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When Your School Behaviour Policy Isn’t Up To The Task At Hand, What’s The Next Step?

"This alternative approach increases your capacity to work with children who present challenges and are in most need of inclusion"

Dr Geoff James
by Dr Geoff James
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The scenario:

Jamie is six and often hurts other children at playtime. It’s got to the point where he can’t be allowed out to play without close supervision. When other children do get hurt, parents and carers are justifiably complaining about it.

Jamie has a multiple diagnosis of Autistic Spectrum Disorder, Attention Deficit Disorder, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and high anxiety. You’ve tried using the school behaviour policy to get him to behave. He’ll say what he should do readily enough – “kind hands, kind feet” – but he just doesn’t seem able to carry it through.

Your behaviour management policy seems to be operating as a one-way street for Jamie – you’re moving step-by-step up the ladder, increasing the severity of the sanctions in the hope they’ll eventually work. Talking to him about what he’s got wrong and giving him targets isn’t making any difference. In class, he tends to be rather isolated but works well enough given a clear structure. It’s in unstructured time that he struggles.

You need a new strategy that will ensure Jamie’s inclusion and help him to take control of his own behaviour.

Option A: Apply the pressure

You intensify your focus on your behaviour management approach and hope that external rewards and punishments will encourage Jamie to modify his behaviour.

When Jamie engages in minor rule breaking such as being off-task or disturbing others in class, you give him a ‘level one’ consequence; a clear explanation of what’s unacceptable and a verbal warning. When he persists, you give him a second warning and an escalation to timeout to think about his mistakes.

You also give him the homework task of writing a ‘sorry letter’ to emphasise better choices and ask him to catch up on the work he missed. When Jamie’s behaviour doesn’t improve, he moves to level two. You call his parents to let them know about the bad behaviour and the actions you’ve taken to control it and also set up an individual behaviour plan.

The next step for Jamie after showing no improvement is either calling in outside agencies for expert intervention or excluding him. The school behaviour management policy emphasises the fact that the child’s specific needs should be taken into account, but because Jamie has multiple needs, it seems difficult to apply a single strategy policy.

Despite following the procedure closely, Jamie’s behaviour in unstructured time hasn’t improved and his level of anxiety seems to have gone up as more pressure is applied.

The verdict Following the rules is straightforward for most children, but some need clearer direction, aided by the gentle nudges mentioned in your school behaviour policy. If this intervention doesn’t work, it’s assumed that a stronger shove will do the trick. However, children with additional needs are over-represented in exclusion figures, making this assumption dubious. Schools in this position should analyse their behaviour management policy, retaining what’s good and replacing what’s ineffectual.

Option B: Go further afield

You’ve tried low-level behaviour management with Jamie, but as he is not responding positively you decide to activate higher level expert intervention, in the hopes of avoiding exclusion.

In Jamie’s case, external input comes from the paediatrician managing his medical case, as well as a specialist autism service who have suggested a number of strategies to follow. Medically, best practice recommends a combination of drug treatment and psychotherapy for ADHD and OCD, but Jamie has not been able to tolerate medication and talking therapy hasn’t been offered.

It’s important to remember that Jamie’s doctor can only work with the evidence she has in front of her when making decisions about his medical care. As a teaching professional you have unique insights into his learning, development, strengths and needs in the context of school, information which is invaluable but often unavailable to medical professionals.

You are able to supply the doctor with notes of conversations with Jamie, his parents and other school staff about what is going well in school, what needs to change and what actions are being taken. You look into implementing the recommendations from the autism expert regarding classroom management strategies and keep in close touch with Jamie’s parents to find out what works best and what might be followed up at home.

When Jamie is well-informed about changes he responds positively, so you focus on this aspect at first, with identical copies of school plans in class and at home in a format that Jamie can access.

The verdict You know that punishment doesn’t reliably improve behaviour, but up until now you have stuck to this approach in the absence of an effective alternative, even when it doesn’t fit well with your school’s values around inclusion, care and engagement. Knowing that Jamie’s individual needs are being supported, you can now look at broadening your school’s behaviour policy with an educational alternative to higher level punishment.

Option C: Focus on solutions

You arrange a time to talk with Jamie one-on-one. Instead of focusing on his problems, you look at working towards solutions that can make a significant difference.

Rather than pressing on with your conventional behaviour management route, you decide to try a solutions-focused coaching method with Jamie. This is based on the inquiry approach to learning, promoting children’s learning about themselves, finding their own solutions and developing productive behaviour.

You can make a start by seeing Jamie as a successful, resourceful and hopeful learner, instead of a child who is failing to make progress. You open up a new type of conversation by asking Jamie what he’s good at, what he likes doing and what it is about him that makes him successful.

If he likes riding his bike and he’s good at it, how come he can do that? He might tell you he’s brave when he falls off and just gets back on again. This encourages him to think about problems as challenges he can overcome.

You enable Jamie to take control of his own change process. Where would he put himself on a one-to-ten scale for bike-riding? What’s working? What might change a bit? With this portable aid and his increased sense of self-motivation, he responds well and begins to spend playtimes safely within a couple of weeks.

As he experiences successes, positive internal and external feedback encourages him to explore his own resources. He even asks for more coaching sessions to help him self-regulate his behaviour.

The verdict Solutions-focused coaching can be started straight away without additional assessment, permissions or multi-agency meetings. It’s a safe process that concentrates on strengths and the possibility of success, rather than past failures. It builds Jamie’s resilience as he finds he can overcome difficult challenges. This alternative approach increases your capacity to work with children who present challenges and are in most need of inclusion.


Dr Geoff James is a consultant, trainer, writer and researcher specialising in solutions focused coaching. Previously he has taught in mainstream, special school and pupil referral unit settings. He is the author of Transforming Behaviour in the Classroom (SAGE Publications). Find him at solution-support.co.uk and follow him on Twitter at @geoffjames42.

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