Behaviour support in secondary schools: what works for schools?

Between June 2000 and December 2001 a team from the University of Glasgow evaluated the effectiveness of behaviour support in one education authority's secondary schools. The context was Scottish Executive incentives to education authorities to develop more inclusive approaches to young people with social, emotional and behavioural difficulties. This education authority enabled its 21 secondary schools to shape their own responses, resulting in the emergence of sometimes very different forms of behaviour support across schools. The evaluation project set out to answer four questions: what is working; where are systems not working; what else is needed; and is the initiative providing value for money? Two sets of information collected over the first year of the project were analysed, including exclusions data, school reports on the initiative and case studies relating to 116 pupils receiving behaviour support. The article gives findings from the first year and discusses the implications for informing behaviour support policy and provision.