Softly, softly schools fuel bad behaviour

Telegraph

26-06-2025

Teaching assistant Katherine Hall* has witnessed behaviour in primary schools that has shocked her: pupils turning over desks, climbing on furniture, assaulting their peers and hurling equipment across the class. But what disheartens her most is the lack of action to tackle and change such behaviour when it first manifests as lower-level disruption.
'While most children fall into line, some struggle to adjust to the environment. Instead of teaching them how to adapt and exercising teacher authority when necessary, those poorly behaved children learn they will not receive meaningful consequences for unacceptable and anti-social conduct so they never learn to adapt,' she says.
'Little 'situations' keep getting managed and accommodated,' she continues. 'Then eventually, the child explodes and something bad happens and they get suspended and on and on it goes.'
The approach – with labels such as 'child-centred', 'trauma-led' or 'restorative' education – relies on prioritising children's feelings. It means that, rather than nipping poor behaviour in the bud as soon as children start school, it becomes ingrained, says the 45-year-old.
The end result is disastrous for pupils. As they get further up the school, and the nature of the misdemeanours become more serious, they are being kicked out.
Recent data from the Department of Education shows that suspensions and expulsions at state primary schools are soaring – rising from 22,694 in the spring term 2018/19 to 30,831 at the same point in 2023/24.
More than half of exclusions are driven by 'persistent disruptive behaviour'. Other shocking categories include use or threat of use of a weapon, physical assault, damage to property, sexual misconduct, bullying, verbal abuse and inappropriate use of IT, social media or online tech. Some 77 primary pupils – that's four to 11-year-olds – were suspended for behaviour related to drugs and alcohol.
The factors behind the rise in this troubling behaviour are myriad and complex. Many on the Left blame the impact of poverty – primary pupils on free school meals are four times more likely to be excluded than other pupils.
Others point to family breakdowns; the Department for Education figures show that children from groups with higher proportions of households led by a married couple, such as Asian and African families, have lower exclusion rates than their white and Caribbean-heritage classmates.
According to the Centre for Social Justice, children suffering from the consequences of family breakdown are 50 per cent more likely to have behavioural difficulties, anxiety or depression, fail at school, and struggle with relationships.
At the same time, pupils are more distracted than they have ever been. According to a 2023 Ofcom report, more than half of eight to 11-year-olds across the UK own a mobile phone. Children's concentration levels have fallen off a cliff, reducing their ability to cope with anything requiring effort and focus in class.
Few of them are reading books, preferring instead a diet of three-second TikTok clips, warp-speed gaming or even porn, with half of children being exposed to explicit content by the age of 13, according to a study for the Children's Commissioner for England.
Then there is the rise of 'gentle parenting'. While definitions vary, this type of parenting focuses on guiding children's behaviour through empathy and rewards rather than discipline, and has been slammed by Katharine Birbalsingh, head teacher of Michaela Community School in London, who argues that a lack of boundaries can be harmful and stunt development.
Also in the mix is the seemingly exponential rise in the number of children with special educational needs (SEN). One of the fastest-growing categories is the catch-all of social, emotional, and behavioural difficulties (SEBD).
Schools have to make 'reasonable adjustments', such as special 'sensory' areas, headphones to block out noise, time-outs and reduced timetables. Suspension rates among SEN pupils, with or without a formal diagnosis, are significantly higher than average.
At the first sign of behavioural issues, school and parents are in hot pursuit of a diagnosis of some kind, spurred on by social media. The new flavour of the month on parenting sites is rejection sensitive dysphoria (RSD), a term used to describe 'intense emotional reactions to perceived or actual rejection or criticism'.
It can manifest as 'emotional dysregulation, low self-esteem and difficulty managing relationships' and is frequently linked to ADHD.
It troubles Hall that the approach to children who have 'mislearnt' behaviour is to look for a diagnosis that might take years to secure, if ever, rather than immediately explore how to change the behaviour and train pupils to adapt to more social, formal settings.
'Where I think the line is being blurred is that the misbehaving children are not necessarily SEN,' she says. 'Any child that is running around and refusing to stay put is assumed to need an assessment. Yes, possibly something is going on. But a child's inability to focus and do what they are told is almost immediately filed under the heading of neurodiversity or ADHD. And the behaviour then becomes something that they are deemed not to have any control over.'
For Hall, the tragedy is that many of these children will never get 'a formal diagnosis of anything because they don't qualify and will just always be that troublesome child because no-one has set them boundaries'.
Indulging bad behaviour
Let down as toddlers by parents who struggle to set clear expectations of behaviour or employ effective parenting techniques, some children are then failed by schools which adhere to the principle that 'all behaviour is a form of communication'.
The ill-defined concept of 'wellbeing' is superseding the core purpose of education, Hall warns. And in this environment, showing displeasure at a child's behaviour, whether by a stern look, a raised voice or a sanction, is heresy – as is simply telling pupils what to do and expecting them to do it.
When bad behaviour is indulged and there are no apparent consequences, other pupils take note.
'Other kids see this as preferential treatment,' says Hall. 'Then everyone thinks that they have a choice: 'if I'm in a good mood I'll stay at this desk, but if I'm bored or annoyed, it doesn't matter if I kick off'. It is actually confusing for children.'
At the older end of primary school, behaviour can become violent; while the teacher pretends they are not alarmed and frightened classmates look on.
One former teaching assistant from Sussex describes how she was hit, kicked, bitten and sworn at by primary age pupils in the course of her work. She quit when she realised that 'this isn't going to stop'.
Matters are made worse, not better, by attempts to teach young children 'emotional literacy' in personal, social and health education (PSHE) lessons.
'It is teachers acting as amateur therapists,' says Hall. 'Saying to children 'This is what anger looks like, this is sadness' is not the same as helping them to manage or 'self-regulate' their feelings, but we assume it is. We teach that all feelings are valid but we know that, in fact, our feelings might be unhelpful, wrong, misplaced or fleeting. What we are doing in classrooms is woolly and ill-thought-out.'
What you will never hear, adds Hall, is a teacher saying 'let's put aside our feelings and concentrate on learning'.
Therapeutic education
The UK's largest teaching union, the National Education Union (NEU), advocates for therapeutic education – a holistic approach to learning that addresses not only academic needs but also emotional and social development. At its core is the belief that everyone is, to some extent, shaped or harmed by their childhood – and that what was once considered a treatment for mental health problems can, in fact, be nurturing for all.
In an NEU toolkit for teachers, it says that behaviour management should start with asking 'What has happened to you?' rather than 'What have you done?'. This approach, it claims, creates safe learning environments, and addresses the challenges of student mental health.
Its influence on government policy is clear. New guidance proposed by the Department for Education advises teachers, when dealing with violent pupils, to pause and consider whether the children have 'experienced adverse life events or past traumas or neglect,' or may have undiagnosed medical conditions, before resorting to restraint or isolation. To preserve the 'dignity' of out-of-control pupils, staff are also encouraged to think twice before intervening 'in front of their peers.'
But some in education have concerns about the efficacy of the therapeutic approach. According to David Didau, a former English teacher and the author of What If Everything You Knew About Education Is Wrong?, the aims of therapeutic education appear antithetical to those of academic education.
'Our preoccupation with therapy and wellbeing makes the normal, abnormal and far from teaching resilience, it seems to make us all more fragile and unhealthily aware of our vulnerability,' he writes. 'It teaches us that we're damaged and that we need professional help to undo this damage.'
As Tom Bennett, the Government's lead behaviour adviser puts it, the teacher can become 'a children's entertainer to a room full of child Napoleons, terrified of upsetting their child-emperors'.
'Restorative practice feels right; it appeals to our sense that, with enough discussion, everyone will realise they should do the right thing,' he says. 'But I am weary of working with schools that have leaned so hard into restorative practice they fell over, and need to be rebooted because behaviour is so chaotic.'
Hall is far from an advocate of the ultra-strict discipline regimes that lead to silent classrooms, but she points out that in unruly lessons, it is often the autistic child who loses out most. Another casualty of staff time spent sitting in sensory tents or kicking a ball with a child who has acted out are the pupils who need extra academic support – often those from disadvantaged backgrounds.
Teaching assistants who are assigned to police the non-SEN 'problem child' have less time to tutor small groups who need extra input to bring them up to the expected level.
'I don't know what the answer is, but my instinctive feeling is that when schools start pandering and going from a position of 'I'm in charge' to negotiating with pupils, the game is lost,' says Hall.
'Children who push against boundaries and go on low-level power trips need discipline more than others, not less. All the child-centred approach achieves is to reinforce unacceptable behaviour and the irony is that it ends up with those children being kicked out of school.'