New Behaviour Guidance
After the end of term for most independent schools, the Government published updated Behaviour in Schools guidance and also updated its Searching, Screening and Confiscation statutory guidance.
The guidance “reflect[s] the importance of the proactive and preventative work that schools can undertake to ensure high standards of behaviour. This includes recognising the importance of school culture, and how this is developed through the behaviour policy and the engagement of pupils".
The Behaviour guidance is consistent with the spring consultation document and is non-statutory in nature, but it does take a more holistic approach and adds to the regulatory expectation on schools to manage behaviour in order to improve culture and protect others from harm. It includes more detail about what the Department for Education (DfE) expects to be in school rules and a school's behaviour policy, expressly extends its application to online conduct, expects consultation and collaboration with parents and pupils and encourages appropriate record-keeping and trend analysis, overseen by the school's proprietor.
The changes to the Searching, Screening and Confiscation guidance similarly support a holistic approach to the management of concerns about pupil conduct. The changes remove some of the wording which expressly supported schools when managing the challenges of pupil behaviour and it is now more balanced, requiring searching and screening to be fair, appropriate, proportionate and consistent. There is new content on strip searching (only exercisable by the police). Recording duties and communication with parents about searches for prohibited items is now mandatory and there is an express duty on Heads and Designated Safeguarding Leads to oversee the use of these powers and trends in their exercise within the school.
We would recommend that schools therefore:
- arrange a review of their behaviour and discipline and expulsion, removal and review policies before the start of term and ensure that the new guidance and expectations are appropriately referenced in relevant policies and procedures, in particular safeguarding, online safety, anti-bullying, codes of conduct and SEND
- review staff codes of conduct to ensure their 'active bystander' and positive role model duties are clear
- train those staff who are authorised to search pupils on how to do so lawfully and on how to deal with non-cooperation