The Behaviour Hubs Programme - a Win for Relational Approaches

The final evaluation of the Behaviour Hubs programme in England has found that the £10 million initiative “largely achieved its objectives”, finding “strong evidence that pupil behaviour improved following the programme.” 

This may come as a surprise to some who have been following the progress of these Hubs, introduced in 2021 under the previous government with the purpose of improving behaviour in schools in the wake of rising exclusions, suspensions and persistent absence after the Covid-19 pandemic. The appointment of the sometimes controversial Tom Bennett to lead the programme was a cause of concern for many who would like to see more inclusive and relational approaches take precedence over the behaviourist approaches to managing behaviour that are more frequently used in schools.  

 The interim report, published in November 2024 was somewhat reserved about the success of the programme. It found that although teachers felt better supported and reported improvements in behaviour in their schools, pupils themselves reported that behaviour had got slightly worse.  

The final report, however, is unequivocal. The programme, it says, has driven “nationwide, systemic, sustainable improvements” in behaviour management in schools and led to improvements in pupil behaviour. 

As is so often the case, however, the really interesting findings lie beneath the headlines. The evaluation aimed not only to measure the success of the programme, but also to identify which factors helped and hindered success. It is here that we may have cause to hope that, at last, the preference for ‘zero tolerance’ and ‘no excuses’ behaviour management may be on the wane. 

The most important factors in driving positive change were found to differ somewhat between school types according to phase, location, size and pupil-teacher ratio. However, they all broadly rested on improved consistency, an increased focus on preventing poor behaviour, better communication and monitoring, skilling classroom teachers to handle behaviour incidents rather than calling on senior teachers, and, most interestingly, more efforts to reward positive behaviour. 

The report finds that at the start of the programme, several schools had behaviour management approaches centred around compliance and punishments with little or no rewarding of good behaviour. Some used techniques which appeared to “focus on shame.” 

Schools that saw improvements during the programme shifted their focus from applying consequences which too often saw children removed from the classroom and losing learning, to pro-actively preventing misbehaviour, de-escalating situations and rewarding desired behaviours in a range of innovative ways. This included better and more frequent communications with parents when children did well or deserved praise. 

Of all the strategies that schools tried over the course of the programme, zero-tolerance approaches were given the least focus by schools. The evaluation finds that “staff belief in the effectiveness of punishment weakened” and more than half of participating schools said that they had significantly increased their use of restorative practices. In focus groups, pupils in these schools said they felt more supported. 

There is encouraging news for parents of children with SEND and complex needs, many of whom may have been concerned that increasing standardisation of approaches to managing behaviour would have a negative impact on their children. 

Although improvements in behaviour were less strong among SEND and neurodivergent pupils and those with more complex needs, staff recognised that the ability to regulate emotions was a factor among these children and this would not be addressed by behaviour policies but by supportive interventions. On the plus side, many teachers said that less time spent on dealing with general poor behaviour meant more time to devote to children who needed this extra input. 

More than that, some schools devised new systems of behaviour management to take account of pupils’ individual circumstances, led by trauma-informed perspectives. In fact, more than half of schools reported that the use of targeted support for pupils who were struggling had significantly increased, often driven by better monitoring of behaviour incidents to identify children who needed this support. 

Where pupils did need to be removed from the classroom, some schools made changes to what happened immediately after. In one school, the exclusion room was rebranded as the ‘reset room’. A change of name alone is unlikely to have any positive impact, but there was also evidence that where this shift in thinking was taking place, greater priority was being given to pupils’ mental health and wellbeing over punishment.  

In short, the evaluation demonstrates what organisations like Adoption UK have been saying for years. Shaming and punishing children is less effective than devising fair, consistent, easy-to-understand behavioural expectations, supporting children to achieve them, and warmly recognising the progress that children make. 

The original Behaviour Hubs programme ended earlier in 2025 and was replaced under the new government by new RISE Behaviour and Attendance Hubs. This programme will again be led by Tom Bennett, alongside Jayne Lowe. We trust that the new programme will be truly evidence-based, drawing on the strengths and successes of the previous one as outlined in this comprehensive report. 

by Becky Brooks, Policy and Research Advisor, Adoption UK