The Education Select Committee has published a report on behaviour - Behaviour and Discipline in Schools: Volume 1 (3rd February 2011).
The report will assist the government in the development of its policy on behaviour and discipline in schools following the schools White Paper published in November 2010, and in the lead up to the publication of the SEN and Disability Green Paper due to be published in March 2011.
Summary of report recommendations
- All schools should ensure that their staff can identify special educational needs (SEN) and that teachers should receive SEN training as part of their initial teacher training.
- Exclusion is used as a trigger for assessing the needs of a child, ensuring that behaviour related to autism is not mistaken for bad behaviour.
- Schools should ensure that they are providing appropriate support to a child so that they can get the most out of their education. The focus should be on a child’s learning and the support that they need rather than the behaviour itself.
- Guidance on restraint needs to include advice on SEN and the current requirement to inform parents when their child has been restrained at school is important.
- Independent Appeals Panels for exclusions should be retained.
- The government’s plans to introduce a phonics reading test at age six to identify learning problems should be extended to look also at language comprehension.
- The Inclusion Development Programme (IDP), which was a government funded project that included the development of autism resources for teachers, should be refreshed and disseminated.
- Local authorities should retain responsibility for some local specialist services that provide support to schools around SEN. This may include educational psychology or autism outreach teams.
You can read the full report on the parliament website, here.