Behaviour management policies, with big implications for children, need to be subject to rigorous evaluation

Do "sweat the small stuff" behaviour policies actually work, in the long run, for pupils? The fact that we seem to lack a firm, detailed evidential base for policies which have big impacts on pupils is of concern.

 

“You can’t punish the special educational needs out of a child.”

So argued the mother of a 12-year-old boy, whom I spoke to last month and who took me through in detail how, she argued passionately, a school’s uncompromising approach to behaviour management had triggered serious anxiety and drained all his enthusiasm for education following a crucial transition. 

Was she right? Has her son been damaged? Are such punishments, where they occur, contributing to the high levels of disengagement from secondary education among 11- and 12-year-olds we now see, within months of it starting?

Or are those defending unyielding “sweat the small stuff” policies on behaviour, uniform and equipment the ones with moral righteousness, in the end, on their side? If so, can they evidence that their policies are best, for children? And if not, what should we think about this?

This case study raised such thoughts, which I think have profound implications for how we view how school policymaking currently works, and of course for those young people on the end of it.

The detail

The mother I spoke to had felt concerned enough about the situation facing her son at Ark Alexandra Academy, in Hastings, East Sussex, to withdraw him from the school within weeks of him starting year seven there.

Her son, Michael*, was diagnosed with ADHD while in primary school. He was also to be diagnosed with autism in those first few weeks at secondary, and also has persistent bowel trouble. Ms Matthews said that, within 12 days of starting at the school at the age of 11, he had racked up three hours’ worth of detentions. Ms Matthews provided evidence of some of the reasons for these “interventions,” as given by the school. These included “missing uniform,” with a separate entry for the same day stating that he had had a detention for “no blazer and shirt untucked”. Another entry said that he had been punished for “twice walking on the right [of a corridor] when transitioning for lunch”. Ms Matthews said that he had been punished for forgetting a blazer in the classroom of a previous lesson, and for not having a clear pencil case, despite what the school had said was “multiple” reminders, though she said that this had been her mistake and that she could not afford to replace this equipment.

She added: “Fearing more detentions, after PE, Michael would be rushed and flustered while getting changed to get to lesson on time. But in his haste, he would fail to completely tuck his shirt in. His attempt to avoid one detention [for being late to his lesson] just landed him another. Michael’s biggest learning barrier is executive dysfunction. You can’t punish the SEN out of a child. They just end up disproportionately punished and disengaged.”

She added: “So, for a very robust child, who doesn’t have a history of mental health problems, and who had been excited at going to secondary school, in 12 days he was transformed. Within not even a week, he was like ‘I don’t want to go to school tomorrow, mum.’ There was a real sudden change in him. And he just couldn’t understand why: what am I doing that’s so wrong?”

She said the anxiety of trying to avoid detentions triggered a flare-up of Michael’s longstanding gastrointestinal symptoms. Suffering from these, and migraines, he ended up off school for two weeks. When Ms Matthews then ended up struggling to secure a toilet pass for Michael before he went back to school, which he needed in order to be sure that he would be able to get to the bathroom if requiring it urgently during a lesson, she said she then came to the conclusion that she could not send her son back to Ark Alexandra. So she withdrew him to home educate last October, before eventually finding him a place at another school, where she said he is now much happier.

Hers is not an isolated case at this academy, which is part of Ark Schools, which controls 39 academies from its base in White City, West London. Another parent told me that they had also withdrawn their two children from the school, saying: “Within a few weeks of the new leadership team starting, both of my previously happy, 99% attendance, zero detention, hard-working children were having anxiety, panic attacks, stress and all the physical symptoms that entails. Even now, months later and both attending different educational establishments, the damage and trauma caused by the environment at Ark is still having a huge impact.”

This parent described the current set-up at Ark Alexandra as a “hostile” environment, “with punishments handed out for crimes such as having a bent elbow when raising a hand, comforting an upset classmate, crying [and] walking a few inches too far to the right in a corridor”.

Last December, a petition was launched “for a fair and supportive discipline policy” at the school, with its impact on pupils’ mental health to the fore among concerns. The National Education Union’s local district has warned of an “authoritarian regime pushing out young people and demoralising staff”. The local Labour MP, Helena Dollimore, has also raised concerns, particularly around the impact of policies on children with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities, adding in a Facebook post in February that she had been “shocked to hear that in the last term along, 123 children were removed from Ark, about 10 per cent.”

On Friday, after annual census data was published for all schools nationwide, Education Uncovered published a story showing how the school had shrunk dramatically since its current management regime had arrived, in September 2023. Specifically, year groups of children who were in years seven to nine in January 2023 were around a sixth smaller – 16 per cent – by the time they reached years nine to 11 in January 2025. (This is a much higher drop-off in numbers than was seen before the current management arrived). 

Ark Schools maintains that the school is thriving, and that survey feedback from staff, pupils and parents recognised that it was improving.

Wider implications

Ark Alexandra is, in my experience in covering goings-on in schools for many years now, towards the extreme end in terms of high-control behaviour management policies. But this argument has more widespread importance, with the benefits versus downsides of strict versus less strict approaches carrying ramifications, I think, for many schools and perhaps millions of children in England.

In fact, it’s a debate I’ve been living myself, with two children also currently negotiating key stage 3 in London secondary schools.

The key question, of course, is: will these policies work, for the children they are meant to help?

Surveying all of this information, and thinking back to my conversations with Ms Matthews, I wonder about the philosophy behind what could be called “sweat the small stuff” approaches to pupil behaviour management.

Will a tough approach to child’s forgetfulness improve behaviour in long run?

To zoom in on one example in particular, I think about Ms Matthews having stated that Michael received a detention for leaving his blazer behind, in another classroom.

As a parent myself, of course all the time I face micro decisions on what to do, when encountering my son or daughter acting in a certain way. Is punishment the best way forward if the child does something I think is wrong, or would this be an over-reaction, in this case: basically, how’s best to proceed?

So in this case was punishment the best answer, in terms of Michael’s long-term interests? Ms Matthews, of course, clearly believes it was entirely counter-productive. You end up just making the child so anxious about not making a mistake, they become disaffected. And he did not mean to do anything wrong: his condition makes him forgetful, she, and he, would argue.

By contrast, as she put it to me in discussing the experience of the school Michael now attends, having left Ark Alexandra: “Teachers know that Michael is going to drop his blazer, or a coat, or a pencil case. So, with just a quick ‘Michael’, a little nod, or a discreet little side eye, you know, that’s all it needs. You don’t need to punish the child. And he can go onto the next lesson positively and get on with his learning without internalising why he’s the problem.”

The advocates of sweat-the-small stuff, I guess, must be of the view that a more tolerant approach, as described above, will end up letting Michael down. The point is, I guess they would argue, that in the real world he does need to remember that blazer. It will be important to him later in life that he is not forgetful, and that piece of his uniform is important to him appearing smart, which in itself will be vital when he finds himself in the workplace. Allowing leniency on this promotes “lower standards” and ultimately lets Michael down, since he will not be forced to confront his forgetfulness and change his behaviour. And punishment, in reminding him of where he is going wrong, will force him to change tack, for his own benefit.

It is possible to quibble with some of the detail in this argument. A stress on uniform, for example, can increasingly seem in contrast to the requirements of the modern workplace, even when those of us working in what used to be called office jobs are actually on-site, rather than working from home: I am writing this piece in jeans and a t-shirt, for example.  

But the bigger point is that - it seems to me having covered this argument for a while now - those advocating for toughminded behaviour, uniform and equipment policies in schools, really do need to be able to cite rigorous evidence of the benefits of these regimes.

That is, critical parents, in this and other cases, have argued of negative impacts on their children’s mental health, when regimes are perceived by children on the end of them as overly harsh. Advocates of these systems might be expected, in arguing against this, to be able to produce evidence that, although these rules might seem tough at first, in the end they will pay off.

In other words, although in his case Michael was withdrawn from this school before spending much time there, advocates of such policies should be able to point to studies citing that in other instances, students such as Michael were eventually persuaded, by the behaviour system including its regime of punishments, not to leave the blazer behind, and that any impact in terms of stress and disillusionment, where it occurred, was fleeting. Their behaviour was indeed improved, so that the system was to their benefit.

But is this true? Does improving behaviour in the widest sense – including on the minutiae of uniform and equipment – come about to children’s benefit through regimes which emphasise punishment, alongside reward? Does it have no impact? Or do negatives outweigh positives?

The staggering thing, I think, given the clearly often large impact that these structures can have on the detail of how children experience school, is that this evidence seems to be lacking.

Interventions in education vs healthcare

It is sometimes misleading to make a comparison between education and healthcare: the two systems are not always analogous. But one in this case may provide some insight. Imagine a healthcare intervention, which were said to have potentially major impacts on a patient, for better or worse. Would the National Health Service roll out such an approach without detailed studies on whether it is likely to help those on the end of it? I would suggest that to do so would be fairly unthinkable.

And yet here we are, with school behaviour management policies: parents are expected simply to back them, even though in some cases they have serious concerns about the impact on their children, without such evidence.

Often, researching and writing in this field, the answer that comes back from those defending high-control/zero tolerance/sweat the small stuff policies in the face of such criticism, runs as follows: “What evidence do you need? You just need to work in a school to know that this stuff works, and the fact that you are critical of it underlines the fact that you have never stood up in a class and tried to make children behave. We have experience of running schools, or teaching in them, and see the evidence that it works, every day.”

Or, I have sometimes heard it put that such a study would be hard to design.

Not all teachers would be of that view, of course: some prominent educators were among those to argue on social media over the weekend that this latest case raises questions about what might be happening, for so many children to leave a school.

But, to come back on the point about evidence, without it those making these arguments are less likely to convince parents who are sceptical that this is the right long-term approach for their children. And it is far from impossible to think of studies which could indeed test out, reasonably scientifically, the long-term impacts of these approaches on children.

For example, as the think tank Pro Bono Economics put it last year, in a paper advocating the systematic measurement of children’s wellbeing: “Alongside a lack of data about the drivers of low wellbeing sits a lack of data about the solutions to it. A clear example is the current debate on how to respond to poor behaviour in schools.

“Some would advocate for a stronger punitive approach to poor behaviour, while others would say that aggressive student behaviour is a symptom of a failure to focus on building trusted relationships, which punitive approaches can put at risk.

“But these assertions are not based on deep evidence presently.”** 

Data pointing in a concerning direction on pupil mental health

The need for those advocating particular approaches to behaviour management to back up their claims about its benefits with evidence seems particularly clear given that stacked up on the other side of this debate are an increasing range of statistics pointing to the wellbeing of children in this country, especially teenagers, going in a concerning direction, even relative to other nations.

The reported life satisfaction scores of UK teenagers, as measured in the OECD’s “PISA” study, fell drastically between 2015 and 2022, with our 15-year-olds reported by the Children’s Society as faring worst on this measure among 27 European nations. In April, I reported how the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) showed how the proportion of English pupils saying they disliked school had doubled in eight years: from 24 to 48 per cent among 14-year-olds and from 14 to 28 per cent among 10-year-olds. This was a far worse trend than the international average.

Last month, it was revealed that a survey of more than 100,000 pupils analysed by the University College London academic John Jerrim had found a “steep and lasting drop in engagement” happening for children in year seven, with Professor Jerrim also using international data to state that this was significantly higher than seen in other countries. Last week, the leader of England’s fourth-largest academy trust was reported in the TES also saying that, based on survey data in her own organisation, children’s engagement with school, again, “falls off the edge of a cliff” in the first years of secondary. 

Are school behaviour policies contributing in any way to these numbers? Well, again given the impact that they can have on children’s experiences, it seems right to wonder.

Recent research, specifically about the transition from primary to secondary school, also found that “schools function best when they prioritise human relationships over rigid structures.” 

Some of those organising and/or advocating for certain types of “rigid” school behaviour policies often give the impression that even to ask questions about them is to undermine them, and therefore should not happen. But, especially given the above, questions do need to continue to be asked. And I say that with huge respect for teachers, in terms of having to manage what are often challenging situations in the classroom, and with pupil behaviour in general seemingly not in a good place at the moment. To state the obvious, it is not an easy job.

The need for nuance, and a middle way?

I should say, finally, that answers on this seem unlikely to be simple. While I think few would dispute the need for children to face serious sanctions in the case of serious misbehaviour, and for there to be clear boundaries in the case of bad behaviour per se, automatic and strict punishments on uniform and equipment are in my experience more contentious, if only because failing to follow a rule on the latter would appear to carry few implications for other students.

Does “sweat the small stuff” lead to improvements in more serious aspects of misbehaviour? I think the jury is out on that: this approach clearly has high-profile advocates, but on the other hand, I have repeatedly heard from teachers in recent years that “sweating the small stuff” can leave generally well-behaved pupils anxious for fear of being punished for some small infringement while those needing more serious sanctions shrug off their endlessly-repeated detentions.

Again, what is the evidence, in detail, of the impacts on all pupils?

Advocates of these approaches have been known to argue that the “silent majority” of children who are generally well-behaved want tough-minded rules. Yes, it is true that misbehaving students should not be able to disrupt the learning of a whole class. But, in my experience both professionally and personally, I have heard it argued that over-policing of the details of school life can lead to anxiety and be detrimental to mental health, even among well-behaved pupils. Those making these arguments should be able to point to evidence of having asked young people, in detail, what they feel about these policies.

And to ask questions about these policies as above is not even to get into the debate about SEND: was Michael really being punished because of his ADHD, for example, and do special needs make it even harder to think in terms of one-size-fits-all behaviour policies?

On all of this, I think many parents will want a middle way: a sense that rules are in place to stop misbehaviour, without stressing out children so much that some are disengaging from school. Is such a position really not possible, as often seems implicit in this debate?

I am picking up some sense, in relation to Ark Alexandra, that classrooms are more orderly, and that teaching is more straightforward, under the current approach. That’s important. But so is evaluating the impact on the many children who are no longer in the school.

There was a sense, in one or two responses on x to my piece over the weekend, that essentially the latter did not matter, with the institutional needs of Ark Alexandra to the fore: the results and Ofsted inspection outcomes of this school in the past had simply not been good enough, and therefore that a tough new approach was needed. And, by implication, that the experiences of those who had left the school might not count – or indeed that they were assumed simply to be “troublemakers,” who needed to leave: a point which parents I have spoken to dispute vigorously.

But of course the experiences of all children a school is charged with educating – those who remain, and those who have left - need to be considered. The fact that we appear to lack such an evaluation at scale, including by the Department for Education, is pretty staggering, and something this still-relatively-new government should be looking at urgently.

 

*The names of Michael and his mother have been changed.

 

** Sometimes, those advocating strict approaches on behaviour point to a single school – Michaela Community School, in north London. Their pupils have indeed achieved staggering GCSE results, in a school which operates an avowedly traditionalist approach to managing behaviour. But are such approaches generalisable, given the particularities of Michaela’s situation, and to what extent are its results a product of its behaviour policies? Basing policy on extrapolating from one institution seems quite precarious, as a strategy.