Question to the Department for Education:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government, further to the Written Answer by Lord Nash on 14 July 2014 (WA 103), what evidence they yet have of improved behaviour of school pupils, following their issue of "updated behaviour advice" in February 2014.

In February 2014, following results of the Teacher Voice survey (2013) which showed that one in three secondary school teachers lacked confidence in their powers to discipline pupils, we updated our behaviour advice to make clear the range of sanctions that it is permissible for schools to deploy for poor behaviour. This update was aimed to reassure teachers of their powers to discipline pupils and increase teacher confidence to confront poor pupil behaviour.

The Teacher Voice survey funded by the Department for Education was repeated in May 2014, just three months after the behaviour advice was updated. The majority of teachers (74 per cent) said that the standard of pupil behaviour in their school is ‘good’ or ‘very good’. This is broadly similar to the findings for 2013 and an increase of 4 percentage points on the respective figure for 2008.

In addition, the Ofsted Annual Report published in December 2014 shows that 83 per cent of schools have behaviour that is good or better. We aim to repeat the same behaviour questions in future waves of the Teacher Voice survey in order to measure change in pupil behaviour over time.