The Behaviour in Schools Study: How does school discipline affect pupil mental health and wellbeing?

What we did

This project has three parts. First, we systematically reviewed all the research on the link between behaviour management in schools and pupil mental health and wellbeing.

Then we worked with young people to understand how school discipline affects them, their experience of school, and their life outside school. We used a novel approach for collecting this information. We recruited a small group of young people to work as researchers on the project, and they led the interviews with pupils. We also asked pupils how we can better deal with poor behaviour in the classroom.

Findings from part one and two led to part three of this project, to understand the views and experiences of stakeholders involved in behaviour management in mainstream secondary schools.

What we found and what this means

In the systematic review of the evidence, we included 14 studies from 5,375 papers. These studies looked at a range of strategies, including temporary suspension (10 studies), verbal reprimand (2 studies) and a combination of strategies (2 studies). There were no studies on isolation strategies, which are commonly used in UK schools.

Half the studies (7 out of 14) looked at whether these strategies led to depression, four looked at the impact on exam grades and four on behaviour in class. Five of the seven studies showed these disciplinary strategies were linked to depression and three out of four found these linked to poor behaviour in pupils. The effect on exam results wasn’t clear. All except one study were at high risk of bias, meaning we can’t fully trust their findings.

It appears pupil mental wellbeing and class behaviour was made worse by these strategies. These are important impacts and should be researched in high quality studies before these strategies are used.

Watch our animations

We worked with YPAG to develop two animations based on the interviews with young people.

What next?

We hope this project will help improve policy and practice around school discipline, as well as shedding light on what further research is needed.

Our findings can inform decisions about school discipline policy both locally and nationally. We are working alongside Bristol City Council to ensure that our work informs what happens locally.

Now that we know punishment-based policies cause harm, we will assess the impacts of non-punishment strategies for behaviour management.