Category: Governance

The Education Endowment Foundation has published new guidance on improving behaviour in schools, responding to a clear need for schools to have consistent and clear policies that promote positive behaviour in lessons. The report, based on extensive research and consultancy, is built around six recommendations for preventing and responding to misbehaviour. These are categorised as either ‘proactive’ (strategies to prevent bad behaviour from happening), ‘reactive’ (how to deal with bad behaviour when it happens), or as relating to ‘implementation’ (focusing on the need for consistency and coherence in behaviour policies).

Practical examples of each are included to support senior leaders and classroom teachers in primary and secondary schools, though governors and trustees may also find the guidance useful, even in schools where behaviour is generally good. Particularly instructive is the finding that “universal systems” of behaviour management are unlikely to work, whereas more personalised approaches can significantly improve the behaviour of disruptive pupils. In terms of implementation, many require deployment at classroom level, though others still require a school-wide focus.

The report’s publication is timely and should be read alongside the Timpson review of school exclusion.

The Department for Education (DfE) has confirmed that funding for the PE and sports premium will continue for the academic years 2019 and 2020. While allocation details are yet to be confirmed, in 2018/19, schools with 16 or less pupils received £1,000 per pupil, whereas schools with 17 or more pupils received a lump sum of £16,000 and an additional £10 per pupil.

The PE and sports premium is funding given to schools with pupils in years one to six, or pupils aged between five and 10. It can be used to fund sporting or PE activities beyond what the school already offers, and is meant to allow schools to put in place sustainable improvements to their PE and sport provision.

The Department for Education (DfE) has agreed in principle to 30 recommendations put forward in the Timpson Review of School Exclusion,

Based on extensive consultation with parents, schools and LAs, the Timpson review highlighted the pupil and school characteristics which are associated with greater risk of exclusion. Alarmingly, 78% of pupils who are permanently excluded have special educational needs of disabilities (SEND), are classified as in need, or are eligible to receive free school meals; 11% of permanently excluded pupils have all these characteristics.

Also identified are four fundamental drivers of policies and practices around exclusions in schools, including:

• differences in leadership, standards of behaviour and culture in schools
• lack of consistency around the management of poor behaviour
• few incentives for schools to take responsibility for pupils at risk of being excluded
• a lack of safeguards to “protect children against informal exclusion and … off-rolling”

The review bolsters our understanding of current practice, underlining the considerable variation in how effectively exclusions are used. It concluded that action is required to ensure that permanent exclusions are used appropriately.

The Home Office has published a consultation on options for supporting a multi-agency or ‘public health’ approach to tackling serious youth violence, including options for the introduction of a new legal duty and a non-legislative option for partners to work together voluntarily.

The proposals seek a multi-agency approach involving a range of partners and agencies such as education, health, social services, housing, youth and victim services, offender management and others. It aims to address ‘what works’ in tackling the root causes of serious youth violence by bringing together organisations together to share information, data and intelligence, and encourage them to work in concert rather than in isolation.

You can read the proposals in full here (external link)

The consultation deadline is 28 May 2019.

The Education Policy Institute (EPI) has published a report addressing growing concerns about the number of pupils being taken off school rolls without formal exclusion. An increasingly prevalent practice that has gained media attention in recent years, ‘off-rolling’, as it is also known, is an informal pupil exit that ultimately benefits the school’s interests over those of the pupil concerned. 

Research conducted by Ofsted in 2016-17 revealed that “over 19,000 pupils did not progress from Year 10 to Year 11 in the same state-funded secondary school”. EPI’s paper, funded by the National Education Union (NEU), builds on this finding amongst speculation that that these exits are growing due to schools and multi-academy trusts (MATs) “‘gaming the system’ by removing pupils from their rolls so that those pupils are not then counted in the school(s) GCSE results”.

Spanning across ten years, EPI’s study focuses on three different cohorts of students between year seven and year 11 and delves into the profile of pupils with unexplained exits. Many affected pupil groups were vulnerable learners with one in three having contact with the social care system and one in seven being classed as disadvantaged pupils. The report also notes that almost a quarter of all unexplained exits were contained within just 330 schools.

Further details on where in the education system unexplained pupil exits occur most prominently will be delivered in a second report due in summer 2019. The document will also disclose the local authorities and MATs in which this practice is particularly high.

Good governance can only be achieved with ethics being at the heart of the decision governing boards are making.