Improving pupil behaviour across schools is essential to creating safe, inclusive, and effective learning environments. This document aims to provide a coordinated and evidence-based approach to supporting schools in managing and improving behaviour. By fostering collaboration between educational settings, the local authority, families, and external agencies, we seek to ensure that all pupils, regardless of background or need, receive consistent guidance, support, and opportunities to thrive. The nature of inclusion means that what works for one pupil will not necessarily work for another. Viewing the inclusive strategies suggested as mere hoops to jump through undermines their true purpose, reducing meaningful support for all pupils to a checklist exercise rather than a commitment to equity and belonging. We hope that this document outlines a framework of expectations, interventions, and professional development to equip schools with the tools they need to promote inclusion and address challenges proactively and compassionately.
Over the last few years, we have seen a significant increase in the numbers of permanent exclusions and suspensions in England. We have seen this increase in Lincolnshire; however we have also seen a much higher rate of exclusions, both fixed-term and permanent, than the national rate.
We know that permanent exclusions and suspensions affect the most vulnerable in society, disproportionately impacting their life outcomes.
“Exclusion and heavy sanctions meet the needs of some adults. They might temporarily relieve the disruption in the classroom. But they rarely meet the needs of the child.”
- Paul Dix – When the Adults Change, Everything Changes
“The impact of school exclusions has a profound effect on young people’s sense of identity, both in the present and their hopes for the future and its reach goes beyond what happens in school itself and into the wider contexts of their lives.”
-Youth Voice on School Exclusions – The Children’s Society
Lincolnshire’s ‘Ladder’ of Behavioural Intervention was developed with schools, for schools, outlining what schools, using good practice expectations, can do to meet the needs of pupils whose behaviour is challenging. A review of the Ladder has taken place in partnership with a wide range of stakeholders, including parents/carers, educational settings, including mainstream schools and alternative provision setting, behaviour outreach colleagues, speech and language colleagues, and local authority staff.
The Ladder supports Lincolnshire’s key aim that children and young people are supported in their school settings to access high quality, inclusive education and achieve the best possible outcomes in school and in life.
