Relationships and behaviour in schools: national action plan 2024 to 2027

Supporting relational approaches based on high warmth and high standards and expectations

Footnote 1

Evidence consistently shows that a positive school ethos and culture is essential to developing positive behaviour in the classroom, playground and wider community. The current national guidance on relationships and behaviour in schools, has at its foundation a whole school ethos of prevention, early intervention and support against a background which promotes positive relationships, learning and behaviour.

There is growing evidence that the type of relational style that is offered to children and young people impact greatly on behaviour, staff and child wellbeing and attainment. Positive outcomes are most evidenced in a relational style characterised by high warmth and support, high standards and high expectations of socially responsible behaviour, and an ability to effectively set limits for behaviour, ensuring effective implementation of values, and expectations in a firm and consistent manner while using reprimands and consequences when necessary. It aims to promote autonomy by encouraging children’s participation in decisions about their behaviour. This combination aims at preventing problems and alleviating issues and also has the dual purpose of managing behaviour in the short term and developing responsibility among children in the long term.

Whilst it is clear from BISSR and the discussions held at the relationships and behaviour summits that there is general support for relationships-based approaches, it is similarly clear that there are challenges with how such approaches are working on the ground, with staff feeling disempowered from setting the effective boundaries. Some of the difficulties highlighted by school staff are:

• That relationships-based approaches have resulted in a lack of meaningful consequences for disruptive behaviour.
• Lack of time and resources needed to implement such approaches successfully.
• There is a need for alternative options of support for those children and young people who, for a variety of reasons, struggle with boundaries and meeting the established expectations of behaviour.
• The challenges for school staff of applying relationship-based approaches when faced with the realities of dealing with violent and aggressive incidents in schools.
• Lack of options as to how to manage the behaviour of a small core group of young people with whom all other approaches and strategies had been exhausted.
• Lack of alternative options and resources for pupils for whom mainstream education may not be appropriate.

In recognition of this evidence, this plan remains grounded in the national approach of promoting positive relationships and behaviour, and supporting the wellbeing of children and young people, but puts in place a range of actions designed to empower staff to address the spectrum of dysregulated, distressed, violent and aggressive behaviour seen in our schools.

In doing so, the actions focus both on setting guidance and expectations using national policy, and providing practical support to schools and school staff to support the implementation of policy in practice and to provide children and young people with the right support at the right time.

The action plan aims to:

• Support schools to reinforce a positive ethos and culture, where all members of the school community are respected and safe, their wellbeing is protected, and children and young people are included, engaged and involved in their learning and in the life of the school.
• Apply a whole-school approach to improving relationships and behaviour, where all members of the school community – school staff, parents and carers, children and young people – recognise their role in developing community values by creating, modelling and supporting positive relationships and behaviour.
• Provide guidance and support to ensure schools can embed relationships and behaviour policies, based on the needs of their children and young people, in line with national guidance and developed in collaboration with staff, parents and children and young people, which set clear expectations of relationships and behaviour.
• Seek to address the broad spectrum of behaviours identified within BISSR, in recognition that all behaviours, and a school’s associated responses to these, contribute to the culture and ethos of a school.
• Empower schools and staff to apply relational approaches based upon high warmth and high expectations, whilst providing further guidance to support interventions in situations where children and young people are not responsive to such approaches and where assessment would dictate that a more individualised plan will more likely lead to change over time.
• Support schools to implement a spectrum of relationships and behaviour approaches, appropriate to the specific context, taking account of issues such as the Public Sector Equality Duty, and intersectionality.
• Acknowledge the respective responsibilities of Scottish Government, national agencies, local authorities and schools, and to ensure complementary actions in priority areas, as set out in this action plan.
• Draw together actions being taken forward across national government and in both education and wider policy areas, in recognition that addressing some of the behaviours and challenges in schools is a society-wide concern that will require a multi-agency approach.
• Recognise that there are developmentally and contextually different problem situations in our primary and secondary schools (and in different year groups within this). Each sector has its own challenges and though approaches require to be tailored through self-evaluation to individual school context and staff and children’s needs, these should be based on the common foundation of a clear and consistent setting-wide relationships and behaviour policy over which all members of the school community have a sense of ownership and participation.
• Support the effective recording and monitoring of inappropriate behaviour, which may lead to initial increases in recorded statistics. This is understood and supported as an appropriate consequence of ensuring schools and local authorities have the necessary information to support their response.