What have we got wrong about behaviour? With Tom Bennett

And I'm welcome to they behave for me a podcast for a 2 by me Adam Boxer. And me, Amy Forreste, we're going to be covering all things education, policy curriculum, teaching, and learning and much more. And we're going to be coming to you every Friday to take you into the weekend. They behave for me as part by Carousel. Carousel, that consists of Carousel learning and Carousel teaching. Carousel learning is your one-stop shop for all your retrieval needs. It does homework, it does classwork, it gets your students learning smarter over the long term and is described by Professor Dinnon when he must again change her. Carousel teaching is a brand new CPD platform aimed at getting CPD working and helping teachers get better at teaching. With only 10% of teachers saying their last in-cept day was very useful, and less than 15% of teachers strongly agreeing that professional development has made them better at teaching, Carousel teaching's unique approach to teacher development has the potential to get CPD working in your school and revolutionise the way your teachers get better. I know more about Carousel learning or Carousel teaching yet to Carousel have a learning.com. If you're enjoying the podcast, please remember to hit subscribe so you can hear us every week. With fewer and fewer teachers using social media for work, it's more important than ever that we work together to reach more teachers. And the best way to support us is by sharing the love. So if you have a friend or colleague who you think would enjoy their behaviour for me, please do feel free to let them know about us. Amy, how are you tonight? Hi, I'm all right, are you? Erm. It's a spectrum. There is a spectrum of OK to not OK. Yeah, I'm just, I'm really, really, really, really tired. Well, we will go and have babies, like, what do you expect? Yeah, it's just. Have baby, rearing sleep. Yeah, it's just sort of unrelenting at the moment. And then we've done all these dark, like, parenting things, where we send the kids to clubs and it's all just a bit mental. And I'm pretty, pretty tired. The throat isn't really working anymore. I'm partly through a very large gym, which is not doing anything to help. No, but we'll have a pissed podcast. Well, yes. And actually, my mood is about to get worse, because our special guest tonight has already been rude to me once. And that's just this evening. So, yes, I saw you. I saw you yawning during the intro. I know what you're doing. I'm not trying to put us off. Yeah, he is. No, he's just, he's just trying to be rude. Anyway, welcome to our wonderful, but rude guest, Tom Bennett. Oh, no, you've turned the main back on, look at that. So, welcome to this, welcome to. I'll put him on mute again. He's still talking. He's got no idea. Look at his face. Can't believe he just did that. It's a much of a mark for this kind of thing. Really, yes. Are there people at home thinking, "I wonder how Adam's throat is today?" I really hope he goes on at length about this. We are the UK's number one teacher-facing podcast. What a high bar that is. Other than Mr P, I C T and Mr Barton Metz. Yeah, they tend to just eclipse us a little bit out there with Mr P and his world tour. I just have to say, because it's taking you so long to invite me on, quite frankly. But now, I can take this off my bucket list. You sound upset, right? But you must surely not be surprised given everything that's already happened there in the last five minutes. But you didn't know that was going to happen. Anyway, it's nice to be here. He says through gratitude. It's very nice to have you. No, to anybody. You are to my favourite people in education. And I don't know what walkie-chancer fate brought you two together, but thank God it did. That's very kind. Thank you, Tom. It's not the same. Yeah, well, what about the, I don't feel the same about you. I just really like a couple. Yeah. Nice. And Tom, we always ask our guests to introduce themselves. That's very lazy. Well, you say it's lazy, but that is not lazy. That means you have to do preparation once or ever. No, no, no, no, it's not that at all. I mean, it's partly that thing. I have a theory, right, that the people who are like the type of people who are happy to be guests on podcasts are more than happy to talk about themselves. And I always like introducing myself because it gives me the chance to talk about myself. And I feel like a lot of the people we have on also like talk about themselves. And why would you want me to talk about you when you can talk about you? That's certainly an interesting theory. And I'm not sure what's entirely always true. And also, you know, when you've introduced yourself a million times, it's not always as much fun as you might think, but may I have a crack at it? And go for it. No, right. My name is Tom Bennett. The founder of research, Ed, one of the UK's most prominent ex bloggers, if anyone remembers what blogging is. I remember. And currently the government's school behavior advisor or now referred to as ambassador. So I've been, I've been upgraded or something. What's the difference between a saw and an ambassador? Well, tradition I saw would have lots of power and status and wealth and I had none other. And ambassadors get to enter the plane for us before everyone else and I also don't get that either. So I'm still waiting for my Ferrero Rocher to, to signify the position. I love a good Ferrero Rocher. He doesn't love Ferrero Rocher. Oh, me, I don't know. Oh. No, I don't, I don't like the texture. Let's, let's address them. Real. Yeah. It's too far. Not. Interesting. Okay. Well, all of that is, is pretty interesting. Yeah. And you say that you are an ex blogger. Do you remember when we used to be called me bloggers? Me bloggers. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. You're a popularist as well, weren't you? Yeah, yeah. I mean, Adam, I mean, I certainly remember you're blogging really well and I'm blogging. Yeah, I know, I know, I know, but it's called stacking now or something like that, right? And, and you're, one of the things I love about that is that when blogging first started, you know, 2009, seriously taking effect in the UK, it really was a very English/British, but mostly English phenomena. And it was such a great way of reaching people. I mean, there was a time there when social media was a force for good and enormous force for good. And people were actually sharing ideas and so on. And it still is to some extent. But the work of people yourself and, you know, another people in that field really helped to change things at a classroom level, which I think was terribly important for building a kind of a momentum, you know, that's a critical mass of ideas. And genuinely, I mean, in my, my Gandalf like travels around the world, you, you hear and see people from lots of other countries around the world can appear in over our shoulder going, you know, what's going on over there, you know, why are things changing so rapidly? And I genuinely think part of it is the density of conversations that we've been having. And I could see why people have slowed down in terms of things like blogging and so on. Mostly because they've got jobs, but they found something else to do. But also, I mean, I used to blog obsessively, I used to, you know, make sure I churned it a couple of blogs a week, like Greg Ashman, but it takes a lot of time to do that. And social media has escalated to the extent that where it's much more about, you know, as you say, kind of micro blogging and, you know, and series of 10s tweets and so on and 10 posts and whatever. Don't know if that's a improvement or not, but I do miss the days of, you know, the really good as you could chew over apart from obviously yourselves. And Greg Ashman, you know, I think the last two, I really missed that, that kind of sense that we all had, that we were all talking and we were all listening and we were all learning. Yeah. It was like the sixties. I mean, none of you remember that, not, not a lot, but it was kind of like, it was very groovy. It was a sense that, you know, hey, we can change the world guys and all we need is a, you know, all we need is a keyboard. And to the extent it was right, which I kind of loved, like you could write, there would be like one banner of a blog. And then the next thing you knew, there'd be like 10 more of like what we've done with they saw, like, how this has worked in our school or this is how we're going to try and improve, like it. Absolutely. The trigger effect was massive. Yeah. And I think actually, I mean, genuinely, you need to kind of, that's why I'm very, very blessed. I get to step outside of the UK quite a lot and kind of look back in. And there's so much going on here that, you know, while it's far from perfect and things just, you know, things are still appalling in many ways, I wouldn't, I wouldn't be British if I didn't say that, but, but there's so much going on here that's just so healthy. And part of it is that really, really, really high level of discourse. And people will take into the classroom and people will translate these ideas and they will just translate it. They'll kind of chip bits off and take parts away for themselves and they'll adapt it and they'll modify. And then these ideas don't just mutate in a bad way, Adam, I know you write well about that, but they also kind of speciate. They become new species, most suitable, adapted to their environments. It's such a healthy, lovely thing to see where really are in a new phase of education because of that level of discourse. And it's all because people in the classroom decide to start taking control of the situation, saying, why do we have to listen to these people who have never been in the classroom? Why do we have to listen to these people who don't read evidence bases whatsoever? You know, we've got the experience, we've got the practice, and finally, the theory is getting to us. So why don't we do something with that? And again, I see that very much in your work and in what you do. It's given a beautiful answer to a question that nobody else could. Well, that's technology, isn't it? That's technology. I was waiting for a question, most substantial than what kind of Ferrara Rossi do you like? So I thought I could be waiting all night and quite frankly, I've got children to put to bed. So I thought I'd just launch ends of it. That's a value for money, guest Adam. Yeah. One bomb. Thank you, man. Right there. Yeah, absolutely. I'll question myself. Can we just log off? Yeah. Yeah. I'm going to tell the man, I'm feeling how my throat is. Oh, he's not done. Sorry, coming on. Stop going. I'm going to step in with the question if that's OK. There's a question. Yeah, I'm going to ask. I'm actually going to ask one. I was wondering about your Ferrara Rossi's number, sir. Obviously, my role in school, I have the pleasure and the privilege of a big director of behaviour. And you know, you write so sensibly, thank you. The kind of thing, listening and reading people like you reassures me that I'm not completely insane. No, you're not. The world is, but we're not. That's what I like to believe. Yeah. Appendient is divided. It is. Obviously, you're best known for a lot of your work on behaviour. And as somebody who is doing the hard times at the chalk face, I'm very grateful that you exist number one, because you actually talk some sense. But I wanted to kind of start with there in terms of behaviour and kind of what's changed in schools. Because I think when we look at the history of behaviour, the history of schools in our country, I think a lot has changed. I'm sort of interested in what you think the drivers of those change were, but also kind of what the future holds. Yeah. Oh, that's a good question. So, I mean, there's a lot of ways to tackle this. The first thing I would say is that the main driver of behaviour is human nature. Right. And human nature and the kind of architecture of the human mind has not changed substantially in 20,000 years. Now, as in cognitive psychology, so in social interactions, and again, one of the privileges I have is working in schools around the world. And I've been to about 1,500 schools. I've been to schools in the outbacks of Australia, Indigenous schools, a bit of COZOO in the town, and Vancouver, all these lovely, interesting, fascinating places. And one thing I do know is this, one thing is that I know nothing. And that, showing that the same all over the world, and then the triggers and the levers and the factors that affect and determine their behaviour are remarkably similar. Kids are kids, context matters, budget matters, society matters, culture matters, all these things are going to matter, identity matters, but kids are kids. So I would say that, you know, the reason why kids misbehaving classrooms, it's because why should they behave? It's about the Daniel Williams, you know, why should students like school? Why should anyone do anything anyone else wants them to do? Right. You know, the reason I'm doing this is because I like you and respect you. And I've got a bit of spare time tonight. You know, it's my reasons, my motivations, but I wouldn't do it if I didn't want to do it because I don't have to do it, not being compelled. So that's one, that's probably the biggest factor. The second factor is, because that's a universal constant, the second factor is how do we respond to that behaviour? What do we do? And those two main factors, you know, you can either persuade or coerce, right, and skills do both. And the idea that we don't is fantasy, you know, but we do both. And because, you know, national compulsory education, it's still historically speaking in its infancy is about, you know, it's about 120 years old, that almost every child had to go to school up to the age of 18, that's very new, in fact. And so we've got a relatively short span to even look and think about this kind of question, you know, how has it changed? It used to be that you went to school, you were supposed to behave, and if you didn't, you'd get beaten, right? Or, you know, you can be thrown out, you know, it was, it was not a big deal. Or you didn't turn up. And I didn't really matter. It's like the first 20, 30, 40 years of school where, you know, you could just fall between the gaps. And then you look at something like the elite schools, the elite schools, the great, the great private schools in England, like rugby and so on. And then they realized the behavior actually wasn't so great. There's a fascinating history, Daisy Crystal's great on this, when they talk about things that they eat in riots. I'm sure you're aware of it, that all of the great publishers, they all had these enormous riots at the end of the 19th century. And the reason, and this is great, you love this, I mean, they were shooting at the headmasters and stuff like that. They barricaded teachers into their dorms, they set fire to the building. This wasn't mucking around, but this was wholesale, but then, but the joy of this is that the reason they were doing it is because they hated to be told what to do by middle-class people, which was what the teachers were, right? Yeah. So, this wasn't so good. Galician, you're not rising. It was the exact opposite. So, what then came about as a result of that was this idea of the kind of the prefect system, the fagging system, as it was called, that the older boys, or girls as opposed, were in charge of the younger ones, and that there was a kind of, you know, hierarchy and a little bit of dominance. I mean, and there was a real emphasis on kind of natural justice, natural consequences that if you were an idiot, you'd get in trouble, and the boys would beat you up. But if you were really cool and brave and strong, then you would, then you would rise to the top. So, what's changed is a justification for Lord of the Flies, and it's a terrible thing to do, right? I see human nature for details. So, there is a behavior management that is 50, 60 years old, in terms of, you know, I studied subject, you know, how do we get kids to behave? And so, these are all the factors swimming about the question you've just asked there. So, what's changed is that we're really starting to shine a light inside the secret garden of education, and then it's no longer to something which is kept distant and separate, you know, Dylan William famously referred to schools as the black box. You knew what went in and what it came out. You didn't see what happened inside. Well, now we can do. And I remember even back in the, gosh, was it the 90s, early 2000s when there was an episode of the Channel 4 show Dispatches, when Alex, oh, forget her name now, I want to say Alex Fisher, but I don't think it is that she went undercover into a school as a supply teacher and filmed what she saw. And it was just what you were managing. It was kids bouncing off to ask and shouting and saying like to have often sort of, the nation was appalled. And the teaching council of England banned her from teaching, you know, that was never sponsored. How dare you say these things? How dare you show what's really going on? So, genuinely, and I say this with my, my characteristic humility. One of my kind of missions of the past 20 years, 10, 15 years, Alex Dolan. Good. Yes, that's right. I wrote about her. I met her. I did a fellowship at Cambridge and I was sitting next and about you, Alex Dolan, and I kind of basically said, I'm such a fan and she didn't want to talk about it anymore. She'd moved on to whether forecasting or something, but anyway, I digress. And yes, what I've been trying to do is to try to shine a light, and there's the same look, things that are actually quite bad in some schools. And that, you know, famously, Austin used to say, well, 85% of schools are good or better behavior. So nothing to worry about. And I used to say, no, that's not true. And I don't think much has changed. I think we've realized now what's going on. And I think what's, I think, Covid's had an impact, but I think Covid has simply revealed things as they were. You know, children became dehydrated from the school environment, they lost their habits, but also adults lost the expectation that the children should go to school. So attendance fell off the cliff, not with all children, but with the particularly with the non-attended, the high non-attenders. So very, very, very tight groups, particularly affected by this. So I think Covid has magnified what was already there. So I don't think we should take that, we should discourage that. And I generally think, and I know you're going to ask me about this later, I generally think we'll go for once if I had the impact. For good or for bad, let's find out later viewers, but I think what's been really healthy in the UK, and he says coughing under his breath, is that we have really started to focus on behaviour as a thing that we need to discuss and talk about, and systematise, and look at evidence bases, not just let's see if they like you, let's see if you can build their relationship with them and all that, bollocks. It's much more about, right, how do we actually create healthy systems whereby people flourish behaviourally, socially, individually, and collectively. I think in the future, what we're going to see, well, who knows, because again, lots of other countries are watching what we're doing. And behaviour around the world, may I just say, behaviour around the world is really bad. And you get lost to societies, which are far more collectivist than their approach. So if you go to certain countries, you absolutely do see a much greater emphasis on things like social shame, and what does my behaviour imply for the group and so on, and that's not always a bad thing. I think that's a very good thing in many ways, right, although you then get the de-emphasis of the individual and their rights and perspectives and so on. So you go to some Japanese schools, you go to see some Chinese schools, the state schools and a massive conformity to group norms. The worst behaviour ever was so in China was in the elite private sector, where you get extra for your child to misbehave. So, you know, I think that the way it goes in England again is very, very interesting to lots of other countries. And to be honest, a lot of the work I've been doing for the past couple of years has been working in places like Australia or Flanders or Canada or parts of America, because they're interested. They want to know, how do you improve behaviour? Because England seems to have done a little bit better, so what are you doing over there? That's interesting. So I'm very busy these days, consulting with different territories and governments and so on. And hopefully that's a good thing. Yeah. I think that's a really long answer for a short question. I do apologize. It was, but I think you've captured the main sort of things that do actually come through. No, you did, because like, you know, you talk about how things have changed and developed in the fact that we talk about it now, and we're a lot more open about behaviour and systems structures in schools. It was sort of making me think back to the early parts of my career when, you know, you'd have an assistant head who was responsible for all kinds of things. Behaviour would be shoved on there, and he was like, he'll come along when a kid needs a bollacan, and that'll be about it. Yeah. That's behaviour. Was it? That was behaviour, like 15 years ago. I'm not expecting that. It's just really child. Yeah. And I remember vividly in our school, which the behaviour was not great when I was in school. And they brought in this guy who was like the hard guy, he was going to, like, sort of behaviour. Yeah. Good luck. He was like a little bulldood in the head, like the neck and the top button done all the way up to his chin. And this guy was strung around like a peacock, and I just remember like two events where he came into assembly and everyone just started doing the Imperial Death March, like literally like, 400 kids in the hall. You don't want to talk about that from now, are you? Yeah. And then there was one occasion where one of my friends was on his phone, so mobile phones had just come in. It was like a Nokia 3310. He was on his phone in, like, it was like lined up outside for like, I don't know, maybe it was a fire alarm or something like that. And this guy comes out to him and he starts like trying to get the phone. And this guy literally in front of the whole school, he's just like, no, and he's like, no, no. And he was just like, no. And he like made us to grab the phone. And literally my friend just pushed him off, he was like, no, I'm not giving you my phone. And I think like, so you said that you, I think things have got, so I don't think on average behaviour has got better. I think there's been like a Boris Johnson, this like flattening of the sombrero. So it's like you've got normal distribution where you've got like, some schools are really bad behaviour, some schools are really good behaviour and then everyone in the middle. And I think things have sort of squashed down a bit. I think that COVID has made some places hell of a lot worse and like, like quite, quite bad. But also we've got some schools that have like really blazed a trail in terms of like, what's the art of the possible really in like, what's possible in terms of getting an amazing behaviour. And I think more and more places are starting to sort of not necessarily emulate those systems. Like, you know, at TTA, we don't emulate Makayla. We don't have the same systems that they have at Makayla. We don't have the same systems that they have, a lot of the like, you know, in a city, high standards, silent corridor type vibe schools. But like, we know that it's possible to have amazing behaviour and we'll do that our way, but it like teachers either are the possible. Yeah. I know this now. I can certainly agree with that. What I would say is that I think behaviour, I mean, just in my 20 years of education, I think behaviour has got a bit better in the last 10 years. I'm kind of bound to say that, given my bloody job, you know, I might as well just go home if I can say that. But I think one of the things we launched about 40 years ago was a national behaviour sort of. You're welcome. And then because there wasn't really, there wasn't any annual systematically comparable data. This has been a whole time, hasn't got worse or better. And the honest answer is we don't know. We just don't know. You know, I can tell you one thing. You definitely don't see any more of the kind of easily chaotic schools anymore because the introduction of HFCI of Austin in general meant that those ones did get shut down. And they used to be not common, but, you know, but too common. So that's improved. But then with the national behaviour survey, we were asking really, really uncomfortable questions. I wanted to walk towards this and what do we actually know? My big belief was that this was being hidden and people weren't talking about it enough. And it was controversial when I first started speaking about it. And so the national behaviour survey revealed, for example, one of five children didn't feel safe. You know, that's an alarm bell, a hundred miles tall. Now, what's been quite nice is that, you know, as you get more data points, you start to get more than just noise and hopefully get trends. And we've seen an improvement in things like number of minutes lost and number of children who feel they don't feel, they don't feel safe and so on. So there's been improvements in those types of areas. It's by no means a detectable trend as of yet, but hopefully it's a sign of something. I think that, I mean, Doug Lamar used to say, he was amazed that you could go into almost any school in England and the herd of the tribal practice that, you know, somebody who's heard of comp to a loan theory, whereas you go to almost any school in America and they haven't. Well, I think the same is true with behaviour that I think that the work of people in myself and yourselves and so on, the types of things that we typically espouse, even basic stuff like systematic routines and accountability processes and so on, which is the basic DNA of what really works. I think many schools are turning towards that light like a sunflower. Some schools are really active in a way that just wasn't the case 15 years ago and I promise you this, it is not the case in most countries I go to, I go to entire nations where you say to them things like, you know, you need to give the kids a sanction because they told you to f off and they'll go, oh, we can't do that. And you go, all right, well, then good luck with being sworn at forever, you know, and you know, they really are. Or I think since I might even say to school leader, make sure your staff know what you expect of them. Right? That doesn't sound that, you know, and hold them accountable, you know, mention it to them if they don't do it. And they go, well, we don't really do that. We've got, we've got more, we've got trust, we've got a high trust system in this environment and just go, good luck with chaos for them. And, you know, some places are really desperately far behind and I think by comparison, England is probably doing kind of okay. Yeah, I think that that shift to having kind of systems and procedures and elements of consistency and clear sort of red lines in schools, that's a massive shift. I think we, like, thinking about like the national picture, I think there's a school we've probably moved on that a little bit earlier. And because we've had that long to get that embedded, we're now able to think where do we go on top of that? Yeah, yes. Can we bring in that might enhance that, but there are still schools, like you say, where that just isn't in place. Yeah. Oh, I mean, I just see, I mean, I've worked with the business service I've worked with, with the army, there's lots of institutions in England that themselves don't have a clear understanding of what it means to propagate and perpetuate and sustain a culture. Yeah. And, you know, for instance, you look at the prison service and there's hardly any trades in training for the prison guards and there's the very little consistency practice between them. And 90% of them think that part of their job is to punish the prisoners, you know, which actually isn't their job. The job is to look after the prisoners in a weird way. And so it's the cost of knowledge all over again, when you're used to a good idea, it feels normal and you think, well, everyone should know of this, but it is not the case. And that's why I've got a job, that's why I've got a career, because there are so many places around the world where you just don't need to keep saying, listen, you know, you should probably have boundaries and you should probably have teacher expectations and so on. And there's a great French quote, I can't remember who said that Barry Smith was good for this one. He said that everything, everything's been said already, but because no one is listening, we have to keep repeating ourselves. And it seems, I'd say it's better in French, but it's still true that when it comes to basic stuff like, I don't know, retrieval or systems or routines and so on, this is the stuff you have to, this is the place you start. Yeah. It's your building block, isn't it? You can't go and do the rest of it. Like, I think about like how we've progressed as a school, we've gone from having what, you know, one person that does the ballaking 15 years ago to like, I've got a whole team, now a behaviour support team that work with those young people so that we move beyond just the sanctioning and we're able to try and teach and change and develop the behaviour because we've got all those things in place underneath it if we didn't, you can't do any of that. Yeah, interesting enough, you mentioned sanctions there. I agree, sanctions are part of the pudding, you know, they are part of the recipe, they're the spark plug of the engine if you wanted to develop a dreadful metaphor, but even schools that are overrelying sanctions, they tend to do them really badly too. You know, there's no one since roughly as to how you and when you apply penalty and some schools are so scatter going about it or they're over punitive or they're chaotic punitive, there's no deterrent effect whatsoever or the deterrent effect is completely imploded. So yeah, there's the, in places that do this well, they often follow very simple structures very well. Again, it's another kind of the only really invincible, you know, do five things brilliantly and you're probably going to your culture change really, really quickly. Yeah, I think that one of the things we've found is that is quite helpful if we're thinking about like higher level sanctions like a suspension, we're thinking, well, is it proportionate? Is it necessary? What do we need that period of time for? We're not just banging somebody out the door for a week, actually, we need a week to plan for their needs a little bit better that we're not meeting at the moment. Absolutely. I think there's also a really interesting conversation that we had about when there's a suspension, a sanction, and when there's an intervention, and sometimes it is and sometimes it's both. And then the question I often say to schools is, I mean, I'm known as the kind of the hang of in the vlogum guy, right? I'm known as the suspension guy, which is, which is great, you know, and it's only because I defend the right of schools to use them, but thank you for doing that because we really need that. It's a thankless task, but one of the things I often say to schools most frequently is should this suspension be an internal exclusion of some kind, normally far more substantially impactful for a child, having said that it's a suspension as the result of an escalated micro sanction system, then that's as long as, yeah, they have to be suspended, an internal suspension or internal exclusion, or sometimes you call them internal inclusions, which is great. It's an intervention strategy before they get suspended, and I think that's a crucial thing to remember. But some schools do that really, really well, and of course, as usual, some schools do it terribly. Yeah. So, so. Oh, I'll give you that. Hello. I, you know, I'm not going to disagree with anything that's been said. But I do want to ask, and this is something I think about a lot because, you know, I work in my work with a lot of leaders, and a lot of leaders often say things like, it's so important to talk about things we've got wrong. It's so important. And then people clap them. They're like, yes, thank you so much for showing vulnerability and like, yeah, they didn't actually say anything. They got wrong. And then my favourite is when they're pressed on things that they got wrong, they normally talk about how other people, they weren't good enough at getting other people to do the thing they wanted them to do, and I'm like, well, that's not something, I mean, I guess that is something you've got wrong, but it's really good sort of blaming. Anyway. Yeah. So, I guess my question is this, right? We have, we've essentially got two paradigms in behavior, the first pair, sorry, three paradigms, the first paradigm was like, whatever, let's say fair, which is what you outlined, you know, early systems, which just didn't exist, second paradigm was like, we can make people behave by the building of the relationships and the making lessons engaging, making our curriculum relevant, and stuff like that, and that was the paradigm that sort of existed up until the sort of 2010 to 15 type area, and that's what was challenged by the blogs and stuff like that, the you mentioned. And then we've got a paradigm which is more like, okay, so actually let's just build some systems. So, a macro level will build centralisation systems, gradually escalating consequences, a micro level will teach teachers the things that they can say in classrooms to ensure that behavior will be better, regardless of rewards and consequences, so you're front loading your means of participation, your crystal clear instructions, your phase transitions, that kind of stuff. And I guess I'm interested in like, so within that paradigm, so after the change, so I don't want to hear about how everybody else is wrong, I want to know like, what do you think we have got wrong about behaviour, and put differently like, what things do you think you've changed your mind on, but since that time started, so not like, oh, when I was young and a teacher I thought, well, relationship, blah, blah, blah, no, okay, so you've changed your mind, you're working in a different paradigm, like, what have we got wrong from within that? Oh, all right. See, okay, that's a bit of a sorry niche question, but I like it. It's a difficult question because, yeah, it is, it is, that's what I'm going to be. I was truly wondering, as you were saying, I did appreciate your point there, but when people expose vulnerability by seeing how amazing we are, it's a bit like when someone says, I'm so humbled to receive this OBE, you know, you're not, you're raised, you're elevated, you're bloody delighted. Anyway, I'm humbled to be on this show, literally. So, and we shall humble you, where did it all go wrong, George Bess, they ended up here, so that's a good question, okay, so yeah, I'll try and avoid the answer, because obviously you know, I started to teach, maybe it was full of nonsense, because I didn't know anything with behaviour management, and I tried everything. But while we got wrong about this paradigm, I think, I think that the paradigm you're describing, let me gently push back, certainly, I think it is broader and more nuanced, and I'm not just saying, well, we got everything right, but the model that I certainly expose is, as you say, you know, systematic implementation, consistency, understanding and clarity of expectations, in order to hold staff accountable, and so on, it all fits together, but you said something earlier on, which I think is interesting, you said that, you know, we don't do a Michaela does, and I'm going to, you probably won't argue with this, but I'm arguing that you do, because you have that sense of, well, we know what we stand for, we know how that culture translates into behaviour, we know how that, we know what expectations we have, what systems or routines we have, and we know how we then implement that across the school. Now, those systems can include, for example, systems of accountability, which are meta-systems, systems looking at systems, but you can also have systems of how we build relationships, you can also have systems of how we deal with complexity of student need, you know, and the reason why I think this is like it, it's almost unforcifiable, it's kind of like capitalism, it can consume any other ideology, is that I've seen all these schools, and schools can be brilliant in, you know, thousands of different ways, and that's great, I don't think every school should be Michaela, I think Michaela is brilliant, they've been Michaela, and I think your school has really been your school, and I've seen wonderful schools of all different shades and stripes from the world, but all the brilliant ones, if they're not just brilliant because of a very fortunate, you know, lucky sperm club of student cohort, if they're brilliant because of what they do, it's because they know who they are, and they've systematically implemented it, and in that systematic implementation, there is room for systematically allowing people individualized autonomy or spaces or agency where they can make justified decisions, so for example, if you look at the medical paradigm, and I know we all love looking at the medical paradigm, and doctors don't just get to say I reckon this one needs leeches, I actually know I think he needs to drink arsenic or something, doctors are taught principles, knowledge, the most specific knowledge, variables and variable boundaries and areas of uncertainty and probability and so on, and within those principles then they can make a professional judgment, and so I think that the system you just described allows that. I'm going to stop you on your romantic presentation here now, because that is true, but equally if a doctor uses, let's say you've got a surgeon, and in surgery there are specific techniques, right, specific like moves to do in particular types of surgery. No, but they're not, they're not like, it's nice, it's nice, it's nice, and they will have names, they will name off the people, if they use an outdated one, and the patient suffers because of it, like that doctor will get sued, right, they're still like, oh sorry, let's do it, they're still very like, I'll be back in a second, if you can, he's off to get a spacey take now. Yeah, I think what he's saying is like, don't kill people in surgery, because you'll get sued. I certainly endorse that, and I think it's absolutely clear in public that I don't endorse killing people in surgery. No, me either, or in schools, I try to avoid it where I can. Right, and the other point that I wanted to rate is like, it's interesting you mentioned Mikaela, sorry, I don't know what you guys are talking about, I'm just jumping in, don't you? Just killing people, but it's fine. No, sure. I don't know what I like. So, so Mikaela is an interesting one, because like, like, we on this show, we've been, you know, this will be easier for us to do than you, but we've been opening critical of the way the Mikaela dealt with the, the, the, the prayer room business. I feel deeply uncomfortable with the fact that we still have us, we have a school that has been open for like 10 years now, as exemplary behaviour, outstanding results and still doesn't let students gather in the playground in groups of more than four. Like, I think that's wrong, right? I think like, that's an infringement on the liberty of a child. And I think it's like, and so it's not the case, the, you know, in a sense, I guess, you could say, we do the same thing as Mikaela, because we've got systems and we, we know what we stand for and blah, blah, blah. But like, I, I think there are, there are better and worse ways to do things. And I think that, you know, some schools should do things differently. I'm not saying that Mikaela needs to move to the same model that TTA has. I'm not saying that Mikaela needs to move to the same model the Cochamath has. I'm not saying that Cochamath needs to move to our model, whatever. But like, I think, I think it's possible to say, well, actually, you know what, that's a bit far, right? And I think, and I definitely think that despite the fact that, by and large, I'm out, I'm out there batting the high standard schools. I think there are some things which are just a bit mental. And I don't think we need to do them in order to maintain, like, good behavior and high standards. I, yeah, I wouldn't, I wouldn't disagree with any of that. I just, I think one of the things I've realized by looking at excellent schools is, as said before, they could probably be really in different ways. Now, I, I could conceptualize Mikaela as like a using boat. It's an Olympic athlete, right? It's the fact it's, you know, it doesn't just get the best, you know, value added in the UK. It gets it by a country mile compared to the second one, right? And I'm on a roll, I'm on a roll box, but it's not true. It's not true. It's not true. It's not true. So anyway, not really the point you have anyway, but, you know, but you, you jump in bed and you jump in. And I don't think every school should be like Mikaela to that extent because to get to that level of excellence requires an extraordinary high level of discipline. Again, imagine the Olympic athlete, imagine what they have to give up to be good. It's not just genes, although genes play a big part in it, but the Olympic athlete, it's also, you know, years of, you know, never touching a tonics to your cake, which is, you know, which would be hell in many, many, many, many, many films from me. But I don't think any school should do that. What schools can do is they can look at me and go, OK, I see that you are quite consistent about stuff. We could also be quite consistent, but not as consistent as you. And that's fine. But I think for most schools, particularly when they're struggling, the low hanging fruit of cultural improvement is actually, do you know what should, we should probably be more consistent amongst ourselves, but we should probably system a certain aspect for you things. So I visit a lot of schools that genuinely, you can do a lot of good in a couple of days, because you can see it in their eyes to go, oh, yeah, it's what we should be doing. But not everyone should be Michaela. So I think it's possible to look at Michaela and go, I disagree with how they handle things. But what I think is very haunted disagree with is, is that you have systems. And we have systems, you know, there's a system in an industry, there's a system in a university, and there's a system in a bus, and there's a system in a library, and they've all got different systems, but they work in different contexts. I'm often minded in the fact that when it comes to the universe, we often see ourselves as being the hero and heroine of the narrative of the universe, you know, we are the center of the known universe, and everyone else is a bit part player. And because of that, we very frequently judge people's likes, dislikes, preferences, and aesthetic choices relative to ourselves. So we like people who are quite like us, and we like people we admire, but we dislike people who are the outgroup and aren't like us. And when I'm driving in the motorway, at exactly 69 miles an hour, I might add. If somebody overtakes me, it's 71 miles an hour, and I'm shaking my fist, starting, you may not, you're going to kill it because it's so fast. But if I'm behind somebody who's doing 68 miles an hour, I shake my fist and go, come on, granddad, we've got places to be, and we very frequently base our preferences on aesthetics. I don't think every school should be as sick to be a killer. I am very at peace with them being that sick, because other schools can be themselves. And I believe in that agency, I believe that a school's culture is like a human being's persona or character. It's how they typically are, and I think it's very important, a school knows that. What that is could be very, very different. And I embrace what your school does and embrace what Amy's school does and so on, but not the schools I've worked in. No, it's not. If your identity as a school is netted, it's like who we are and what we do. Yeah, I mean, and it can be so different, you know, I mean, put it this way. I'm ever talking to Catherine, and she won't mind me saying this, right? Because I mean, I massively admire her, but as I frequently say, she's got two settings combined harvest up and dead, right? And she's not dead. So she's a combined harvest up and turns through life, right? No, don't get in front of her. And she's brilliant at what she does. I mean, genuinely, she is world class. She is an Olympic athlete of her teachers, whether or not you agree with what she does. And I do, I say agree with a lot what she does. And I remember said to her, because I visited Michaela, the half a dozen times. I said to her, is there anything you would change about Michaela? It was kind of like, there was question there, you know, being a bit of a tour, you know, what's wrong here? And she looked to me like I just, you know, like a spat and a shoe. And she went, no, well, hang on, maybe, maybe we could, sorry, she's now Jimmy Cagney, right? Maybe, maybe we could, you know, maybe we could walk in the right instead of walking on the left. And I was like, okay, is that it? And she went, yeah, that's it. Because to her mind, everything hung together. Yeah. You know, like a wonderful crystal chandelier, if it took something out, the whole thing would fall apart. Maybe she's right, maybe she's wrong. I disagree with that sentiment. I think there's lots of things you could do. I still have a brilliant school, but it wouldn't be her version of a brilliant school. And I think there's lots of brilliant schools out there. And I love that because we soon as you start saying that to schools, especially when you're coaching them, you can see them relax. They, you're not there to tell them to be the DFE school. You're not there to tell them to be messed up or St George's or Charles Dickens or whatever. So just be the best version of yourself, you know. I think there was a time that the landscape was such that like schools thought maybe they did have to like carbon copy some things. And I think one of the things I've noticed that's changed is more like that schools kind of have more individual, like of ethos around them more so than I think they've probably had. Like even if I'm thinking locally, we've sort of gone from schools all being kind of one and the same to like, or, you know, we get the rep of all their really good, you know, with special educational needs and behaviour. So yeah, this school is actually really good at this part of it. So we'll send them that like, I feel like that hasn't always been the case education where schools have had to their own defining strengths. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, remember this, sorry, go on. No, sorry to interrupt me, but I didn't need to step in line now. I was just going to say, I'm all the other member of the specialist schools movement, but every school was what identify a special. I was complete. No, it's not like, yeah, we were like, I'd say in language. Yeah, yeah, maybe we were, you know, but burn it as fire anyway. And I think that in a kind of Darwinian sense, schools, good schools evolve to be fitted to be fit. As Darwin would say, to the environment in which they occupy in order to survive. So any, you know, mutation, which helps them to survive tends to be passed on to the next generation of teachers and course and so on. And I think obviously that can go badly wrong, you can develop kind of chaotic mutations, but you can also have mutations towards perfection. And you might get a coastal school with a very high turnover of staff because nobody stays for very long. So they might develop systems, which focus on staff induction and reproduction of culture, a rapid rate. Or you might have a school in inner city London, which would get high rates of gang violence. And so because of that, they ban and bandanas or something like that, because they don't want to propagate gang identification. You know, so schools can develop different cultures because of the challenges they face. And good schools do that in a way that, you know, they start to speciate, they start to become different versions of the same species. And that's really healthy, I think, but you don't see it all the time. And one of the things we tried to promote, I tried to put what I was writing the behavior policy for schools a couple of years ago, which was very uncontroversial, as you can imagine. And if you read my most documents, if you actually read that document and I beg people to do. I read it many a time. God bless you. It's very different from his previous essay, which was terrible. Yeah, because it's much more about, you know, think about what you want to happen in your school. What does good behavior look like to you? And the people who kind of challenge and attack me online have clearly never read anything I've written, and when, in principle, the behavior hubs program that we ran recently, you know, it was all a bit matching up brilliant schools with schools that wanted to be better, but their relationship was very much about not just be like us, but who do you want to be? We will help you systematise that strategic way. So a lot of the reforms have been happening, you know, unbeknownst to the people that hate them are far, far more individualized. And, and, and kind of autonomous than people actually realize schools tend to improve much better when they exist in peer to peer network support or learn another when they actually see other schools in similar circumstances and similar bunch to the challenges, making a difference. Do you remember, sorry, I'm ranting here, but years ago, there was a strategy whereby the elite private schools were supposed to sponsor an academy. Oh, yes, yeah, so you got things that willing to call the suspension of the first academy and rugby sports, and it was a disaster, because the idea was there's very kind of, you know, a class idea that these schools get great grades so they must know how to get great grades, and that's, of course, as they got great grades because they had a highly highly boutique intake demographic. Yeah, you know, of other enormous social and cultural capital advantage, and they didn't quite work that out, and so all of these experiments completely failed because there's not that there's no good matching Grange Hill with Mallory towers. Sorry, for, for viewers of this pro, sorry, for the viewer of this program, for the listener, Mallory towers is the name of Mallory towers. Grange Hill loses a few people. Waterloo road, let's see, you can't match them. They're not the same beast and also they're both rubbish. Marvelous, okay, cool, let's push on because we've got about eight minutes left and three questions in the world. Let's crack on tonight. Yeah, I don't need to get a bad look at him. We'll run with Wayne, he said, let's do, let's do the belonging question then. So, so this is a big new one at the moment. There's a big focus on the term belonging. For some of us, it sort of came a bit out of nowhere, but it's now a big thing, offsteader using it quite a bit. Where's the term come from? Is it a welcome addition to offset framework in the public discourse, or should we resist it? Oh, belonging has not just appeared. It's been around for donkeys. Um, whether it's valuable or useful is another matter entirely. Let me just start off here by saying that people who advocate belonging in schools use that same kind of rhetorical, leisure demon or slight of hand that many people use, who could be against belonging? You know, what a wonderful thing. If you criticize it for one second, people go, you monster bin it. What have you got against children belonging? Do you want anything with the excluded? And so it's like the word inclusion. It's like child center of education and so on. These are these are terms which are designed to be waterproof to, to, to, for, for, for resistance and criticism, to kind of run off them like water off a top. Belonging is a very fashionable idea just now. So obviously you can't be against it, but it's such a broad abstract that can mean many, many things. And belonging was, it kind of started to become current discourse and education around it at the time of Maslow. So you know, Abraham Maslow wrote the hierarchy of needs in 1948. So, you know, this is cutting edge stuff, right? And it's the idea that, um, that is one of the basic human needs. They need to belong to the group and that belonging precedes learning. Right? That's, that's a really important part of this. But if you don't feel like you belong somewhere, you won't learn there. Right? Now, obviously, you know, why is people should start to smell a bit of a rat there? Because obviously you want Kirstie to feel like they belong to, let's put, let's just say that's a given. But doesn't necessarily proceed belonging and then it moves into things like the social emotional learning movement of America, you know, you get to things like, um, social psychology and you get to things like, um, uh, like social, social learning, trauma and form practice, even to things that contemporary identity politics, this idea that, for instance, when the children learn best when they've got things like autonomy, independence, relatedness, back in the thing. So there's lots of lots of work been done in the social arena by these types of things. Um, and a lot of that research is very, very strong, very, very valid. There seems to be a big stroke. There's a very strong correlation between how much somebody feels like they belong to a school community and things like, large stress, increased motivation, increased attentiveness, uh, lower dropout rates and all these lovely things that we're looking for. Right? So we've got this problem. We love belonging and it appears to be associated with success. What we don't have is a causal relationship. What we've got is an enormous amount of data, which is, which is correlative in nature, which is, which is a bit like, you know, do children read more if they grow up in a house with books. You know, it's probably not the presence of the books themselves. It's more like the house to values the books, buys books, and teaches children to read. So, you know, it's, it's one of those types of things. It reminds me of a family member of mine when they had a child. They went, you know, I was there one evening and they said, oh, it's a good night. And I went in and there was classical music playing in the background. I said, oh, you're playing some nice classical music. And he looked at me and he goes, yes, it's canon. And I was like, it's what? Because it's canon. I was like, no, no, it's, it's Packabell's canon. It's called Packabell's canon. You know, the wedding change, right? And, and he's like, oh, is that what it's called? And I'm like, like, playing classical music to your child isn't going to make them smarter. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Right? Well, when you find the kids who listen to classical music when they're younger or smart and have better life outcomes, it's because their parents were smarter and understood this stuff. It's like, you can't, you can't force it. It's not going to work. Absolutely. And also, it's, you know, he probably argued that maybe like Mozart or whatever. It's too complex to be appreciated without somebody helping you to unpack it to some extent. You know, it's the anti-m Mozart effect, not that that exists in the first place. And I remember one famous experiment where in Brixton, Tube Station, I used to live near Brixton for a while and they used to play classical music in Brixton. Still, you could quite easily form the the belief that, oh, people ran to your muscles really love classical music. And like those were doing, what they were doing was they were trying to disperse gangs. Yeah. Now, there's a whole ocean of, you know, that you can write about, was that a good thing or not to do that? But, you know, there's the whole correlation problem right there. So it comes to a lot. Yeah. So I'm actually belonging. So obviously, you know, belonging like inclusion, like liberty, like justice, these are brilliant abstracts. But unless you define what it is, you actually want, then, then you, then you could justify or miss anything. And trauma informed practice and, you know, ac, research and so on is very strongly in this area of children that stay they belong to, to the better school. But what I would can flip that is head and say, the way you get shown to belong at school isn't by focusing on their trauma or by trying to build individual relationships or by individualizing exceptions to behavioral boundaries. You know, I'm getting them to like here. I'm making them feel like this is a great place. It's by making sure they exist in a community with strong sense of communal purpose, sense of safety, a sense of explicit structure and routine, you know, I know what I should be doing and how to succeed. I know that people care and value me, but that also means boundaries and consequences and high expectations. So that's a type of environment where people feel like they belong. If you are in an organization with high expectations, you're proud to be part of that, if it's successful and you feel like you're valued. If you're in the army, if you're in a religious institution, you feel valued not because you're ignored, but because you're noticed and you know whatever else needs and wants from being at that part of the community. And that's why I focus on the time on creating a culture, creating a culture in schools because that's the culture where people belong the most. And that applies also to alternative provision and people of all units and so on. But if you say to a child, I know you punch them in the face, but I understand you are angry. Adjustifying behavior because of example emotional state, trying to curry favor with children, trying to make them think that you're cool or lovely or kind. And what it does is it just accentuates their anti-social behavior because they think I've got a perfect justification to behave this way. It makes them belong less to the community rather than belong more. And so perhaps there's a happy medium between these highly communal societies like in South East Asia and these highly individualized societies like American Britain. Perhaps there's some middle ground where we can meet, where we understand that children need to understand that they're part of a community. And you know what Aristotle used to write about this, but you could only flourish as an individual if you were flourishing in a community of flourishing individuals. And the two things were explicable. Sorry, I'm mispronouncing that there's no one political right now. We'll look at you, and to that reason, I'm not sure. Aristotle said that to flourish outside of a community, you had to either be a god or a monster. It was not great. Gods are monsters, you know, famously, that they could have Frankenstein reference. And he said that, you know, we are neither. We're neither gods nor monsters. We're human beings. Man, he said, is a social animal, I guess he meant women as well, that we are social creatures. I mean, flourish socially. That's how you belong. Very good. Okay. I'm lost coming to me on that before we wrap up. I don't really think I've got anything to say. Sorry, I'll board you to tears with that one. No, but I think you're right in terms of talking about like the bigger picture, although I do think the concept of belonging on a much more on a much smaller basis when you're working with individual kids and trying to engage them and trying to change behaviors and improve them. I do think that having that as part of your toolkit and your assessment of what the issue is is also an important one. Like, you know, trying to find opportunity to go right. Well, if this child's getting more and more disengaged, the more and more, you know, suspensions, pecs is looming. What can we do to try on a very small tiny little level? I think that is an important part that probably gets a little bit missed, but is I've found it particularly helpful anyway with the kids that we work with today. Amy, you've sorted the bulk. That's the point, right? So because your school has strong systems. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So we can do those things. Yeah. You're just that you can. It's that you know that that's the right thing to do. In the school that doesn't have those systems, if a kid is acting out, you don't know if the kid is acting out because they've got some kind of real issue that needs unpicking or simply because you don't have good systems and the child has the capability to act out without very consequence. Yeah, it illuminates it for you, doesn't it? And you can see that that little bit more. I think that's something I've learned as well over the years is to consider more of those things when working on an individual level rather than like a whole school level because you can't just be like, oh, we're going to do a belonging initiative. Like, that's Wally nonsense. I have this like running bet in my head that if you did like a survey of like and you went to schools and you found the schools that had on average the highest level of belonging in the students. Like, I would bet significant amounts of money that those schools also have like the firmest and strongest behavior policies. No one feels like they're belonging, they don't feel like they belong to chaos, can you? You know, the same is the same as the like Metacognition, right? Everyone else is the Metacognition, you know, Metacognition is the initiative or whatever. I'm like, I've never used the word Metacognition in my school. Nobody ever used it. It's just not a thing. I reckon if you measured the child's like Metacognitive stuff, then then there'd be off the scales that are playing just because we do the actual things that end up with it's like an outcome measure that there's no point trying to actually do that thing. It just doesn't work. When I worked in Soho, which was like the Wild West of London, it is. Yeah, I'm, you know, it's probably quite gentrified by now. But one of the things that, yeah, the box of the regularly. And one of the things can you imagine, one of the things that people liked about Soho and attracted people from around the world was that nobody cared what you did, you know, you can, so for instance, you would see these enormous, you know, healthy, burgeoning, gay communities and communities from around the world. And people could be expressed themselves and so on. But there's a flip side of that. If no one cares what you do, no one cares. And so, and I'm not saying that's a bad thing that nobody could be did, but there is a flip side to that. And that in high care communities at which schools often need to be, particularly for a lot of children with genuine trauma or children who get genuinely chaotic backgrounds or genuine difficulties in their behaviors. They need high trust, high structure environments, where there's so much predictability that they flourish, they get, they give them somebody to cling to, and they also need really, really high levels of, you matter to me. And the reason why you're here with me just now isn't because I hate you, it's because I care about you. And they need that daily pastoral rhetorical, you know, punch with these, with a reliable adult who loves them or loves them professionally. And for them to understand that sense of care, Amy, you said they're nobody flourishes and chaos. And that's kind of that, again, that's about the sweet spot. It's having the structure, but they're having the give within the structure to make a professional call. This child needs a daily pastoral conversation. This child needs a, you know, a structure tend to what this child needs are removal once a week to make it work for them. A lot of it is very much in the details, but the idea of structure and routine is very much the foundation of it. Very good. And on that note, unfortunately, we haven't managed to finish everything we want to talk about. Maybe we'll have you back on the show in about a few minutes. But that is all we've got time for today. Thank you all so much for listening and thank you Tom for joining us. If you're liking it and such, you can find us on Twitter or BlueSky or you can email me at www.endermetchariccioflearning.com. If you're not yet subscribed, it's carries on learning all carries out. Teaching, do consider booking in the demo via the website. 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