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. More information on the positive behaviour approaches.
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.
The Government published national guidance, Included, Engaged and Involved, on promoting attendance and managing absenteeism and are now developing national guidance on exclusion - Included, Engaged and Involved Part 2 - a large part of which will be on prevention of exclusion.
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 next survey is due to be published in 2009.
For more information and examples of best practice visit the Learning and Teaching Scotland website.