Schools where behaviour improved mostly had an “increased focus on rewarding positive behaviour”, an evaluation of the government’s behaviour hubs programme has found.
The most significantly improved schools focused on increasing rewards and also the responsibilities of teaching staff, according to the Department for Education’s of the programme.
The hubs programme ended in March 2025, having started in 2021. It was replaced by combined attendance and behaviour hubs later in 2025.
Restorative behaviour management
Schools involved in the programme reported an increased focus on rewarding positive behaviour rather than punishing undesirable behaviour (57 per cent said adoption of such measures had “increased, often significantly”).
“Staff belief in the effectiveness of punishment weakened, and there was an increased emphasis on rewarding positive behaviour,” the evaluation report states.
And the “increased focus on positive behaviour was often accompanied by a shift to restorative rather than zero-tolerance behaviour management”.
“Restorative” is described as “an approach to behaviour management that focuses on support and empathy instead of blaming pupils”.
In contrast, the report finds that in participating schools “least investment was directed at increasing zero-tolerance approaches and increasing [senior leadership team] responsibility in behaviour management”.
Only 18 per cent of schools said adoption of zero-tolerance measures had “increased, often significantly”.
However, adopting restorative approaches to behaviour management was more common in primary schools (65 per cent said adoption of restorative measures had “increased, often significantly”) than in secondary schools (36 per cent).
Factors largely beyond schools’ control still limited how much behaviour had improved, the evaluation report says.
“Schools that faced substantial external challenges achieved the least positive outcomes, while those demonstrating the most significant improvements generally did not experience major external barriers. This suggests that the absence of external challenges was necessary for the most significant improvements,” it concludes.
The least-improved schools pointed to high staff turnover as a challenge, citing difficulties in “maintaining consistency, the need for constant training, and embedding new approaches”.
But high staff turnover was also highlighted by the most-improved schools, which said that introducing major changes to behaviour policy was easier with new staff who were not accustomed to existing practices.
Final report more positive
The final evaluation report is noticeably more positive than the interim evaluation in November 2024, which found that pupil perception of behaviour got worse during the hubs programme.
Today’s report says that the programme “largely achieved its objectives” and that there is “strong evidence that pupil behaviour improved following the programme”.
The most notable gains were seen in schools with lower pupil-teacher ratios, small primary schools and large secondary schools.
However, while in some instances improvements could be “directly attributed to the programme itself”, the report finds that “additional causal factors also played a substantial role”.
The report recommends that the revised hubs programme allows schools to tailor support to their own needs. It also advises removing “strict requirements” for the mandatory participation of two members of the school leadership team.
Also today, Vlog has revealed the first regional advisers for the new attendance and behaviour hubs programme, while the DfE has confirmed the remaining 36 lead hub schools in the scheme.
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