'Teachers feel powerless - it's time to give them back control of the classroom', new report from Tony Blair Institute

Embargoed copy of the report here

The government must shift the balance of authority in favour of teachers, giving them the statutory authority to force parents to engage, to tackle an ‘epidemic' of poor behaviour.

The recommendation is made in a new report from the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change (TBI).

In “Tackling the Behaviour Challenge in England's Schools” TBI sets out how the crisis is driving teachers from the profession and children from the classroom.

New analysis of data from Edurio and Opinium by TBI in the paper reveals that less than half of teachers find support for dealing with student behaviour easy to access and fewer than 1 in 10 believe their school always enforces the rules. Meanwhile, more than two-thirds of teachers say that lessons are disrupted by poor behaviour sometimes, often or consistently.

Persistent disruptions not only affect pupils' learning but also contribute to teacher dissatisfaction, burnout and even fears for their own safety. Recent Department for Education (DfE) analysis found that 37% of teachers who rated pupil behaviour as “poor” were more likely than average to consider leaving within a year, whereas the figure for those who rated behaviour as “good” was 21%. Combined, these figures suggest a worrying trend that is set to continue in teacher retention, undermining efforts to ensure there are enough teachers in classrooms in England.

The analysis also reveals that feeling safe at school is a key driver of pupils' attendance, with 7 in 10 children who feel unsafe at school saying they missed at least one day in the previous month. Feeling unsafe is in fact a higher predictor of poor attendance than any other factor, including the Ofsted rating of their school, gender, or receiving free school meals.

Alexander Iosad, Director of Government Innovation at TBI, said:

“In its first King's Speech, the new Labour government rightly sought to place a greater focus on wellbeing in schools. The Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill is a welcome start. But there can be no wellbeing if schools are not safe places to be in for pupils or teachers – fixing this is foundational to the government's aspirations.

“We have heard time and time again about the challenges of teacher retention, yet almost nothing about the hidden crisis driving their exit. For any other career, a safe, non-disruptive environment is the bare minimum. Today's report shows that teachers are powerless and unsupported to tackle a rising epidemic of disruptive and dangerous behaviour. We must shift the balance of authority back in favour of teachers and give them the support they need.”

The report urges a ‘radical re-set' of the parent-teacher relationship, giving teachers new powers to compel parents of disruptive children to engage. Where it is reasonable and proportionate to do so, the report argues, teachers should have the right to compel parents to engage with them and to escalate to other agencies where parents refuse to show up.

“The first step is consistent, effective and enforced behaviour strategies”, Iosad continued. “But behaviour issues often have their roots outside of the classroom, and teachers often find themselves powerless to affect change. Let's be clear; this is not just a challenge, it is a safeguarding issue. Schools should therefore become statutory partners in safeguarding and should have the authority to compel parents and other agencies like the police, NHS and social services to come together and agree an action plan.

“Only by giving teachers the power to address poor behaviour not just in the classroom, but at its source, will we be able to keep teachers in the profession.”

The report's authors also find that poor behaviour is ‘crushing learning outcomes'. New TBI modelling included in the paper suggests that tackling bad behaviour could boost the economy by as much as 1.5 per cent of GDP. The authors write:

It would of course take several years for pupils educated in low-disruption environments to join the workforce and for the economy to realise the associated productivity gains, but over time these are likely to become increasingly significant. According to our model, cutting the time lost to disruptive behaviour in the classroom could add up to 1.5 per cent of GDP in the long run through higher workforce productivity. 

While new powers for schools will help stem the tide and put teachers back in control, the government also needs to invest into improving the way schools deal with behaviour and engage with other agencies at the national level. The DfE should therefore set up a National Behaviour Challenge with a target of cutting classroom disruption by half by the end of this parliament and improving measures of wellbeing.

This would include using strong relationships at the regional and local level, using up-to-date data to inform a peer-led improvement and support system in which schools that struggle with behaviour are benchmarked and paired with others successfully tackling similar challenges – for example, via the newly announced Regional Improvement for Standards and Excellence (RISE) teams. 

Through these clear targets, knowledge sharing and context-specific interventions, the Challenge would not just provide more support, but more power to teachers to tackle disruption and put learning back on the timetable.

Further info

Addressing poor behaviour in schools is one of TBI's top ten UK policy priorities for 2025. You can read the full piece here: Ten policy priorities for the UK in 2025

Methodology for GDP figure

To calculate potential time savings, we modelled a speculative scenario where average levels of classroom disruption were reduced from current levels of around a fifth of teaching time by half. 

The current figure was derived as follows. According to the Department for Education's (DfE) National Behaviour Survey (NBS), for every 30 minutes of lesson time, 7 minutes were lost in disruption on average in May 2023 and 5.5 minutes in March 2023. We used the average of these figures to create a proxy value for 2023. This worked out as about one fifth of total classroom time (which was also like findings in the previous year's NBS).   

The reduction in classroom disruption by half was based on the rates typically enjoyed by teachers who lost comparatively less time in the DfE's NBS,thereby serving as a reasonable proxy for a low-disruption environment. 

Methodology for our work with Opinium: 

A representative sample of 1,000 14-16 olds in England studying towards their GCSEs were surveyed by the research organisation Opinium. Fieldwork was contacted between 5-16 February 2024 and the survey was undertaken with parental supervision.  

Representative quotas were set for age, gender and region, and schools were coded by Ofsted and Progress 8 scores using Department for Education data. 

Methodology for our work with Edurio: 

We partnered with Edurio to run analysis on their extensive parent, pupil and staff data sets. Using data collected from three surveys during the 2022/23 academic year, Edurio reviewed responses from 73,000 pupils, 16,000 parents and 13,000 staff members to look at the relationship between the pupil experience and elements of school success.

The measures reviewed were Ofsted rating, Progress 8, the proportion of pupils achieving expected grades in reading, writing and maths (for primary schools) and the proportion of pupils achieving grade 5 or higher at GCSE (for secondary schools). In addition to this, we looked at elements of the pupil experience relating to another, more qualitative measure of school success: how happy pupils felt at school. The findings were collated and reviewed before being summarised, with some examples, in this report.