HE recent “quick start” money for pupil support units must make this initiative (recommended in the Pack report of 1977) the longest trailed ever. The lack of any persistent funding has kept it on the back burner for 25 years and it still lacks clarity of purpose.

Is it meant to be a sanction or a support? Indeed this issue highlights the continuing ideological confusion at the heart of pupil management policies and practice. It is therefore fitting that schools are at the same time being encouraged to review their policies.

The support initiatives since Pack funded by short-term budgets have provided a welcome extension of schools’ options. The trouble is, however, that many of these initiatives deal with the symptoms without tackling the root causes of the problems they are charged with addressing. And so, despite many positive developments, we are still reported to be in crisis.

Projects are developed with much enthusiasm but sometimes suffer from conceptual woolliness and scant resources. Ambiguity about how they should fit into and add value to the school structures is common. Much time and energy is used clarifying what they are trying to achieve. Support works best in schools with an overarching inclusive approach to pupil welfare and management.

The Better Behaviour - Better Learning report gives further impetus to the emerging consensus on the need for co-ordination and proposes that the management of pupil care, discipline and learning be integrated within an overall support structure. Less successful projects are those that are cosmetic “bolt-ons” to the school system and rely on the commitment of energetic staff. If they leave, any momentum tends to be lost.

Everyone agrees that support projects aim to improve behaviour but there has to be a shared agreement on how this will be achieved. Most teachers attracted to this work tend to have a personal ideology that takes them down a child advocacy road which sometimes goes in the opposite direction to the dominant culture. Like the naive newcomer who is talked into going in goal for the staff football team, they will be scapegoated if the side loses.

Schools need an integrated structure and collective responsibility for greater impact. Joined-up working should be a goal for schools as well as local authorities. School values need to be talked about, shaped and shared by staff to create a unity of purpose and counter cynicism. What children need, who is going to provide these needs and who is going to orchestrate the system must be clearly articulated. No teacher would think about lesson planning without clear outcomes in mind; behavioural intervention should be no different.

Schools need both to support and control pupils. But to these we need to add prevention - to divert pupils moving up the discipline chain. We know from research (Munn and Lloyd 2000) that support works best where management see the school’s responsibility as developing the social and academic achievement of all pupils rather than focusing on the academic progress of conforming pupils. They have a more flexible curriculum, more staff support, involve in-house and outside support in joint problem-solving and build non-judgmental relations with parents. Punishment needs to be considered in three ways. First, clearly signalling the unacceptability of misbehaviour. Second, punishment should incorporate aims of resolution - to help children make reparation, to teach them what to do, to make them accountable, to encourage self-examination.

The third element of punishment is removal - to give teachers and pupils respite and interrupt the unwanted behaviour by providing time-out or a cooling-off period. Support will aim to rehabilitate - to tune into the child’s perspective, to empathise with and meet the emotional needs of children in a short or long-term crisis through accepting relationships.Support interventions should have a sharp focus on pupils’ specific difficulties, keeping their school life as normal as possible.

More and more teachers have come to see the resolution of disruption as part of their job and behaviour management as a function of everything every teacher does. Continual funding is needed to allow long-term planning and take schools forward.

Alan McLean is principal educational psychologist for north-east Glasgow.