The promotion of pupils' self-discipline has been clearly highlighted as one of the National Priorities for Scottish education. This reflects the key role that establishing positive working relationships between pupils and staff is known to play in ensuring effective learning. Equally, we know that this relationship also works in reverse. The quality of teaching and learning has a major and direct influence on pupils' behaviour and motivation. This remains the case despite the fact that other significant factors may also have an influence on behaviour, including some with their origins outside the school itself.
Given the close links between pupil learning and behaviour, promoting positive behaviour in schools must be a key element in ensuring the best possible educational outcomes for our children. Furthermore, teaching young people to manage their relationships with others in positive ways is also an important end in its own right. For pupils, acquiring the ability to manage their behaviour and relationships appropriately is a key part of preparing them for life in an adult society, including the workplace.
Expressions of concern about standards of discipline in schools, in the media and elsewhere, have been a recurrent theme within the Scottish education system in recent times. The concerns included the amount of low-level disruption in classrooms, corridors and playgrounds. There was also the perception that staff were facing a growing incidence of more serious confrontations with particularly challenging individual pupils. In the 1990s this concern was reflected in a series of national publications to research the issues and spread the growing expertise that was developing in terms of new approaches to managing pupil behaviour. Examples included:
A national commitment to addressing this issue continued as the Scottish Executive took over its responsibilities after the establishment of the new Scottish Parliament. In December 2000 the then Minister for Education, Europe and External Affairs, Jack McConnell, established a national task group on discipline in schools under his own chairmanship. The report of this Task Group, Better Behaviour - Better Learning, was published in July 2001. Following the publication of the report, Scottish Executive Education Department (SEED) agreed a Joint Action Plan (Appendix 1) with The Convention of Local Authorities (COSLA), The Association of Directors of Education in Scotland (ADES) and the Association of Directors of Social Work (ADSW). The plan was launched in December 2001 and set out the path for implementation of the Task Group's Report. Implementation of the action plan is firmly located within the framework of the National Priorities for education. It is also consistent with the Executive's drive to ensure that all children, including those who are vulnerable, can access the broad range of educational opportunities which will enable them to achieve their potential.
Implementation has been supported by a range of funding sources that have helped to provide additional staffing, accommodation and other resources. The sources include the National Priorities Action Fund, A Teaching Profession for the 21st Century and Public Private Partnership finance.
The basis of this report
In April 2002 Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Education (HMIE) initiated a two-year review to monitor the implementation of the recommendations in Better Behaviour - Better Learning (the BB-BL report) as reflected in the joint SEED/COSLA/ADES/ADSW action plan. The Task Group itself had recommended that HMIE should evaluate the progress being made by local authorities and schools in addressing its recommendations.
The main activities of the HMIE task leading to this report included analysing and collating information from the following sources:
HMIE also paid focused visits to a sample of eight local authorities (Appendix 2) where they interviewed senior officials from education and social work departments. In each of these authorities they visited a primary, a secondary school and off-site provision for primary, and for secondary pupils with behavioural problems.
Organisation of the report
The agenda set out in the BB-BL action plan includes a broad variety of actions, some of which were targeted at local authority level whilst others were targeted at school level. They ranged from actions focused on preventing low-level disruption in classrooms to actions focused on improving the effectiveness of provision for pupils experiencing severe disaffection and/or social, emotional and behavioural difficulties.
The main evaluative sections of this report are organised as follows.
The final two chapters then draw out key lessons from the activities undertaken by schools and authorities to date and summarise a number of key overall conclusions on the progress made thus far.