From the US: student behaviour getting worse, say teachers. What’s remarkable is how international a phenomenon this is.
1. Student behaviour is a major factor in classroom culture and student success
2. Teachers report decline in student behaviour edweek.org/leadership/is-… Reported decline in social skills; cooperativeness; altruism. Phones indicated as a factor; a dislocated sense of identity.

What do we mean by an inclusive school? 🧵

This is a debate that burns in education. What does it mean to be inclusive? When should we exclude? Some unserious people, driven mad by their activism, believe we should never exclude. But these people usually have not, or do not teach in a school where behaviour is challenging. Or they have no experience of schools since they studied in one. Not to exclude when necessary is a safeguarding disaster.

Students cannot be forced to endure spaces with, for example, their abusers, or exposed to students who deal drugs or bring in knives. Exclusion must be done only when necessary, but when necessary, done. What is inclusion though? That’s the pivot around which this all revolves. When I started teaching in 2003, I was amazed that classrooms often contained students so badly behaved, or with learning needs so pronounced, that I knew I could never provide for them adequately.

What should I do, I wondered, with a student who doesn’t speak English, but has no interpreter in the class? With a pupil who frequently assaulted or insulted teachers? With a student in a GCSE class with a reading age of seven? More, why were such pupils packed into the same classroom as everyone else? Why weren’t some taught in small nurture groups? Why weren’t some in specialist provision? Why weren’t some suspended, or in rare, instances, excluded?

Inclusion, I was told. And that was seen as the end of the debate, like a magic word. Because who could ever be against inclusion? Who would dare dispute it?

Education's biggest secret that lies in plain sight is this: the culture of many schools, and the outcomes of their students, is dominated by the social strata and economic circumstances of the cohort's families. Put simply, children from circumstances of poverty, neglect, abuse, lack etc are disproportionately exposed to risk factors that reduce and frustrate their opportunities to flourish at school and in life. This isn't (or shouldn't be) a controversial thing to say. 🧵

Of course this is probability not destiny: kids with every advantage can do badly. Children with nothing sometimes win everything. But when it comes to games of chance, the house usually wins.

Why do most kids grade so well in an independent school? It's not because of the teaching, which is very, very similar to state ed teaching. It's largely because of the social, cultural and educational capital inherited and absorbed from the home environment. Why do kids do so well in a grammar school? Because they are largely captured from the most able and academic cohort of children. Guess what happens when you put them all in one place? They do rather well. FANCY THAT. Which is why the following strategies:
1. Expand grammar schooling
2. Model state comprehensives on what the 'best' independent schools do
...are non-starters. They can't replicate the impact of the home social environment.

Another grim article that seeks to justify violent assault against students and teachers. It’s unbelievable how some people can find out a student attacked others in school, needed to be excluded as a result, and their sympathies are solely reserved for the attacker. theguardian.com/education/2024… Newsflash: you cannot run an institution where people are allowed to attack one another with no consequence. You cannot be allowed to run one where you permit this. The author of the piece, and the activists quoted wouldn’t endure it for themselves. They couldn’t write, or practise law, if they thought someone would punch them as they did so. So why expect others to endure it?

The advice ‘build a good relationship’ to teachers is both fundamentally correct and simultaneously the worst advice you can possibly give. It is Schrödinger’s Behaviour advice, both right and wrong.

https://twitter.com/pepsmccrea/status/1836465236661928400

This is because, as Peps says, it is maddeningly vague. How do you ‘build a relationship?’ What *is* a relationship?

I thought I would fact check this bizarre article from this weekend's Observer (not, as people keep saying, the @guardian, which normally is much better for quality education coverage). It's almost easier to find out what is true, than to deal with all the inaccuracies. 🧵

https://twitter.com/guardian/status/1814723306001416290

'English schools to phase out ‘cruel’ behaviour rules'.
1. There are no 'cruel' behaviour rules in schools. What the article describes as cruel are exit/ removal room, and suspensions, exclusions, all of which are legal and at times completely necessary. It's like calling double-yellow lines and parking fines cruel.
2. There were no plans to phase them out anyway. The story was complete fiction.

Lemov's work is extraordinarily useful for teachers, in a way that a good deal of educational theory is not. It is based on the practice of highly effective teachers, and I'm happy to report that used wisely, it is a gift to the profession of those who actually teach children.

https://twitter.com/mmartin_edu/status/1812373040606347376

'No opt-out' lets kids know they can't choose not to participate meaningfully. This is incredibly useful to prevent kids coasting, not trying, or falling further behind. Optimal pressure is essential for human development. Zero pressure precipitates lethargy. You can have too much of *anything*

https://x.com/mmartin_edu/status/1812373041898225883

Some leaders who have taken over a school where the culture is already calm and safe, can squander that culture quickly. They think ‘oh we don’t need to be so tight on stuff, the kids here are fine.’ So they relax their systems, drop some expectations, and tell staff, ‘I trust you, and want to empower you. Classroom management is up to you.’ Leadership follow up on behaviour deteriorates, incidents stop being recorded. For a while this is ok. If you visit in this phase it is possible to see a school with good behaviour but weak systems. But the storm is coming.

‘Relationships’ are often cited as fundamental to behaviour management. But rarely do we see a clear explanation of what this simple term means. Which leads to multiple car-crash theories about how to achieve them in schools. Ambiguous terms lead to chaotic outcomes. A relationship is how two or more people:
1. View/ think about one another
2. Treat/ behave with one another.

So there are countless types. Good and bad. Toxic. Healthy. Friendly. Hostile. Familial. Professional. Etc.

Some responses to the criticism of the announcement yesterday to ban mobile phones, so I can just tap this sign/ thread when the same points come up: 1. 'All schools do this already!' No they don't. Lots of schools don't have a policy on this, or permit phone usage in school in some way. So the guidance is significant for many schools as a way to steer practice.

Trauma Informed Practice has become this season’s behavioural Brain Gym. In the wild, it has become 100 different things, justifying 100 different approaches. Be very cautious about adopting this without caution. Here’s why:

https://twitter.com/adamboxer1/status/1698083217310371943

1. Definitional: Trauma is real and devastating. Traumatised children need tons of support and love, accommodations etc. But not every child is traumatised, and not all or even most misbehaviour is caused by trauma. That should be obvious, but many seem to assume this so it’s not

The danger with this statement isn’t that it’s untrue; it’s that, as advice to new teachers it’s as vague as saying ‘make sure they learn’. It doesn’t tell you *how* relationships are formed. Which tricks teachers into clumsy attempts to be ‘likeable’ or popular. Building relationships requires predictability, consistency, demonstration of care, high standards, and reinforced boundaries. All of these begin with taught classroom routines. This is how you demystify ‘building relationships’

I work in the behaviour sphere so much it still surprises even me when you come across people so unfamiliar with the process and reality of managing classrooms and schools, that they are shocked by the most basic of behaviour strategies, like ‘lists of prohibited behaviours with sanction tariffs.’ THE HORROR It staggers them that, in a complex environment with scores of staff and hundreds of students, it might be useful to standardise expectations across the staff culture to improve predictability and reduce uncertainty- and increase fairness.

It's good to see that a summit is planned to discuss behaviour and violence in Scottish schools. What's clear is that the existing guidance to schools on how to manage behaviour is inadequate, unhelpful, unclear, and impractical. It urgently needs to be overhauled and rebuilt.

https://twitter.com/ScotGovEdu/status/1661383468725465091

1. It is almost entirely based around the goal of reducing exclusions. But that's an easy goal to reach- simply put pressure on schools to never exclude. That's a false goal. The real goal should be to create an environment where exclusions are *no longer necessary.*

This demonstrates succinctly why we need to be strenuously resist teachers seeing themselves as crusaders devoted to moulding children to their own religious or political beliefs. On *any* point of the spectrum. Parents don't pay for their children to be indoctrinated by their… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… If you want to baptise the children of the earth in your name, then go do so on your Facebook page. Don't expect to hold a job in state education, because children need to be protected from extremism, not immersed in it. And if you can't see that, then ideology has blinded you to… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…

People who teach in schools full of children with great social skills often can’t see why people make a big deal about behaviour. Cheerful compliance makes it seem easy. Which is why these people often can’t understand why ‘just asking nicely’ isn’t enough. The danger is when people with shallow experiences of challenging environments get into positions where they can dictate to others with deeper experiences of difficulty and defiance.

We ‘need’ to stop seeing misbehaviour as always emerging from a mysterious unmet ‘need’. Because not all misbehaviour does, and responding to it like that’s true often leads us into terrible errors of practice. ‘Needs’ language is part of the problem. A need contains a moral imperative: ‘this must be met’. And it suggests that once it’s met, better behaviour follows. But that’s not true. Take Maslow’s famous hierarchy of needs.

One of the most pointless behaviour tips you can give: 'build a relationship with your class.' Not because it's not true, but because it tells a trainee nothing about what to *do*. Often they vanish down a rabbit hole of trying to amuse or please the class. Chaos ensues It also mixes up causation with correlation. Just because we observe good relationships between peers and staff in well-behaved rooms, doesn't mean that the relationship is a cause. A good relationship is the OUTCOME of a process, not the process itself.

One observation about the independent sector: it seems to succumb *more* easily to the kind of infantile 21st century, groovy nonsense (like project-based learning, ‘collaboration/ creativity/ critical thinking etc) than the state sector. ‘Edupreneurs’ love this It’s the perfect storm:
1. Wealthy clients looking for an edge over their competitors.
2. Privileged student cohorts who are keen, hard-working, capable
3. An environment where failure is undetectable because of (2)
4. Any outcome can be called a success.

Behaviour management with the wrong lens. When well-meaning people ask teachers to consider and address social causes for behaviour. It's not that it's not relevant, or important, but that you're talking to the wrong people Teachers need strategies to create calm, safe environments where everyone can learn in an atmosphere of mutual dignity. I wish we could solve society's broader ills, but that's not in the teacher's gift.

SLT: please don’t do this. Don’t send them back in because they’ve been sweet to you, or to show them how lovely, cool or tolerant you are. Support your staff.

https://twitter.com/ianwhite21/status/1494360161380675599

Students can’t be allowed in without a threshold conversation with that member of staff, where students acknowledge responsibility, the impact of their actions, apologise, and are taught how to avoid future consequences.