In this article
What is behaviour that challenges?
Children and teens often go through phases of defiance, where they want to push boundaries and try to assert themselves. This is usually just part of their normal development and is something that they will grow out of.
For some young people, their behaviour becomes out of control. Young people may be more at risk of developing this type of challenging behaviour if they have certain special educational needs (SEN) or a troubled life outside of school. When a student’s behaviour is uncontrollable or especially challenging, they begin to pose a risk to those around them.
Within a school, challenging behaviour must be addressed and controlled as the people in charge of the school have a duty by law to ensure everyone’s safety and wellbeing.
Some examples of behaviour that challenges in schools is:
- Being extremely argumentative
- Refusing to follow orders from teachers
- Shouting or screaming
- Swearing
- Making threats
- Spitting
- Being physically violent to staff or pupils (including hitting, kicking, biting)
- Damaging property or breaking classroom items
- Carrying weapons (for example knives)
All schools and colleges should have procedures in place to prevent and deal with challenging behaviour and pupil violence, including verbal and physical abuse and destruction of property.
Pupil violence
Some pupils can be aggressive and violent at school. This violence can be directed at teachers, non-teaching staff, other pupils or even at themselves.
According to data from the HSE gathered by Channel 4 News, 682 violence-related injuries to teachers were reported between March 2022 and March 2023. This includes incidents in both primary and secondary schools. Separate figures gained through a freedom of information request by the news outlet showed that the most common age for a pupil to be suspended from school in England or Wales due to assaulting a teacher was six.
The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) define workplace violence as follows:
‘Any incident in which a person is abused, threatened or assaulted in circumstances relating to their work.’
The HSE further define that this can encompass both verbal threats (including those over the phone/internet) and physical attacks.
Work related violence can have serious impacts on people and may result in both short and long-term consequences, for example:
- Injuries
- Stress and mental health conditions
- Disability or death
Under the Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations (RIDDOR), employers have to inform the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) if employees suffer:
- A fatal accident at work
- A major injury at work
- An injury that requires them to take more than seven days off work
Accidents and injuries in this context include those resulting from assault by a pupil, therefore it is vital that schools ensure they report each incident that fits the above criteria.
When staff in schools feel persistently threatened, targeted or attacked by pupils, they will often feel unable to undertake their work properly and need to take time off work. This causes disruption to pupil learning and reduces productivity for the school.
Violent pupils can leave both staff and other pupils afraid to go into school and cause parents to worry whether their children are safe whilst in school. This can cause serious reputational damage and cause parents to withdraw their children over safety concerns.
Schools with poor reputations that are associated with bad pupil behaviour are sadly also less likely to attract the best and brightest teachers to apply for jobs. Preventing workplace violence is therefore crucial for teacher and staff wellbeing, parent satisfaction and pupil outcomes.
To protect people from pupil violence and ensure that school is s safe and positive environment, steps should be taken quickly to assess and document challenging situations. In turn, this should inform a plan of actionable steps to be taken and all necessary safeguards should be put in place to protect everyone involved. This process usually begins with a risk assessment.
When might a risk assessment be needed?
When pupils are showing signs of a pattern of challenging behaviour that poses a clear risk to the health, safety and wellbeing of others in the school community, a risk assessment should be completed as soon as possible. This can help to keep the child, staff and other pupils safe.
Most schools have a behaviour policy and when pupils begin to show challenging behaviour, schools will often try to follow this framework first. If this has no effect, or if the situation is too serious for this action, a risk assessment is usually the next step.
Risk assessments for behaviour that challenges in school may be aligned with ‘trigger points’ as outlined in the school’s behaviour policy. This includes serious infractions such as threatening assault, carrying out assault or being found with a weapon in school.
Risks assessments can be done for all types of challenging behaviour in schools, including:
- Verbal aggression
- Physical aggression
- Destructiveness
Under the Health and Safety at Work Act, all employers have a legal duty to look after the health, safety and wellbeing of their workers as far as reasonably practicable. Every business must have a policy for managing health and safety.
Additionally, the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations places a further duty on employers to assess the health and safety risk to workers, which can include the threat of violence.
The basic steps of a risk assessment are:
1. Identify the hazards
2. Assess the risks
3. Control the risks
4. Record your findings
5. Monitor and review
A risk assessment can help you to decide what controls need to be put in place to control hazards, which includes challenging behaviour and violence.
When controls are put in place it is important that school staff also have access to the training and resources that they need in order to enact them. Training staff to deal with challenging students and letting them know that they have the support of the school management team will empower them, both inside and outside of the classroom.
What should a risk assessment include?
Health and safety law says that employers must protect their workers and takes steps to keep them safe. This applies to violence at work.
Under health and safety law, workers are also expected to act on the information and training they have been given and report any risks or unsafe practices in the workplace to their employer.
Risk assessments should include the pupil’s name, year group and tutor group (if applicable).
Additionally, the behaviour risk assessment should list:
- HAZARDS: for example punching or kicking
- WHO IS AT RISK: for example staff, other pupils
- RISKS: injuries, bruising
- CURRENT CONTROL MEASURES: for example restraining, clearly saying ‘No!’, walking away (if safe), moving child away from classmates
- HAZARDS: for example biting
- WHO IS AT RISK: for example staff, other pupils
- RISKS: bacteria such as tetanus
- CURRENT CONTROL MEASURES: follow first aid protocol, call 111 for advice, ensure vaccinations are up to date
You may also note down additional requirements or future action plans (especially when current controls are not working). It is also useful to note the time of day these instances occur; if challenging behaviour often occurs as break time consider keeping the pupil indoors for a period of time, if it happens in a particular lesson consider moving them to another class or allowing them to work alone in a quiet room for that lesson.
Devising a risk assessment may also show patterns that start to show what triggers the behaviour. It is helpful to address these triggers (and remove them where possible) as a preventative measure, in addition to implementing for controls for the behaviour when it arises.
Schools may also draft a separate violent incident report document that can be used to record information of specific violent incidents within the school.
You can find an example of what a challenging behaviour risk assessment looks like here.
Devising a pupil behaviour risk assessment
Any staff member who completes a pupil behaviour risk assessment must be competent to do so. A collaborative effort is often helpful when a pupil behaviour risk assessment needs to be completed.
It is essential that anyone working on a risk assessment for a pupil is aware of any regulatory frameworks or school policy that may affect the process. They should consider factors such as:
- GDPR/ data protection
- Child protection/ safeguarding
- Health and safety
- Equality and discrimination
- Pupil restraint/ reasonable force
You can find example templates for pupil risk assessment online that you can download (an example is linked in the previous section). However, it is important to use these as a guide and understand that each school and pupil has their own individual needs and attributes and this is not a ‘one size fits all’ scenario.
The way a school approaches behaviour that challenges may also depend on other unique factors within the school such as:
- The size of the school
- The number of SEN pupils
- The ratio of staff to pupils
If behaviour that challenges is pervasive within a school, rather than being localised on just a few incidents or pupils, it is an indicator that there is a serious problem within the school or school community that needs to be identified and addressed.
It is also important that risk assessments for pupil behaviour are monitored and reviewed, especially if the behaviour is escalating or an incident involving an injury has occurred. In these instances, it may be necessary to define further controls as existing controls are no longer sufficient to keep everyone safe.
Is parent/carer permission required?
Parent or carer permission is not usually required for a risk assessment to be completed; however, it is usually best to try to engage parents in the process as soon as possible. Parents may be able to provide valuable insight and information about why challenging behaviour is happening and may also be able to use strategies for their child outside of school to address and improve their behaviour.
Risk assessments for challenging behaviour are often done once other avenues within the school have been explored such as using sanctions within the school behaviour policy including detentions, internal exclusion or external exclusion. When these sanctions are repeatedly failing, schools may opt for a ‘contract’ or ‘home school agreement’ which is a voluntary contract that outlines expectations for behaviour and sets out consequences for failing to meet them.
Children who show behaviour that challenges in schools often demonstrate anti-social behaviour outside of school as well, for example persistent truancy, poor behaviour at home, drug use or criminality.
Although it may be a challenge to get parents to engage, it is vitally important that parents and schools try to work in tandem to help pupils who show challenging behaviours, rather than working against one another. This gives pupils a greater chance of overcoming and controlling their behaviour, improves outcomes for all concerned and keeps everyone safer.
Can school staff refuse to work with aggressive students?
In most circumstances, teachers who refuse to teach a student based on their behaviour will be in breach of their contract. Teachers wishing to take industrial action by going on strike due to pupil behaviour still have to follow procedures.
If a pupil’s behaviour is affecting your mental or physical health, you should report this to the school management team and request urgent intervention. You can also consider going to your GP for help and advice who may advise you to take some time off work.
Teachers and all school staff have the right to feel safe at work and it is vital that all steps are taken to ensure that no employee is put risk and that steps are taken to avoid exposing them to harm. In the case of serious pupil violence or challenging behaviour this may include working with other agencies including:
- The local police
- Social services
- Child and adolescent mental health teams
If you are a teacher and are concerned about teaching a pupil due to their behaviour you can call the National Education Union (NEU) advice line for information and support and to see whether you have a case for refusing to teach.
