Improving school discipline

Report Cover

A joint action plan designed to continue tackling indiscipline in Scottish schools - signed by the Education Minister, teaching unions and other education leaders - has been launched.
 
The Discipline Stakeholder Group - made up of the Scottish Executive, teaching unions, ADES, GTC Scotland and COSLA and advised by HMIE - has been working since 2004 to improve behaviour in schools.

The action plan is in response to the Behaviour in Scottish Schools survey, carried out by the NFER, which builds on similar studies carried out in 1990, 1996 and 2004.

The key findings of the discipline survey, endorsed by all members of the Discipline Stakeholder Group, include:

• On the whole school staff consider pupils to be well-behaved
• The key behaviour issue for schools continues to be low level indiscipline
• Most schools cope well with this most of the time
• Bad behaviour has not increased since the 2004 survey, but significant improvement has yet to be seen overall.
• There are occasional, more serious, aggressive incidents, usually in corridors and playgrounds rather than the classroom
• Violence against teachers is rare.
• Increasing numbers of very young children show behavioural problems
• There are differences of perception on discipline between headteachers, other staff and pupils
• Where current best practice is deployed, it works
• A lot of good practice comes from implementation of the Better Behaviour - Better Learning agenda.

Under the action plan:

• A Positive Behaviour Team funded by the Scottish Executive will work with schools
• Schools and authorities will be expected to use current best practice
• The Executive will do more to support quality improvement in on-site and off-site behaviour units by creating a good practice network for staffpublishing a good practice guide and new guidance
• HMIE will monitor responses to Better Behaviour Better Learning and the extent to which identified good practice is making an impact

The Positive Behaviour Team is made up of nine staff from schools and education authorities with wide-ranging experience of promoting positive behaviour.
 

Find out more

BEI Keywords

Discipline, Head Teacher Attitudes, Local Education Authorities, Pupil Attitudes, Pupil Behaviour, Teacher Attitudes

Article published to :

Education

Primary, Secondary

Type of Resource

Government Guidance, Reports, Research

Source :

http://www.nfer.ac.uk/emie/detail.asp?id_content=195&id_category=6&id_Ref=3309&level=&detail=news

Publisher :

NFER

Article Id :

Date Posted: