Editorial

Does the Steer Report have anything

new to say about behaviour in schools

and what to do about it?

As I write this editorial, in October 2006, I have in front of me a copy of the much

anticipated Steer Report (DfES, 2006) on learning and behaviour in schools in

England. This is potentially one of the most significant UK government publications

on behaviour in schools since the now 17-year-old Elton Report (DfES, 1989).

Interestingly, the authors of the new report indicate that the Elton Report is still of

importance and relevance to the schools of today, and refer explicitly to the Elton

Report’s emphasis on

…the need for a coherent whole school approach to promoting behaviour that is based

on good relationships between all members of the school community. (p. 7)

Having said this, the authors recognise the fact that the schools of 2006 face some

certain challenges unforeseen in the 1980s, as a result of societal changes and related

technological developments.

One such development is the mobile phone. According to this report some 90% of

school children possess such phones, with children receiving their first mobile

phone, on average, at the age of eight years. Although the Steer Report authors see

advantages to this and other new technologies (such as e-mail) because of

the opportunities created for communication with parents and carers, they also

express concern about the ways in which mobile phones can be misused:

This is not simply a case of ring tones disrupting lessons. Mobile phones are sometimes

used to convey inappropriate text messages as a form of bullying and harassment. Some

pupils have used mobile phones to invite aggressive parents to school, so the parent can

challenge teachers’ right to punish misbehaviour. Pupils with mobile phones may also

find themselves bullied or have their phones stolen, with a particular risk in some

communities of mugging on the way to school. A particularly extreme and dangerous

practice is where mobile phones are used to record and transmit images of bullying,

assault or other violence – the craze referred to in the media as ‘happy slapping’. (p. 97)

Interventions suggested for dealing with problems relating to the use of mobile

phones include discouraging pupils from bringing them to school, though it is

Emotional and Behavioural Difficulties

Vol. 11, No. 4, December 2006, pp. 233–235

ISSN 1363-2752 (print)/ISSN 1741-2692 (online)/06/040233-3

# 2006 SEBDA

DOI: 10.1080/13632750601097131

recognised that this is not always possible or even desirable, owing to the positive

uses to which phones can be put in enabling pupils to contact their parents and

carers. For this reason the Steer Report favours interventions that educate pupils

about the consequences of misusing mobile phones for anti-social purposes and the

ways in which parents and schools can employ technology to regulate some of the

ways in which their children use this technology.

The treatment of the mobile phone issue reflects two important themes for those of

us concerned with the education of children in schools. First, there is the need for

schools to try to work in and with the world outside the school gates, rather than to

avoid it. One of the ways in which some schools avoid the real world is by opting too

readily for the exclusion option when confronted with challenging students. The Steer

Report takes a pragmatic view on the exclusions issue, recognising that it is a sanction

that many schools will continue to employ. However, the report is critical of such use

of ‘informal exclusion’, and stresses the need where exclusion is used to make it an

effective sanction. This requires ensuring that the excluded pupil is appropriately

supervised and provided with educational support, as well as measures being put in

place to optimise opportunities for reintegration into full time mainstream education.

A second theme suggested by the treatment of the mobile phone issue is the

important relationship between behaviour and the broader aims of education. This is

perhaps the single most important feature of the report, reflected in its title. Schools

should be concerned with the growth and development of their pupils. For pupils to

thrive, they must be placed in a situation which promotes their positive physical and

mental health, a sense of personal safety, pleasure in learning, enthusiasm for social

participation and opportunities for their eventual positive and active engagement in

the adult world of work. The linking of behaviour to these five themes of the Every

Child Matters agenda (DfES, 2003) extends the work of the Elton Report and helps

to reinstate the ‘whole child’ approach to our understanding of how to give the best

to and get the best out of children in schools.

There will be a great deal in the Steer Report that will be familiar to seasoned

readers of this journal. This is as it should be. There are certain ‘eternal verities’

(Visser, 2002) in our field that have to be restated from time to time, lest we forget.

Not only that, but many of these familiar truths are fiendishly difficult to turn into

practice. A positive contribution of the Steer Report in this respect is the use of up to

date illustrations from contemporary practice to exemplify well established

principles. There will be other, perhaps less familiar insights to be taken from the

report, such as those relating to new technologies, that will remind us of the ways in

which we constantly create new ways of expressing social deviance and new

opportunities for feelings of being threatened and insecure. I suspect that it will be a

very long time before there will be a last word on this topic.

Paul CooperUniversity of Leicester

234 Editorial

References

DfES (1989) Discipline in schools (London, HMSO).

DfES (2006) Learning behaviour: the report of the Practitioners’ Group on Behaviour and Discipline

(London, DfES).

DfES (2003) Every child matters (London, DfES).

Visser, J. (2002) The David Wills Lecture 2001: eternal verities, Emotional and Behavioural

Difficulties, 7(2), 68–84.

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