Behaviour in schools
Most pupils are well-behaved in school and it is important to create a positive ethos in and out of classrooms in order to promote and sustain this. The Government is committed to supporting the creation of peaceful learning environments and improved relationships across whole school communities and making sure our children and young people are included, engaged and involved throughout their school careers.
The Government funds the Positive Behaviour Team (PBT) to support local authorities and schools to introduce and embed approaches to positive behaviour based on improved relationships, staged interventions, enagagement and motivation and emotional wellbeing. The Government has recently published a leaflet titled 'Building Curriculum for Excellence Through Positive Relationships and Behaviour' which contains more information on the positive behaviour approaches. It will also inform you of the recent Behaviour in Scottish Schools Research 2009 and how the Scottish Government and the Scottish Advisory Group on Behaviour in Schools have identified the next steps and priority actions to further improve relationships and behaviour within Curriculum for Excellence in response to the findings of this research.
Bullying in schools is completely unacceptable, regardless of its motivation. The Government is committed to supporting all those who work with children and young people and to this end have established the 'respect me' anti-bullying service to provide advice, information and training on both preventing and tackling bullying effectively. More information on the service can be found on the 'respect me' website.
In 2007, the Government published national guidance, Included, Engaged and Involved which focuses on promoting attendance and managing absenteeism. We have now published Included, Engaged and Involved Part 2: a positive approach to managing school exclusions which focuses on prevention, early intervention and response to individual need.
Behaviour in Scottish Schools provides a robust, independent picture of pupil behaviour in schools, including positive and negative behaviours and measures used by schools and school staff to promote positive behaviour. It is based on a large scale survey of local authority staff, headteachers, teachers and additional support staff, and was developed in collaboration with teaching unions and education leaders. The latest survey was published in 2009.
For more information and examples of best practice visit the Learning and Teaching Scotland website.