Laura Webb CPD

I want to start with a couple of caveats, because the idea of blogging about behaviour and school culture does indeed worry me. Firstly, I’m not a behaviour expert of any kind. I am a Head of Department who has moved school into a MAT which places disruption-free classrooms at the heart of their school improvement priorities. I have worked in two schools previously, both of which I was happy at, both of which I moved on from as I was seeking new challenges. That is not to say that I was happy with the behaviour systems at work in my previous schools (I’ll provide a brief overview of these for context) and indeed were part of the reason I moved at each point. Secondly, I’m not a champion/advocate/saleswoman for any approach. I just wanted to share some thoughts on how my teaching life has changed since moving schools.

I think talking about anything to do with education needs context, because I’m really not saying anything that is working for me will work for everyone. So here are the history of schools I’ve worked at (training schools not included – that’s a whole other story!)

• School One: 11-16 school, at the time around 1200-1300 pupils. SEN now 7.6%, EAL 7.8%, FSM 24.2%. Ofsted: good, inspected when I was there in Jan 2016. Behaviour system when I was there: C1 warning, C2 warning, C3 out of room to C3 room and then into the next lesson at the end of the lesson. C3 room included an isolation space, as well as a unit on school for longer-term behaviour issues. (NB – Behaviour system changed the year I left). I worked here as a classroom teacher with a department-based TLR by my second year until I left.
• School Two: 11-18 school, at the time around 1400 students. SEN now 12.3%, EAL 5.6%, FSM 15.8%. Ofsted: good, both before I arrived in 2016, and inspected whilst I was there in November 2021. Behaviour system when I was there: initially no set warning number or across school system. By the time I left, 2 warnings then a hotspot, which meant the student moving into another classroom in the same area of school. No isolation room. No unit for longer-term issues. I moved here for a promotion to second in department and became Head of department after 2 years. In my final year I was Head of English and Director of Curriculum (a sort of associate SLT role, ish – not seen an equivalent in schools I have worked at).
• School Three: (Current school) 11-16 school, 750 students. SEN 16.5%, EAL 37.1%, FSM 53.3%. Ofsted inadequate in 2018, but now a new school due to moving MAT (twice). Behaviour system: entirely centralised. 1 warning then sent to RFL room (Ready for learning). Students removed for minimum 2 lessons and a social time, can be longer (students must earn points on the work completed in order to leave the RFL room). RFL room can be used for longer-term issues, alongside another unit (not in permanent use) (I moved here to take the role Head of English)

I provide all of this with no comment, at this point, on the different contexts served. I suppose I should say that all three schools are within 15 minutes of each other, so serve the same city.

I want to be clear, one last time, that my aim here is certainly not to criticise a school. Each school uses a system that works for their context and students. My comments are entirely based on my experience and the benefits I have found moving to my most recent school. Often these benefits are seen in comparison to experiences I’ve had before.

1. Curriculum time

The most crucial difference for me, and what I suppose it all comes down to, is the amount of curriculum time gained from being in a disruption-free zone. If I’m honest, even as an experienced teacher, I actually found this a little difficult initially, because there is no space in the lesson to take a breath when your class are sat waiting for you patiently and quietly. My lessons start far quicker than ever before, and transitions between tasks are incredibly smooth when no-one sees it as a chance to turn to the person next to them. In general lessons are far more calm (and I come from two schools where lessons were generally calm!) and as a result everything moves quicker – the curriculum content in particular.

I noticed this even in my interview – I couldn’t believe how much I got through. And in my previous school, students were well behaved. I can’t impress this enough. The difference is in the seconds. I literally mean seconds. The seconds when someone whispers to the person next to them, when a task takes slightly longer because students are talking, the time wasted at the start of the lesson when they come in bubbly from their last lesson) – all of these add up. In a disruption-free lesson these seconds are gained, and they add up far quicker than I’d realised in the past.

2. Consistency across classrooms

If every classroom in every school sets exactly the same expectations of the students, this is a win for students and teachers. It makes everything easier for everyone – we all know what we are expecting, and what is expected of us. This is the first school I’ve worked at where I have truly felt the impact of this. When you set the mark at disruption-free, this is what is expected – it’s very binary. I have had issues in the past in situations where there were too many grey areas when dealing with behaviour and student expectations. Grey areas, in my experience, just create blurring of boundaries. Grey areas expand for students, and over time, become very dangerous. Disruption-free doesn’t allow for grey areas. For me, this is healthy.

There are lots of ways the new system has increased consistency – the approach is not the only one. Consistency is created by things like SLANT (see no.8) the way warnings are scripted, the way praise and negative points are logged, and numerous other things. It does wonders for everyone if we are all doing the same thing. I can’t help but think that if you don’t have a clear system with rules and expectations, you can’t possibly claim you are aiming for consistency. How can I be consistent if you don’t give me the parameters of what this means? This goes for teachers as well as students, in my opinion.

3. Workload around detentions

At my previous school, I had to hold detentions for students for a range of things. The most time consuming of these was detentions for being removed from a classroom (in fairness, this changed, but after I had handed my notice in and accepted my new post, which was over 5 years too late for me). These were either detentions with the classroom teacher after a first removal or a detention with myself as KS3 lead and then HoD as an escalation. The workload here, I look back and consider, was entirely unnecessary. As a department we tried to centralise homework detentions (also ran by individual teachers) but being removed from the classroom was held by the teacher as a way to have a restorative conversation and catch the student up.

Of course, students didn’t always show up (see no.9 for detention admin) and so there was chasing workload involved. Now all of this is handled centrally, with school based text messages and detentions ran exclusively by SLT, meaning all of those hours after school are no longer my time wasted. However, it’s important to note that at my current school all types of detention are handled in this way, whereas at my previous school homework, lateness, lack of work, general poor attitude sanctions/detentions were still down to the responsibility of the individual teacher. Call me a cynic, but if you are a teacher who wants to leave at 3:30 (no judgement here, that’s your prerogative) the additional expectation of having to set and sit detentions with students does feel like a workload issue, and therefore probably something you are going to avoid. And rightly so – it is your time, and it should be seen that way. So now being at a school where all these things are handled centrally, has massively eased my workload.

There are many other ways that the centralised system has eased my workload, but this will, I imagine, come up in some of the other comments made below.

4. Transitions between lessons

The school I am at now uses the line up approach, in that before tutor time, P3 and P5, students line up in classes before entering the building. I watched this when I visited the school and on my interview day and when the whistle blew and the whole of KS3/ KS4 fell silent, I was very impressed. Lots of critics of this approach think it’s about power and control, but you have to visit a school with the approach and speak to the students to understand why systems like this have so much value.

In previous schools I’ve had to use every behaviour strategy in the book in order to calm students after a particularly windy/noisy/exciting break time. You know those lessons. But now, all of that is alleviated because everyone enters the building with the same expectations, equipment ready to go, and having waited silently and orderly.

The school I’m now in was built less than 10 years ago, so the design also supports transitions (but I appreciate this isn’t helpful for anyone else…) – students walk one way around a central space, and walk calmly and sensibly. It isn’t silent corridors, but it is purposeful movement around a school building (also moving to a no mobile phone school has helped with this) and again supports a timely and calm start to lessons. I see much less lateness now and much quicker starts to lessons.

5. Equipment benefits

This is such a minor thing, but if your school hasn’t sorted equipment checks, an easy way to stop wasted lesson time and teacher faffing is to fix this. This isn’t to say handing out detentions for a missing pen is the way forward. I think my new school has this pretty much nailed. Every tutor in the morning completes an equipment check of every item students should have. Every piece of equipment is checked. Then what is missing (often students will lend it to each other) is handed out by a member of LT who comes to each tutor room, and a price for that item is removed from a tutor group budget. The amount left goes towards a reward for the tutor group.

I can’t really compare this to a past approach I’ve used, because I’ve seen nothing like it. There are many obvious benefits. As a teacher, I’m not handing out equipment every lesson. As a student, I’m not being punished for leaving a pen on my desk when I finished my homework. As a school, money isn’t being wasted on pens, because students are being held accountable in some way, but in a removal of a reward, rather than an immediate sanction.

As an additional point, my school has mini whiteboards as part of student equipment, and these have been transformational for me in terms of teaching (although that’s probably for another blog post). In terms of behaviour and culture, students carry their MWB with them, and this again saves a lot of lesson time, because the lesson starts immediately and students are ready to go. There are so many benefits to sorting all of these things out centrally and ensuring students are always ready to learn.

6. Removing students

This is a really difficult one to explain, because, let’s be frank, nobody wants to have to get a student to leave their classroom. A lot of non-teachers see this as depriving students of an education, but the reality is, you can end up depriving 29 people of an education if you focus on saving one. As mentioned above, at my former school, a system was used whereby a removed student went to another classroom. I have a few teacher friends who work in a similar system.

As HoD I often had students sent to me (I also wrote the timetable for where students had to go, and felt guilty putting anyone else on it) and despite generally managing behaviour well, this was obviously a disruptive factor. Even if the student arrived quietly and sensibly (which did happen 9 times out of 10) obviously this still caused a disruption – getting them to their seat, ensuring they had something to get on with, and then booking their detention at the end of the lesson. Even if students were getting on with a task, all of this inevitably took my attention away from the class in front of me. Before I arrived and, still, when I left, I was in favour of a system where students were removed from the classroom all together. And when I visited schools considering new roles, this was one of the first questions I asked.

Not only is the location students must go to important, but also the way they will be received and supported, and how their reintegration into the school is handled. At my new school, because there is a separate system and individuals handling this, it can be properly monitored and students can be supported. I hated, in the past, feeling like a student was disgruntled or angry at being removed from a lesson and yet I had a new class waiting outside, and I was unable to support them, and I was sending them off to a new teacher in a negative mood. There was no proper reset for the student, and I can see the difference now in the new system.

7. Warnings

I’ve always felt that 2 warnings before anything happens is basically inviting issues. You’re essentially saying a class of 30 can disrupt 60 times (so once per minute) before you can remove anyone. Of course, it’s rare to have a class of 30 disruptors, but giving 2 warnings per student basically says “We’re okay with your lesson being disturbed 60 times”. Of course I’m not okay with that.

And what even is a warning for? I’ve worked in schools where there are no agreed expectations of students. Really the message you’re sending here is – each teacher has their own expectations, please figure them out and then follow them. In my classroom, I could give a warning for a student not promptly starting a task, whereas in another warnings might start for persistent disruption. How are we all having high expectations if we don’t know what they are? Now, there is a clear list of expectations in each classroom which essentially take the students through the lesson, and students know that a warning will follow if those expectations are not met. They are (rightly) high expectations, and so it’s easier to know what is expected. I can imagine it’s much easier for students too, as they’re not walking in a classroom and reminding themselves what is and isn’t acceptable to that teacher.

8. Minimum expectations

I mentioned SLANT in a tweet and obviously got supporters and naysayers… but I do think it’s a big part of building a school culture where students are expected to meet teacher’s expectations, and they actually know what those are. If you are talking, you want students to listen to you. SLANT, for me, essentially means, “I need your full attention when I’m teaching you”. At times it can be a reset, it can be a smooth transitional aid, it can be a gateway to direct instruction, it can help everyone to focus. It’s just a set of instructions which enable students to focus and learn, but it offers concrete expectations, rather than asking students to pay attention but them not really knowing what this should look like.

I think it’s that classic – work on the small things and the big things take care of themselves – and SLANT is an easy example of this. Saying to students that you won’t allow them to be clicking a pen or staring out the window whilst you deliver something is just good teaching. It’s not inhumane. It’s certainly not unreasonable. It’s basic human manners. I’m really interested to hear what all the hate on SLANT is even about. I wish in my old schools I had a phrase that was used across the entire school to indicate that I wanted the full attention of the class. I look back on all the time I could have gained with something so simple, and it feels like such a shame.

9. Detention admin

This one is relatively minor, but I think it’s so common in schools that I need to say something about it. Because of the nature of the system in one of my previous schools, it was down to me to hold detentions. This seems simple, but children are children, and sometimes detentions do not seem like the best option during a lunchtime. I get it. But all this means is that as a teacher you have chasing to do. As a HOD you want to help with that chasing, or support the follow up, or be the person who tracks the detention via a spreadsheet. And my oh my, in a big school/department, that is a lot of work.

I’ve read somewhere (and I can’t remember where, sorry) that it is not the length or extremity of the sanction that makes students comply, it is the certainty of that sanction. The minute students start to escape sanctions and slip through the net, the minute any system comes crumbling down. This was my mantra for years, and this meant that I had to be relentless in the tracking, escalation and monitoring of detentions. The extra workload for this is enormous. And extra workload = impact on wellbeing. Especially workload that is essentially admin based and could be absorbed elsewhere. I am very happy that I have to neither track nor hold detentions now, and sometimes it gets to lunch time and I have time to eat rather than sitting students into classrooms, or heading outside to find them, or having restorative conversations with them, and that in itself is a wonderful thing.

10. Wellbeing

It’s worth saying that my new school has its own challenges – and I’m one of those people who enjoys a challenge, which is why I left my previous school. But, there is a difference between feeling challenged professionally and therefore waking up with a purpose every morning, and feeling challenged emotionally and physically, and therefore struggling to accept school decisions which make your job more difficult and time-consuming, even when they don’t have to.

Essentially, my wellbeing has improved because of the systems in place. I did a good job (I think/hope) in my last school and worked with the systems in place, but now I feel like those systems being out of my hands has given me so much more autonomy, perhaps ironically, because there is more space to teach and more time to be a better teacher, than time spent chasing behaviour admin or sitting detentions with students.

Because everything is out of my hands, I have experienced less conflict with students (which is emotionally draining), wasted less time dealing with behaviour issues (e.g conversations with students/staff clarifying what happened and what the next steps will be, calling parents to discuss behaviour issues, supporting staff with behaviour issues – although this is still a key part of being a middle leader, of course, in any school, it’s very different now), and found it much easier to move around school and deliver lessons. All of this contributes to better wellbeing.

---

I’ll say it one more time: this isn’t a criticism of the schools I’ve worked at, or your school if you use a similar system, or even me suggesting that following the various policies mentioned above will work for a school that has poor behaviour. It’s just my experience and my views on behaviour and culture – an opinion/perception which I believe I am entitled to.