and the way in.
• Always after lunch? Look at the playground, the queue, and the transition back in.
• Always when the teaching assistant is elsewhere? Look at what support is doing.
• Always in the last ten minutes? Look at fatigue, and at what is being asked then.
• Only with one adult? That is information about the relationship, not a criticism.
• Everywhere, all day, for months? Escalate — this needs more than classroom adjustment.

EEF behaviour guidance emphasises knowing pupils and their influences, teaching routines explicitly rather than assuming them, and using consistent, low-key responses — with targeted approaches for the small number of children who need more. The SEND guidance report adds that high-quality teaching is the first response to additional need, not an alternative to it.

• Quiet, brief, close, and as private as the room allows.
• Name what you want, not what you want stopped.
• Take-up time — say it, then step away rather than standing over them.
• Offer a real choice within the expectation, not an ultimatum.
• Do not chase the last word; the audience is the reason it escalates.
• Follow through calmly on what you said, later if necessary.
• Repair before the end of the day, always.

• Public sanctions that humiliate — shame reliably produces more of what you are trying to reduce.
• Escalating consequences within a single incident.
• Whole-class punishment for one child's behaviour.
• Reasoning at length with an overwhelmed child.
• Removing the activity that regulates them — outdoor time, the club, the responsibility.
• Assuming it is deliberate, or personal.
• Carrying a pattern alone for a term before mentioning it.

Parents of children whose behaviour is difficult at school often expect to be criticised, and arrive defended. Opening with what the child is like at their best, then describing a specific pattern and asking what they see at home, changes the conversation more than any technique.

Where a family reports a very different child at home, both accounts are usually true. Say so — it removes the blame from the room and usually produces the information you need.

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.