Behaviour & Learning Management

 How you can improve pupil performance, reduce teacher stress and save money – all at the same time? 

Despite all the recent hype about “incompetent teachers”, the major reason for student underachievement, to put it simply, is student misbehaviour. Major behaviour disturbances aside, it’s the ongoing low level minor misbehaviour in lessons that hugely reduces teaching time – with the inevitable effects on pupil performance. Get more time on task and you raise achievement. Better behaviour – better learning. 

One of the major stresses for teachers is the same thing – student misbehaviour, often those same ongoing low level hassles that stop teachers doing the job they want to do. The effect of that is to reduce teacher morale, lead to frustration, and cause a considerable level of teacher stress. Improve the skill of those teachers in managing pupil behaviour and they spend more time teaching. Show them how to take charge of their own classrooms and they become more empowered. 

Money is a fast disappearing resource in education. Can there be a school left by now that hasn’t used up a considerable part of its CPD budget on “behaviour management training”?  Was it money well spent? Are your stressed out teachers now coping? Are your students learning? Or did it all slide back soon after? The reality is that training teachers in behaviour management takes time.  Some teachers need more time than others. Some schools have bigger behaviour problems than others. But neither the time nor the money is there to skill these teachers to the level you need. 

Save money – train all your teachers whenever you choose.  The Assertive Discipline Training Pack of 5 CDs contains the complete “Master Class” in behaviour management. CD1 contains the complete Powerpoint presentation with commentary by Geoff Moss. CDs 2-5 contain the complete video programmes in Assertive Discipline presented by John Bayley, all in a digital format. All 5 CDs allow you to edit the materials as you choose to recreate your own presentation version to meet your school’s needs, because you also purchase a site licence with our permission to make those changes. 

For a one-off payment your school has a tried and tested training programme that can be repeated over and over again. Teachers who need more time to study and acquire the skills can have that time. New teachers joining you can go through the programme in-house whenever it suits. All this for the cost of sending one teacher on one training course. Now everyone can get the training but you only pay once. 

End of school year offer – 20% discount until September. In reponse to the round of education cuts, we are cutting the price of this CD pack by 20%. Save some money now – and save some teacher’s sanity for the future! ·         Primary 5 CD pack – was £295 (+ VAT); now £236·         Secondary 5 CD pack – was £395 (+ VAT); now £320 To order during the discount offer period phone 0870 241 8262 or email us at info@behaviour-learning.com 

Judging by the results of a survey carried out by the ATL, disruption by pupils is now routine in our schools. Nine out of ten teachers say they have dealt with an unruly pupil this year. Four in ten have dealt with physical aggression in the classroom. While most said this was towards another pupil, a quarter said the violence was directed at them.

The problem appears to be worse for younger children, with half of those dealing with primary age pupils reporting incidents of violence in the classroom, compared to a fifth of those working in secondaries.  Six in ten teachers believe pupil behaviour has worsened in the past five years, and nearly half believe it has worsened in the past two years.

However the survey does not tell us what preventitive measures are in place in these schools, nor what sort of training the teachers had received in how to manage today's children.

As an organisation we mostly find an absence of clear straightforward procedures in place for violence prevention, few teachers who have really got an understanding of how to be proactive rather than reactive in the face of confrontation, and even fewer who have the verbal and non-verbal skills to defuse hostile situations and take an assertive leadership role in the classroom.

Government at national and local level greatly underestimates the amount of time it can take to properly train-up teachers to be able to deal with today's pupil behaviour. Mostly teachers just receive a one-day INSET training which allows managers to "tick the box" but leaves many teachers still vulnerable and stressed out back in their classrooms.

 Early Years behaviour issues

Thousands of five-year-old children are already at severe risk of disengaging from the educational process when they start school, according to a new report. A study by think-tank Demos found that more than one in 10 children start school without the behavioural skills they need to learn or build relationships. Research among 15,000 young children found 10% of them displayed emotional problems, hyperactivity and difficulty making friends, all factors linked to under-achievement at school and risk of truanting and exclusion. The report author observes that "One in 10 children lack the tools to benefit from education before they even get to the school gate."

The report calls for early intervention to help these young children develop the necessary skills to prevent them becoming drop-outs from school. Just what we’ve been saying for years – but who listens to us? If you want to do something about it look at this link [click here].

Home Office report on discipline and crime - A recently published Home Office study shows that pupils attending schools which were soft on violence and truanting were more likely to break the law. As a result, the authors are urging ministers to consider "toughening up" discipline policies.

Worryingly, the survey of young people's behaviour found nearly three quarters were caught up in either crime, drug taking or anti-social behaviour over four years. Over a single year, the figure was 44%.  A hard core of prolific offenders carried out many more crimes than their peers, it found. The group, making up around 4% of the total, carried out a third of all the crimes. They admitted to offences such as assault, theft, drug taking and criminal damage. Young people in single parent families and those with siblings or friends were more likely to offend themselves.

Researchers asked 5,000 young people aged between 10 and 25 about their behaviour over the previous year. The survey was repeated in England and Wales every year between 2003 and 2006 to build up a detailed picture of their behaviour.

Although young men were more likely to cause trouble, up to half of teenage girls admitted wrongdoing. Children as young as 11 admitted taking hard drugs. Cocaine, ecstasy and LSD were most likely to be used by 19-year-olds but cannabis use peaked at age 16.

The report said: "Further consideration could be given to enhancing schools' disciplinary policies, given this report's finding that weak school discipline is related to an increased likelihood of offending and drug use."

September programme - the Assertive Discipline Master class and Leader training programme has now been successfully completed at the East Kilbride Holiday Inn. It was attended not only by teachers from Scotland but also England and Norway.

 Robert, Ashley, James, Sharon, Frode, Geoff (trainer), John, Des, Helen

From now on we hope to be able to set-up and maintain an e-network with each participant to provide you with ongoing support and advice about using our programmes after each training event. We are already underway with our South Lanarkshire colleagues with this - making use of the "GLOW" system to form support groups for those who have undertaken our Situational Leadership II programme. This time we trained 20 teachers in the method at Hamilton, and we will now be able to provide e-support to those graduates as they use the SLII framework in their various leadership roles.

The Leader training group at the Holiday Inn 

Norwegian Study Visit - Behaviour & Learning Management were pleased to host a team of visiting Norwegian educators recently who were here to look at how we do Assertive Discipline in our schools. The special needs team of seven from Bergen, led by our old friend Karsten Krossnes, visited two primary schools in South London where the programme has been in use for some time.

On Day One they visited Christ Church C of E Primary school, Wandsworth, where in the past we have filmed teachers in action for our own training videos. The head teacher, Colette Morris, is also one of our trainers - and so knows the stuff inside out!

Norwegian visitors with Colette at Christ Church

On Day two the team visited the Herbert Morrison primary school, Lambeth, where the deputy head Lucy Aletti explained how Assertive Discipline had been developed in that school. Our thanks to the children and staff of both schools for allowing us in, and for providing such a warm welcome. 

Visiting Herbert Morrison primary with Lucy

A Good Childhood?  - It seems that despite the fact that the children of today enjoy better educational and health facilities, and have more possessions, their psychological lives are more difficult now than they were in the past. This is the conclusion from the largest survey into childhood ever to be conducted in the UK by the Children’s Society.

The report “A Good Childhood” was published on 2nd February 2009. It states that children still need to be loved! And it sets out recommendations to parents, teachers and the government on how they can better care for children.  It observes that many of the emotional problems experienced by today’s children occur because of inadequate parenting.  By the age of three, children of single parents are three times more likely to have behaviour problems. The study also suggests children of single-parent families are twice as likely to experience poor conceptual development compared with those with married parents. 

The report confirms the value of traditional families, in the face of what the report describes as "a massive change in our way of life" - the fact that 70% of mothers now work, compared with around a quarter 25 years ago - and that one in three 16-year-olds now live apart from their father.  The report says that a key factor in the increased difficulties faced by children is the "excessively individualistic ethos" of contemporary British society. It calls for “a radical shift away from the excessively individualistic ethos which now prevails, to an ethos where the constant question is, "What would we do if our aim was a world based on love?” 

Business world training for education leaders in Situational Leadership II - 2009 brings with it continued demand from school leaders for us to provide this training. Last year we began work with local authorities in Scotland and Wales to train all senior school managers - and the response from that means this year there will be more. So what does this approach uniquely offer? Well, we read a lot from the DCSF about developing distributed leadership in our schools. The NCSL writes even more about organisational structures and management systems. Lots of words – but not always leading to a great deal of action. Leadership is primarily about how we positively influence those we lead. Getting efficient structures and systems in place is important only insofar as you then have the important conversations. It is about how you communicate with others. Leadership in today’s busy schools needs to be shared, but people need to be taught how to lead.

The acknowledged best fit model for teaching others how to lead is Situational Leadership® II.  Why so? Because -

• it provides an easily understood framework for leadership; you don’t need a Masters degree in business gobbledygook to explain it!
• it is immediately doable; managers at any level of the organisation can apply it to their own practice without any additional systems in place
• it is tried and tested; the Blanchard organization, which accredits our work, is replete with researched examples of effective practice
• it is well delivered; we have oodles of compliments about the high quality of our training – check them out for yourself. 

As the only UK accredited trainers for schools in Situational Leadership® II - the acknowledged "best in its class" leadership programme by the business world - we are pleased to offer this specialist training to school senior and middle managers. For this two day training we charge just 1/3 of what you would pay in the commercial world – yet the quality of our training is top class. In the business world this 2 day training would cost over £1000 per person for the 2 days. We run it for £395. Why? Because we used to be teachers, we therefore know the economic realities for school leaders, and we do what we do because we believe in education and not profit!  Whenever we deliver this programme for school leaders we always receive unequivocal praise for the standard of our training and for its practical and tactful approach to teacher management! Situational Leadership® II gives school leaders a commonsense framework for meeting the professional development needs of their direct reports and the skills to manage the potential minefield of Performance Management in a positive and supportive manner. 

What do you get for this?  Situational Leadership® II training gives you a set of tools for opening up communication and helping others develop self-reliance. There are three key skills of Situational Leadership -

• "Diagnosis" - As leader you need to know the development level of your 'direct report' for each of the tasks that person has to perform.  We show you how to identify the level of competence and the level of commitment each person has for that particular task.
• "Flexibility" - The leader then considers the sort of leadership style that will match the follower's strengths and needs. We ask how much direction that person needs to improve on the task, how much support that person needs to gain their commitment. Now we can more effectively match leadership style to the development level of the follower.
• "Partnering for Performance" - At this stage we make arrangements for how we partner up with our direct reports to work on those tasks where the follower has not yet achieved independent mastery. In schools this is often initially a voluntary arrangement - a service we offer colleagues within their own CPD remit. Some time later in the development cycle, however, it may be a requirement that each colleague achieves the goals set within our School Improvement Plan.

On this 2 day training programme you will learn

• about your own leadership style, compare it with that of your manager, colleagues, and those you manage
• how to develop competent and committed teams by diagnosing development level, then managing with the appropriate leadership styles
• how to reach agreements with others about how much direction and support they need from you to reach their goals
• how to analyse case-studies, use hands-on activities, and practical examples from your own work place in order to apply Situational Leadership® II to real-life situations in your own school.

Who should attend?

• Any individuals in leadership roles who want to increase their effectiveness
• Head Teachers and their Senior Management Team
• Middle Managers, HoD, HoY, etc and their curriculum or pastoral teams.

Please note that we are the only UK organisation accredited to provide this training to schools.  Contact us now for a place on our next Situational Leadership® II programme. Phone 0870 241 8262 or email info@behaviour-learning.com

10% discount for 2 or more from the same school. We also provide this training within-house with a team from your own school or learning community at your own venue or at our office here in Eagle Tower, Cheltenham.  It usually requires two days to complete the full programme but we can also tailor the content to meet your own requirements.

Situational Teaching & Learning - We are currently engaged in a project to translate the leadership concepts of Situational Leadership II into the classroom to provide a practical tool for improving pupil achievement. We have been piloting this approach with just a handful of schools in England and Scotland so far.  The objective is to equip our pupils with the means to assess their own learning development levels on topics they are currently being taught. They are first shown how to identify their present level of competence on a task and their commitment to learning or applying those skills. This then allows each pupil to identify the style of teaching that they now need to progress.  As a result they can take more ownership of their own learning, and enter into more positive dialogue with their teachers about their learning needs.

If your school is interested in taking part in this project please give us a call or drop us an email.