Children’s Society issues subtly-worded response to Tom Bennett

A children’s charity has issued a comeback to the Department for Education’s lead adviser on behaviour in schools, after he launched a scathing attack on its newly-published resource on school exclusions.

Tom Bennett wrote on twitter/x that the charity’s “Behaviour Policy Checklist” was “shockingly bad,” in a recent example of punchy online posts for which the freelance behaviour “tsar,” who also runs the organisation researchED, has become known.

Among the arguments in the publication, put together by a group of young people who consulted other youngsters, mainly of school age, was a view that sanctions used in schools are generally not effective.

Mr Bennett is a traditionalist who, as the tweet seems to demonstrate, can take a combative approach on twitter against those posting views on the other side of the argument. In this case, the charity’s twitter account had promoted a resource which seeks to reduce exclusions from school.

Mr Bennett has been a defender of the ability of schools to use exclusion to tackle problems with behaviour.