Other staff not supporting whole school behaviour policy. Just why?

[BBCK]

I work in a rough inner-city comp where behaviour is challenging. However the school has a clear behaviour policy and ongoing CPD on behaviour management for all staff. I am lucky that the dept I work in is fantastic and all of us have outstanding behaviour management (through relentless hard work and consistency) yet time and again I see and hear colleagues refusing to implement the behaviour management strategies they have been given, resulting in chaotic classrooms. Just why?

They don’t want to be seen as weak and ‘having’ to use the behaviour policy. Which is ridiculous.
Ours is one strike and out. It works for 99% of kids.

Have been there. It's infuriating. I had parents accusing me of picking on their child because I was the only teacher sanctioning. Maybe they don't want to do the follow-up admin?

We have a clear policy but are also encouraged to be nurturing. I think the staff who don't apply the policy think they are "nurturing". A small element also think it looks like they are doing a bad job if a student doesn't get it right.

So annoying as when the kids turn up to my lessons they then push back at the rules because they don’t experience them elsewhere. Makes my job harder than it needs to be.

Is there lots of admin associated with following the behaviour policy e.g. if you sanction you have to make a phone call home? This sort of thing can discourage staff from following policies?

1. Pushback and complaints from parents.
2. Lack of support from SLT
3. Desire to be seen as nurturing

I recently went on some behaviour training where a deputy head in charge of pastoral talked about his strategies. They worked well fir him but they were also not school policy where he worked!

I agree that adherence to the policy can make a huge difference if SLT support you and enforce the sanctions. I think the problems start when SLT say both things they want staff to follow the policy and they want staff to make more allowances and be nurturing.

I hear you.. it's frustrating as everyone following it makes a lot of kids from chaotic homes feel safe and ironically... nurtured.

Totally agree with this. We also get contradictory training and leadership from SLT. Follow the behaviour policy but also don't if you want to be a kind and caring teacher and not traumatise your students. It's a mess. If everyone just followed it the kids and teachers would all be much happier.

Absolutely infuriating and unfortunately endemic in some schools!
A behaviour system is absolutely pointless if teachers opt out (yes, you, hod and hoy) and makes those who follow it (me) look like idiots.

They think 'building relationships' means never sanctioning. I'm head of a core subject and encourage my team to follow the policy. If I had a £1 for every time I'm told by HoYs a student is only misbehaving in my department I would be a rich woman. Nine times out of ten, this is in KS3 and the child then gets to KS4 and lo and behold is a problem elsewhere in the school and ends up massively under-achieving in their GCSEs. I'm sorry to say, but I've come to feel that a lot of non-core teachers ignore poor behaviour lower down in the school as they assume the child won't pick their subject and it isn't worth dealing with lack of work, LLD etc as the child will be dropping it anyway. They're happy if the child is at the back, being reasonably quiet but not doing any/much work.