Hard Cases: Why we need to talk about behaviour

Everyone is talking about behaviour, and what they are saying is worrying.

August 2025 saw the publication of the latest National Behaviour Survey by the Department for Education (DfE). With data gathered across a range of checkpoints from up to 1,790 school leaders, 3,614 teachers, 4,802 parents and 3,976 pupils, the findings are striking and over time are becoming coherent in terms of the challenges they are illustrating. Some key findings include:

• Whilst children strongly tend to say that expectations about their behaviour are clear, only 31% of teachers report being very confident in managing pupil behaviour.
• There has been a statistically significant year-on-year decrease in the proportion of parents saying that they are supportive of school rules about behaviour.
• Whilst students are increasingly likely to say that they are motivated to learn and feel belonging in their school, there has been a significant drop in how safe they feel there.
• 10% fewer school leaders in 2024 said behaviour was very good or good in the last week than was the case in 2023. For teachers the drop between 2023 and 2024 was 15%.
• Although fewer pupils reported being bullied, low level disruption of learning appears to have increased, with 76% of teachers saying it impacted lessons last week, up by 2%.

Other surveys of different stakeholders validate the picture painted in the DfE report.

For example, BETT’s Student Behaviour Report of 2024 points to a “sharp increase” in parental complaints about school behaviour policies. They also concur that low levels of disruption are increasingly impacting on lessons. They also reinforce the differences between how senior leaders and teachers view behaviour in their schools, something notable in the DfE’s data.

Similarly, a TeacherTAPP article on a survey of over 8,500 teachers, found that about 50% of teachers were concerned about poor behaviour impacting on their next lesson. This was from a question completed by over 8,000 school staff members from a range of levels of seniority, in which respondents had to choose top priorities for their schools from a list. Behaviour in lessons was prioritised by 35% of teachers, 27% of middle leaders, 15% of SLT members and 9% of headteachers.

The issues identified in the DfE survey are not confined to England. A Welsh Government Behaviour Summit research paper from 2025 found that, of 7,744 survey respondents, 94% felt the variety, range and magnitude of disruptive behaviours had increased since the pandemic. As with surveys in England, low levels of disruption and threatening behaviours were seen to be increasing, and around three-quarters felt not only unsupported, but challenged, by parents. A smaller but still significant proportion of 38% of respondents felt unsupported in their schools.

The Educational Institute of Scotland’s survey findings of 2023 from a survey of 875 branches (the EIS is a union and its branches are schools) also reported increased prevalence of high level misbehaviour since the pandemic. With a focus on violence and aggression, the report notes an increase in such behaviours from both students and parents, with only 11% feeling that school leaders always supported their staff compared to 26% who never supported them.

The NASUWT’s Behaviour in Schools report from 2025, based on a survey of 5,808 members also took a more concerted look at abusive behaviour towards school staff. Reflecting the concerns about safety reported by students in the DfE report, the NASUWT survey showed that 40% of school staff respondents had been physically abused, with 85% being physically abused or threatened. 42% of respondents said they did not always report such instances, two-thirds of whom felt that nothing would be done and over a third felt their capability would be questioned.

The relative consistency of these survey-based reports indicates the key challenges facing senior leaders with responsibility for behaviour that we surely need to talk more about:

• The safety of children and adults in a time of elevated violence and aggression
• The barriers to consistency in managing challenging behaviour with schools
• The declining levels of support and increasing levels of challenge from parents
• The impact upon learning of persistent low-level disruption of lessons
• The widening gaps between perceptions of behaviour within school staff bodies.

Why is inspection talking less about behaviour?

Despite all the evidence (and more) being published in recent years about behaviour issues facing schools, data from SSAT’s Ofsted inspection tracker indicates that behaviour has become less – not more – of a focus for inspection teams. This is something I have written about previously in my blog : ‘What is happening with behaviour in inspection reports?’

Our Ofsted tracker looks at the ‘need to improve’ comments given as bullet points at the end of inspection reports. We summarise these bullets into recurring themes across the school system and analyse what this tells us about the inspection framework. In 2023/24, the behaviour and attitudes section of the inspection framework was reflected in 10.5% of ‘need to improve’ comments across all schools. This figure rose to 10.8% of all comments in 2024/25.

So, does this mean that behaviour has come into sharper focus? Well, frankly, no.

In 2023/24 the proportion of ‘behaviour and attitudes’ improvement needs specifically related to behaviour was 44%, with attendance concerns accounting for 55% of these needs. In 2024/25 behaviour needs declined in frequency to just 36% of all behaviour and attitudes needs, as attendance needs rose to 58% of the total. Not surprising given national focus on absence.

We can go into more detail about this by looking at data across the last two academic years and compare this with the data that we have for the first half of 2025. This gives us a sense of the direction of travel at a time when the new Ofsted framework was being designed. The colour coding shows which needs have become more (green) and less (red) frequent in recent months.

Of these needs, only attitude to learning and concerns about record-keeping and use have increased in 2025. The frequency of most needs relating to behaviour has decreased as a proportion of all ‘need to improve’ comments and in relation to attendance needs. This sharpest decline has been for comments that pupil behaviour is problematic, which has halved in frequency in the most recent months of inspection activity.

In short, whilst survey after survey in recent times has pointed to an increase in behaviour management challenges faced by teachers and school leaders, inspection reports have become (by and large) less likely to reflect this in the improvement needs given to schools to address prior to their next inspection.

Are we going to be talking more about the inclusivity of behaviour management?

One final point to make about inspection of behaviour is in relation to the new Ofsted inspection framework. Having put attendance back in with behaviour (when the consultation had them as distinct areas), it is perhaps telling that attendance comes before behaviour in the title of this section of the framework. This reflects the patterns shown in the data above.

But something else is interesting that also has an impact on how inspection teams might – or perhaps might not – be talking about behaviour in the future: the inclusion of inclusion.

We have used the new toolkits to help map the data from the past two years of reports onto the new headings within the 2025 framework. This indicates to us that inclusion is likely to further reduce the proportion of comments specifically about behaviour.

We have already begun to see this in reports from the latter part of the 2024/25 school year. Out of nowhere, we have started to see comments about a lack of pastoral support rise to 6% of all behaviour and attitudes needs, and 0.6% of all improvement needs. It should be said that this is not a critique of such positioning of Ofsted, merely to note that it seems to be happening.

So, to add a further nuance onto what I concluded earlier: next steps around behaviour have become far less frequent and it looks likely that future inspections may well focus more on the inclusivity of schools’ behaviour policies and practices, than has been the case in the past.

Making the hard case for talking more (and more productively) about behaviour

At SSAT we know that school leaders responsible for behaviour management are having these conversations all the time. We know that these conversations are growing increasingly more challenging given the increase in pressures and the reduction in support that children and young people, their families, and those seeking to educate them are facing. We know that the most common conclusion drawn from talking about behaviour challenges with school leaders is that the scale, scope and complexity of those challenges is increasing and increasingly relentless.

For these reasons, SSAT are delighted to be able to offer an opportunity for current and aspiring behaviour leads in school to participate in a very different kind of CPDL programme. Our brand-new Hard Cases programme uses a case methods approach, to help participants explore some of the most difficult scenarios they are likely to face, across five fully interactive sessions.

In doing so, participants will be able to work as a community of enquiry about behaviour to:

• Collaboratively interrogate realistic and resonant cases of practice
• Reflect on past and existing practice to inform future responses
• Learn from each other about alternative approaches to addressing challenges
• Appreciate that they are not alone in facing up to the challenges of the role.

Hard Cases uses the same research-informed and thoroughly social approach to professional learning about complex issues that underpinned our first two cohorts of our ‘Head Cases’ programme, for serving and aspiring headteachers. It does not promise easy wins and simple solutions, which rarely emerge from difficult conversations about complex issues. What it does promise, though, is a way to talk with others about the leadership of behaviour, that keeps both the means and ends of what we are trying to achieve in sight, to find the best next steps for your context.

In particular, the ‘Hard Cases programme’ will address the issues reflected in surveys discussed at the start of this post: the safety of children and adults, the barriers to consistent practice, the threats from parental (dis)engagement, the persistence of low-level disruption, and the perception gaps between leaders and staff. The sessions will also address the challenges of leading on behaviour, at a time when inspection focus is moving towards inclusive practices.

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Dr Keven Bartle, Senior Education Lead, SSAT

Keven has been a teacher for almost three decades and was headteacher at a richly diverse secondary school in London for nine years. Through his career, Keven has been committed to the power of education for social justice and transformation, working in schools where staff make a difference to the lives of children, families and communities.

Book a call with Keven