Behaviour and culture in 2014 and 2026

In 2014 I was working in a very tough school in East London. I have found myself thinking about that period quite a lot recently, partly because behaviour has featured so prominently in our discussions across Advantage Schools, but also because people occasionally ask why I hold some of the views I do about culture, consistency and leadership. 

The honest answer is that those views were formed in uncomfortable circumstances. 

The school I refer to had become an academy after a prolonged period of poor outcomes and declining confidence. Pupil mobility was unlike anything I have experienced before or since. Around 165 pupils left in Year 11 that summer, but we had taught close to 280 over the previous five years. Every week brought pupils arriving or leaving, often with very difficult personal circumstances, and every new arrival created further complexity for teachers who were already working extraordinarily hard. 

Looking back now, I do not remember a staff member who lacked commitment. Quite the opposite. Teachers planned well, cared deeply about their pupils, and were remarkably resilient given the circumstances. Nor do I think we lacked intelligent people around the leadership table. If anything, we had become too willing to search for sophisticated answers to problems that were, at their heart, much simpler than we wanted them to be. 

I can remember leadership meetings where we discussed teaching, interventions, data, curriculum, new initiatives and the latest ideas that might help us improve. Those conversations were fine. Schools should think carefully about all of those things. What strikes me now is that we spent remarkably little time talking about the one thing that every member of staff experienced every lesson and every interaction of every day: behaviour. 

I do not mean that the school was full of badly behaved children, because it was not. Most of our pupils, despite living on what the Evening Standard called ‘the estate with the most murderous gang in Europe’ came to school wanting to succeed, and many achieved extraordinary things despite difficult lives. The issue was that we had become accustomed to a level of low-level disruption, defiance and inconsistency that had gradually become normal. We had almost stopped noticing it ourselves. Once something becomes normal, people stop asking whether it should be. We thought behaviour was decent. 

That was probably the biggest lesson I learnt during that period. Schools rarely decline because people stop caring. More often, they decline because people gradually become accustomed to things that, with hindsight, should never have accepted in the first place. 

Culture is built by defending the norms and expectations that we believe in and prioritise in thousands of small interactions, until those norms become what pupils, staff and families expect. 

I am sharing this because I think every school in our trust should consider this. Every school leader should consider it. I am certainly not saying that we got everything right. Our schools all have better systems now than the ones I describe below. But I do not want anyone to think that I am asking schools to do anything I would not have done myself. 

Before 2013, things were not good. Behaviour was not good enough. Staff were working incredibly hard, but too often their work was being undermined by poor behaviour, weak follow-up and a culture where too much was tolerated for too long. 

That experience shaped how I think about behaviour and culture. I do not believe excellent culture is magical. It does not appear because a school has the right words on a slide or the right values on a wall. It is built through methodical, systematic work. Much of that work is not glamorous. Some of it is barely noticeable at the time. 

That is why Sallie’s piece last week was so important. Behaviour and culture have to be right as standard if we want excellence. If they are not right, everything else becomes harder, or more likely impossible.  

This is what we did then. 

To say I was working in a school in challenging circumstances is understating things. I had been rereading Hirsch’s The Schools We Need, where he refers to some schools in the US with over 100% pupil transience. We were not quite there, but the level of churn was beyond anything I had seen elsewhere. I remember someone describing it as “off the scale”. 

Our cohorts were significantly below national average for prior attainment. In the context section of Raise, a long document that measured attainment, achievement and the demographics of the school back then, we were in the most challenging quintile in every category. Very few of our most recent intake were high attaining pupils. 

The school had become an academy under an Executive Principal who was also Head of another local, high-performing school. Before that, the school had been under a Local Authority Warning Notice. Results were stagnant. The roll was falling. There was a feeling that the Local Authority was out to get the school. That created extraordinary pressure on the Headteacher. I remember thinking, “if Ofsted come now, we will lose our jobs”. 

The Senior Leadership Team did not do enough to resist that pressure. In fact, I think we magnified it. 

The staff were great. Despite the pressure we had put on them, and I regret that pressure, they planned and taught lessons of a high standard. They worked hard. They followed direction. They questioned. They searched. They wanted to get better. There were very few “door-handle planners”. 

At the first meeting of what became the Leadership Group, under the new Headteacher, I was given a new role. I had been responsible for Teaching and Learning. Within a few minutes I was told I would now be responsible for everything to do with the “Middle School”, which was Years 9 to 11. 

We were asked what we could do that would have an immediate impact. Within minutes we had suggested the obvious things: 

• Ban mobile phones. 
• Exclude pupils who persistently behaved badly despite everything. 
• Make sure pupils saw the Leadership Group a lot. 
• Enforce uniform standards. 
• Sanction poor punctuality. 
• Have whole-school assemblies focused on ethos. 

I still think the wider staff would have come up with the same list. 

The school had tried almost everything. Some of it now looks embarrassing. Learning styles. Pupil-led observations. Learning walks. High-stakes observations. Low-stakes observations. Interventions from 7am to 9pm, including Saturdays. Mocksteds. Local Authority secondments. “Lazy Teaching”, which you can look up, but please do not try it. It is very hard work for minimal impact. Heaven knows what else. 

All the time, we had been ignoring what national attendance and behaviour advisor Tom Bennett would call the elephant in the room. I heard my Executive Principal speak at a Teaching Leaders event and say that schools in challenging circumstances are usually challenging because they face challenging behaviour. I think we had been conditioned to ignore that. We were trying to solve everything else while hoping behaviour would somehow improve. 

Really, the Leadership Group should have been shaking each other and saying the obvious thing: it was the behaviour of the pupils. And accepting that shifting those things was not glamorous, and required a long-term plan that everyone implemented every minute of every day.  

We did have a behaviour system in the ‘bad’ days. It was used to record behaviour. But that was mainly what it did. Behaviour was recorded and then too little happened. 

This went back to a staff working group a few years before that had suggested the system. Behaviour points were recorded. One point if it affected the pupil, such as lateness or lack of equipment. Two points if it affected the learning of others, such as talking back. Three points if it created a health and safety risk. The recording was not the problem. The follow-up was. 

Pupils were recycled back into the system. First it was the classroom teacher’s responsibility. Then the subject leader’s. Then someone else’s. By the time it had moved through the system, most people had forgotten the original behaviour. Internal exclusion, or seclusion, was used regularly. Parent meetings happened. But some pupils had accumulated over 700 behaviour points in the previous year. Staff were sick of it. 

On the first day in my new role, I led a whole Middle School assembly. I told pupils that their responsibility was A, B, C. I cringe a little at my shoehorning this into ABC now. I wish I’d called A, ‘attend’. But I didn’t. Anyway ABC: 

• Analyse your work. 

• Behave. 

• Correct your work. 

I then promised that if other pupils stopped them from doing those things, we would remove those pupils from the classroom. 

We expected pupil planners to be on desks in every classroom. Previously they had barely been used. We logged how often each member of SLT went into classrooms. This was not about monitoring staff or judging the quality of teaching. It was about checking that pupils had planners on desks and that staff were being supported. 

The question I asked was simple: “Excuse me Sir/Miss, is everything to your satisfaction in here?”. Some of you may have heard me ask this to this day.  

If the answer was not a firm yes, we encouraged the member of staff to send the pupil out. There was no negotiation and no returning the pupil to the classroom. If a pupil was found outside a classroom, the only question was, “would you like me to take this young person away?” If the answer was yes, we did. Every time. Including for supply teachers. 

If there was a mobile phone incident, we encouraged staff to make it a big deal. Phones were confiscated every single time and parents collected them after 24 hours. If a phone went off and was not handed in, the Leadership Group was called. We searched every pupil and their bags and confiscated all mobile phones found. 

We drew a line. 

I had previously written about my brother and my belief that, if his school had permanently excluded him, he would not have gone to prison as a young adult. That mattered to me then and it still matters to me now. 

The line was this. If pupils accumulated 25 behaviour points in a half term, they would receive a fixed-term exclusion. Pupils who were one minute late to school had an automatic 20-minute detention after school that same day. No excuses. 

It would have been easy to make exceptions. In the first half term I signed off more than 80 suspensions. At half term I realised that a number of pupils had reached 20 points within two weeks and then improved their behaviour so they did not get suspended. So I announced in a whole-school (remember, this meant ‘years 9-11’) assembly that the threshold would reduce to 20 points. I then ratified it at the next Leadership Group meeting. 

The threshold became more demanding. In the second half term there were still many suspensions, but fewer than 80. I cannot remember the exact figure. 

If a pupil was suspended twice, they would usually return from the second suspension to a final warning, which they signed in front of me. I had to hold my nerve a number of times. We did permanently exclude some pupils that year. It was necessary to defend the emerging culture and to make sure other pupils could learn. 

Suspensions reduced half term by half term, except for one half term where there was a serious incident. 

There was a fight. Many pupils in the year group watched it. Some filmed it. The next day, after a day’s investigation, I ended the school day early and held an assembly. I told the pupils about my brother. I told them that it was because I cared that I would be very harsh. 

We suspended 19 pupils just for being at the fight. All of them were given final warnings. I meant those warnings. Pupils had seen peers not return to school and they now valued their place. The three pupils directly involved in the fight were permanently excluded. 

The system evolved. Pupils who reached 7 behaviour points were placed on form tutor report. Pupils who reached 12 were placed in all-day seclusion for between one and three days, with a re-entry meeting with parents. Pupils who reached 20 continued to face a fixed-term suspension. Every behaviour point was sent to parents by text. 

The following academic year we raised expectations again. 

First, we introduced SLANT, from Doug Lemov’s Teach Like a Champion and written about by Joe Kirby. All of our schools have a version of this. 

Second, we introduced a Saturday detention. If a pupil received four punctuality detentions, they had to attend school on Saturday, in full school uniform, dropped off and picked up by their parents. 

Third, we introduced a new uniform. Alongside that, we introduced a uniform card called the Ready to Learn card. At the suggestion of staff, we also introduced a five-minute afternoon registration. If a child was chewing, had their top button undone, was not wearing their blazer, or was not meeting any other expectation, their Ready to Learn card was signed. If they did not have the card, it was an automatic one-hour detention on Friday with me. 

That detention took place in the Hall, in silence, after school. It was public. If a child had one signature on their Ready to Learn card, the tutor kept them behind for ten minutes after school. No chances, just certainty of action. If they had two signatures, they were in Middle School detention with me on Friday for thirty minutes, including a personal lecture at the end. Three signatures meant an hour. Four meant we considered whether they were doing their job as a pupil and whether seclusion or exclusion was needed. Our secondary schools have better systems than this now. 

Looking back, I would not claim that everything we did was perfect. I would not claim that every decision would be right for every school now. And I think the detail was relatively primitive. I certainly think primary schools in particular should have different, simpler systems but thought about much more by school leaders and implemented with really explicit support for pupils to meet expectations, learn, and for us to understand their level of development. But I do think the principle was right. 

We stopped pretending that culture would improve through hope. We made expectations clear. We made follow-up certain. We supported staff and they supported each other so that the systems never collapsed and were never overwhelmed. We showed pupils that we meant what we said. We defended the right of pupils to learn and teachers to teach. 

That is the point I hope that we will take from it now. 

Strong culture is built when adults agree the standards, teach them clearly, notice when they are not met, and respond consistently. It is built when leaders are visible and when staff know they will be backed. It is built when pupils learn that the small things matter because the small things are the culture. And the work on behaviour and culture is never done.