This term, two facets of school behaviour policies - isolation rooms and booths for misbehaving pupils, as well as a silent-corridors rule - have received huge national media attention. Portrayed as shocking and “barbaric”, their use has drawn comparisons with everything from North Korean gulags to monasteries and prisons.

But if social media is anything to go by, both approaches split the teaching profession down the middle. Some teachers are appalled by what they see as unnecessarily extreme and rigid solutions to behavioural problems. And just as many seem to barely understand why what they see as common-sense approaches even merit comment.

Certainly neither policy is particularly rare or new. So why have they been generating so much heat in recent weeks? Part of the reason must be the language used. The stories about them include references to heads who “think they’re God-like”, tales of pupils being isolated for “days on end”, as well as talk of “seclusion units” and “custodial sentences”.

But the reaction was about more than the dystopian descriptions. The past few years have heralded big changes in the way many of our schools approach pupil behaviour - and much of the rest of the country has yet to catch up. Isolation booths/rooms and silent corridors can be seen as part of a more general move towards a “no excuses” or “zero tolerance” philosophy that has been gradually gaining ground in England.

However, while many schools have been adopting this strict, uncompromising stance, many haven’t. Teachers in schools with more conventional approaches to behaviour may be unaware of the changes being implemented elsewhere, let alone the general public. And when people do finally discover what some schools are doing, they often don’t like what they read, particularly when it is presented as something shocking.

While the “no excuses”/“zero tolerance” approach is controversial, it does appear to have had a big impact. At the turn of the century, unmanageable classrooms and tales of inner-city schools being swallowed by anarchy managed to become both big news and everyday instances in England. Stories about unions taking “refusal to teach” action against apparently uncontrollable, violent pupils became education journalists’ bread and butter. Then something changed. While the recent rise in exclusion rates suggests there may have been significant downsides, there was a definite shift. Reporters saw the tide of refusal-to-teach stories recede as rapidly as they had arrived (although there are now signs that such action is starting to make a return, as school spending cuts start to bite).

Many factors will have played their part in this - unions may have become less aggressive on the issue and a backing away from inclusion in mainstream schools probably had an effect. But many schools also changed their approach. It became increasingly common to hear teachers talk about the fact that there was no longer any need for challenging poor pupil behaviour to overrun even the toughest school. There was a replicable solution out there if you wanted one - the problem could be cracked.

Much of the thinking behind this apparent answer to behavioural problems came from the zero-tolerance approach developed in the US. As Education Endowment Foundation senior associate Alex Quigley has noted, the very first such policies “appeared in US schools decades ago, to address issues of serious violence, drugs and, in particular, gun crime”.

“In the 1990s, the approach was popularised in many US schools and became related to the ‘broken-windows theory’ of crime reduction, which was credited for significant crime-rate drops across American cities, such as New York,” Quigley wrote in an article for Tes earlier this year. “The idea was this: by dealing sternly with minor crimes - mere ‘broken windows’ - serious crimes would in turn be reduced. Hero police chiefs, such as Bill Bratton from New York, heralded their successes. US schools listened and learned.”

And they in turn have inspired a similar - if not always identical - approach on this side of the Atlantic. To ensure that schools are calm, ordered environments, the thinking goes, you have to be utterly consistent on school rules - you need to “sweat the small stuff”. This demands a clear set of rules on everything from behaviour to uniform, and a clear set of sanctions if pupils break them. And then comes the hard, but simple, bit: when rules are broken, then the entire school staff must ensure the system is always adhered to and the appropriate sanction levied without fear or favour. As some would describe it, there are “no excuses”.

The way this has taken hold in England can be demonstrated by the steady stream of newspaper stories about new heads excluding scores of pupils at the start of term for minor uniform infractions. As in the US, the spread of this kind of behaviour policy in schools has been largely organic. Training schemes, such as Future Leaders (now part of Ambition School Leadership), inspired by US charter schools, have spread the word among their graduates. And there has been some encouragement from the top in the past, with Conservative politicians arguing that schools, particularly those in “difficult areas”, should set “clear boundaries”, as well as Ofsted’s backing for “zero tolerance” and “non-negotiable” behaviour policies. However, the actual decision on whether to do this still rests with heads. And many have chosen not to do so - which may explain the growing grassroots teacher schism over approaches to discipline in England’s schools.

‘Punishment should fit the crime’

So what advice is there for a teacher from one side of the divide who joins a new school and is suddenly plunged into a very alien and uncompromising approach to dealing with pupils? Phil Beadle, a teacher and behaviour and management consultant, has serious concerns about the approach pioneered in the US. “The problem with zero tolerance is it overturns the Benthamite idea that the punishment should fit the crime,” he says. “So when it was imported into certain portions of the US education system, it resulted in children receiving very draconian punishments for very minor offences. A pupil could be excluded for having one too many sugars in their tea, for instance.”

However, Beadle suggests that teachers over here should not panic: what we currently have in the UK is not zero tolerance. “You have a whole set of schools that are taking a very strict line on behaviour and that set of schools are very heavily influenced by what [former Ofsted chief inspector Sir] Mike Wilshaw did at Mossbourne [Community Academy],” he explains. “Now, I’ve worked under Mike…and [the school’s approach is] not draconian, it just understands that when you are working in the lower end of society, there needs to be a quite disciplined approach to behaviour, so on a personal level, I have no objection to schools having strict behaviour policies.”

Not all teachers are quite so happy about it. One anonymous supply teacher recently used Tes to relate his experience of working in what he described as a military-style academy. He told of how the entire school lined up in the playground for a uniform inspection, conducted in complete silence by a sharp-suited head.

“He commended the students on their impeccable uniform,” the teacher wrote. “It was indeed impeccable. This also seemed a little odd. Students will usually find ways to subvert uniform rules: a shortened tie, a rolled-up skirt, a non-regulation hairband. Not here. It was as if the Midwich Cuckoos had resurfaced in north London.

“Personally, I’ve always believed that to get the best out of kids, you have to let them be kids. And while I’ll accept that the iron rod will work for some, walking silently in straight lines doesn’t feel like natural behaviour for teenagers. Squash it down here, it’s going to force its way out somewhere else.”

NEU teaching union assistant general secretary Ros McNeil can see the logic behind one of the key planks of the no-excuses philosophy - that a whole-school approach is used to maintain behaviour. “One of the things that never works with pupil behaviour is when teachers feel that they have to sort it on their own,” she says.

“A school is entitled to try to have a consistent approach and to make sure that there’s consistency between teachers, but your staff are all in different rooms with a different group of children teaching different subjects, so you then have to trust the professional judgement of your staff. You can set a culture, you should have CPD, there should be space for staff to come together to discuss what is feeling difficult.”

But McNeil can also see significant problems with the adoption of a completely uncompromising approach, as she argues that for some pupils, excuses should be allowed or at least exceptions made.

“Legally, you have to make reasonable adjustments in your behaviour policy for special needs and disabled pupils; schools have to be aware that parents could challenge an approach that is too inflexible, that is always open to the risk of challenge by parents,” she says. “Teachers should be able to say, ‘This child needs some more support and actually sanctions aren’t the right response for this child’ - whether that is because the child has got something going on at home or they have emotional needs, or the behaviour is linked to anxiety, to school phobia or self-harm. We have a large cohort of children that have mental health issues.”

The Department for Education’s behaviour adviser, Tom Bennett, agrees that “never allowing for context means that you could be unjust”.

“If a student is late because they care for a disabled parent in the morning, a detention might be the rule, but would be dreadfully unjust,” he explains. “So a teacher (and a school) needs to appreciate when context matters, and have social, coherent and consistent reasons for when exceptions must be made.”

Empowering teachers to speak up

It is the need to adapt to circumstances that makes Darren Northcott, the NASUWT teaching union’s national official for education, argue that the term “zero tolerance” can be “unhelpful”.

“It doesn’t recognise that, for some children, the school needs to make adaptations to address any particular needs that they have,” he says. “In developing a behaviour policy, a school has to be mindful of its duties under equalities legislation so - particularly in the case of SEND pupils - the school must make sure that the application of that policy does not adversely affect those children. With children who have education, health and care plans, that plan would have to take into account adaptations that might need to be made to allow that child to participate. It’s not only good practice, it’s also the law.”

Legal challenges can lead to official criticism of school behaviour policy. Earlier this year, a tribunal condemned Burnt Mill Academy in Essex for putting its zero-tolerance behaviour policy above the educational needs of a child with SEND. After hearing a claim made by the parents of Hayden Damiral, a pupil with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and epilepsy, the tribunal rejected any suggestion that the 15-year-old’s exclusion amounted to disability discrimination. But it also found: “The question of Hayden’s actual education appears to have become secondary to the zerotolerance policy of the school, in relation to his behaviour, with the result that a boy of average cognitive ability was not making the progress that potentially he could have been making.”

So, what should a teacher do if they feel their school is overstepping the line with its behaviour policy? McNeil is clear that they ought to feel able to speak out.

“Teachers should feel empowered to speak up and have their view heard,” she says. “I think that teachers’ views in this really matter; the policy is only going to work well if the teachers are on board. Out of all the policies in the school, the behaviour policy has to feel like it’s something that has been formed by the classroom teachers and the senior management working together collaboratively.”

Bennett says teachers should be able to say if they are unhappy with their school’s behaviour policy. “There should be a number of ways to express their disagreement - through line management, through face-to-face communication, through professional outlets,” he says.

But the DfE adviser also notes: “Schools aren’t democracies, and if the values of the school profoundly jar with the values of the teacher, why on Earth would they want to stay? Far better to work in an environment they feel comfortable with.”

Beadle cites the same bottom line. “If you find yourself in a school where you feel the punishments are too draconian, then change school, it’s that simple,” he says. “If there is something ideological about [school rules] that you really don’t feel suits you, then you move to a more liberal environment; I wouldn’t suggest that teachers should attempt to be iconoclastic with this value system. You’re letting down your colleagues.”

That stark choice for teachers - put up with it and play your part or get another job - is only likely to become more common in future. Call them what you will, but tough behaviour policies have become an essential part of the manual for many academy trusts taking over schools, especially those in poorer areas. In some ways they are about little more than introducing an approach to discipline that any good head should take; how can a behaviour policy really work unless it is consistently applied throughout a school, so that teachers know exactly what they’re supposed to be doing and no pupil feels unfairly treated?

The upset comes when small offences are tackled with seemingly disproportionate punishments. Sometimes, from the outside, such instances can seem more like a public-relations exercise than anything to do with actual behaviour - schools laying down a marker to set the tone, to pull in the “desirables”, and perhaps start to rid themselves of disruptive pupils and ward off further troublemakers. And, of course, students - those already at the school, those who might be put off and those who find themselves excluded - can be caught in the crossfire.

Because such policies are often about PR, the language used has often been carefully chosen, but it may not always be quite what it says on the tin. As Bennett notes: “I think most schools actually don’t use zero-tolerance policies - what they usually have is ‘very high standards about x’ and, in my experience, normally have exceptions.”

Mind your language

The language used by critics of such policies should also be considered carefully. A new “Ban the Booths” campaign is calling for the end of “deep confinement booths” and “extended isolation”. The terms make schools sound more like prisons and would prompt outrage from most right-thinking people. But the exact definitions can be unclear, as is the line dividing sensible time-outs for disruptive pupils from unacceptable solitary confinement.

The term “no excuses” is a case in point of how such language can confuse. It has come to be seen as being interchangeable with zero tolerance, meaning simply that schools should accept “no excuses” from pupils who break the rules, no matter how small their misdemeanour. In fact, that is only one side of the concept, as far its origin in the US charter school movement - and the Future Leaders course that it inspired - are concerned. “No excuses” isn’t supposed to apply exclusively to pupils in a school, but to the adults as well.

The aim at the heart of such an approach is to achieve a “100 per cent school”, in which everyone achieves the qualifications they need to progress to the next level. If only half of the pupils manage it, the outcome is seen as a teaching failure and no excuse is deemed acceptable. Difficult home lives or unsupportive parents cannot be used as reasons for underachievement - they are simply obstacles for which the school must work harder to help the pupils overcome.

So when it comes to understanding seemingly uncompromising behaviour policies, an awareness of the nuance can be all-important. There is a world of difference between a school that introduces a “no excuses” policy with half an eye on getting rid of pupils it regards as undesirable or unteachable, and one that introduces such a policy with love and understanding because it wants all its pupils to succeed.

Behaviour policies should be judged not on the labels they use, but on what they achieve - both for the pupils in a school and those who they end up excluding.

‘We realise there is a loophole…bam! We close that down’

Michaela Community School in Wembley, London, is one of the most high-profile examples of a “no excuses” behaviour regime.

Dubbed by the press as being “Britain’s strictest school”, the secondary has adopted a rigid set of rules - on equipment, uniform, conduct, actions and more - any deviation results in punishment (usually detention).

Those rules are seen by some to be extreme: silent transitions, detention for forgetting a pen and not buying one at the school shop at 7.45am, a demerit for “sneering” (two demerits in the same lesson gets you a detention). What’s more, for almost all indiscretions, teachers at Michaela will refuse to accept context as a contributing factor.

“What we say are exceptions are genuinely exceptional…there is a difference between excuses and reasons,” explains deputy head Jonathan Porter. “We ask, was this under your control? Could you have got home earlier, focused on this a little bit more? If so, then you get a detention. Our view is that there are many schools where what is considered to be exceptional is actually in the normal run of things.”

Having strict rules requires the school to mount a huge operation to enforce them. A child is never out of sight of a teacher or far enough away from to try anything untoward. And if a blind spot does emerge, then the school is quickly onto it.

“I always say, ‘They make a move, we make a move.’ We realise there is a loophole…bam! We close that down,” explains headteacher Katharine Birbalsingh.

It’s an approach that has been labelled extreme, and Birbalsingh happily admits that it is. If it wasn’t extreme, she says, the school would be mired in “chaos”.

“Do I actually care about ties? Obviously not. I don’t actually care,” she says. “But we all pretend we care about the tie and looking very smart so they then think ‘I am going to push back and make this tie short’, as opposed to ‘I am going to push back and bring in a knife’. Teenagers need to have something to push back against so if your standards are high, they push back at the top; do it at the bottom and it is chaos.”

Jon Severs

Advice for schools

“Rules need to upheld almost all the time, or they aren’t rules at all, but whims. No community can be run on the basis of context-specific decisions all the time - it would probably be even more unfair than a rule-based system.”

Tom Bennett, behaviour adviser for the Department for Education

“What most good schools will do is they will make sure that all the main stakeholders in the school will have an involvement in the development of that [behaviour] policy and they feel a sense of ownership over it.

“Staff will feel they have a stake. Parents will feel like they are having a say, some of the conflicts we see might arise because parents don’t feel they’ve had the rationale for the behaviour policy explained to them. Critically, making sure that students feel that they are engaged in the policy is important. [This involves] explaining how students can play their role in making sure the school is a calm, orderly and inclusive environment where everyone can achieve and succeed.”

Darren Northcott, national official for education at the NASUWT teaching union

“We know that in schools that have successful behaviour policies, the staff feel like they are a team; you can’t have a situation where a teacher feels like a failure or if they speak up they will be blamed [for having problems in dealing with behaviour].”

Ros McNeil, assistant general secretary of the NEU teaching union

“It’s important, too, that the [behaviour] policies are subject to regular review. Poor practice [occurs] when that policy just sits on a shelf and is not reviewed.”

Darren Northcott

Advice for teachers

“If you find yourself in a school where you feel the punishments are too draconian, then change school, it’s that simple.”

Phil Beadle, teacher and behaviour and management consultant

“If a teacher is worrying [about the impact of a strict behaviour policy on an individual child], they are probably right to be worrying; they should have confidence in their judgement, and if they have concerns about a particular child, then they should speak up. They should try to talk to the Sendco [special educational needs and disabilities coordinator], whoever holds responsibility for the behaviour plan or the pastoral lead.”

Ros McNeil, assistant general secretary of the NEU teaching union

“Understand what the behaviour policy is and then make sure that you are fulfilling your responsibilities under that policy.”

Darren Northcott, national official for education at the NASUWT teaching union

“Never allowing for context means that you could be unjust. If a student is late because they care for a disabled parent in the morning, a detention might be the rule, but would be dreadfully unjust. So a teacher (and a school) needs to appreciate when context matters, and have social, coherent and consistent reasons for when exceptions must be made.”

Tom Bennett, behaviour adviser for the Department for Education

“The responsibility of the teacher is to enforce whatever the rules are in the school; those school rules only work properly when every single teacher implements them, you can argue. But all the time you are in that school, your responsibility is to implement those rules.”

Phil Beadle