Behaviour in schools. It’s the hot potato of education—endlessly tossed around, always burning your tongue if you bite into it. So I proceed with trepidation… everyone has an opinion, and most of them come with a side of outrage. But let’s not get lost in the usual finger-pointing: “It’s the parents!”, “It’s the teachers!”, “It’s TikTok!” Instead, let’s take a step back and explore the big question that lurks beneath every school behaviour policy:

Are we basically good or bad?

It’s an almost theological question (in fact, it is a theological question, but that’s an even hotter potato). It also has a very real, practical impact on how schools choose to manage behaviour. Because the side you land on fundamentally shapes how you write the rules.

The Behavioural Blueprint: What Are We Trying to Do Here?

To write a behaviour policy, you first have to decide what behaviour you’re trying to create. And to decide that, you have to know your starting point. In other words, you have to ask: What behaviour do humans naturally produce?

• Option A: We are basically good. Children have an innate moral compass that, left to its own devices, will steer them towards truth, kindness, and generosity.
• Option B: We are basically bad. Left unchecked, children will naturally veer towards selfishness, lying, bullying, and pocketing an extra biscuit when no one's looking.

How you answer this question has consequences. If you go with Option A, your policies will lean towards encouragement and affirmation. If you go with Option B , you’re more likely to see a focus on training, punishments, and teaching aimed at explaining and persuading children of the goodness of being good.

From Canes to Coddling?

If we take a brief stroll through the last four decades of school discipline, the trend is clear: we’ve been slowly drifting from “People are basically bad” to ”People are basically good".

Historically, British education had deep Christian roots, leading to a pretty hard leaning towards the “People are basically bad” side of the argument. This meant behaviour policies were largely about correction—punishment for wrongdoing, training in discipline, and a general sense that, left to their own devices, children would devolve into chaos. (See: Victorian boarding schools. Or just Lord of the Flies.)

Fast forward to today, and we’ve shifted towards a much more rosy view of human nature. Many schools now operate on the assumption that children want to do the right thing but sometimes struggle to get there. So policies focus on positive reinforcement, and emotional regulation strategies rather than on detentions, exclusions, and terrifying headteachers glaring at you over their spectacles.

Regardless of your viewpoint, it’s a shift that has its merits as well as some side effects. One of the biggest of these is the growing tendency to diagnose poor behaviour as SEND (Special Educational Needs and Disabilities) rather than as… poor behaviour. If you assume all children are naturally good, then bad behaviour looks less like a moral failing and more like an undiagnosed condition.

Of course, this isn’t to say that SEND isn’t real or isn’t rightly being identified more frequently—far from it. But the blurring of the lines means that the children who genuinely need the extremely limited SEND support available are missing out in favour of children who, some might argue, simply need firm boundaries.

So… Are We Good or Bad?

That’s the million-pound question. Should we be training children to be kind, or trusting that they already are? Do children need to be taught to lie, or taught to tell the truth?

Like any good politician, we’d rather answer that one with some more questions. Here are two to get you started:

If we were truly, innately good, would we need behaviour policies at all?

If we were truly, innately bad, would any behaviour policy actually work?

Maybe the big question for now isn’t whether children are naturally good or bad, but whether deep down we actually want to know the answer at all.