Lynne Neagle, Cabinet Secretary for Education
Since last year’s National Behaviour Summit we have made significant progress on the five immediate actions to tackle behaviour. We have worked closely with practitioners, stakeholders, and most importantly our learners, to draw on best practice and research on behaviour to help schools create environments where all learners can thrive.
We are strengthening multi‑agency support and tackling the wider societal factors that influence behaviour in schools. This work is maximising the impact of existing programmes to reduce pressure on schools, while also ensuring that new opportunities for joined up working are identified early, fully supported and implemented effectively.
I am enhancing our collaboration with the four Police and Crime Commissioners and their Forces to strengthen partnerships between police, local authorities, and schools. We will take this joint approach forward through the ethos of the Community Focused Schools Programme, ensuring that support is rooted in the needs of each community.
We are updating national behaviour guidance to provide greater clarity and consistency. Since the Behaviour Summit, one practitioner and stakeholder forum has led a full review of exclusions and detentions guidance, while another has co‑designed new guidance on mobile phone use in schools. Both groups are now concluding their work, ensuring stronger, clearer support will be in place for schools ahead of the next academic year.
We are now creating a national approach to sharing best practice and ensuring consistent definitions and reporting of incidents. I recently announced immediate plans to develop new all-Wales resources to strengthen school safety. Cardiff Council will lead work with local authorities and partners to develop a consistent approach for schools to manage incidents where children take weapons onto school premises. This national approach will be supported by a £300,000 funding investment, with a view to making the resources fully available across Wales as soon as possible.
This term, I launched a series of innovative, school‑led projects, designed to help teachers and support staff address behaviour challenges more effectively and delivered in partnership with universities across Wales, including Wrexham, Bangor, the University of South Wales, and Cardiff Metropolitan University. These projects are exploring practical, evidence‑informed strategies to strengthen behaviour practice in schools. By bringing together the learning from these projects, we can build a more connected, evidence‑driven system, where effective approaches are easier to share, adopt, and scale across Wales.
We are also making positive progress to develop professional learning opportunities focused on behaviour management. At the start of the school year, I published a new behaviour toolkit, for school practitioners, bringing together the latest research and practical resources to help schools develop and sustain positive behaviour. This toolkit will be regularly reviewed to ensure it remains relevant and up to date.
Building on this work, the mini‑projects running in schools this term are already generating valuable insights that will directly shape our proposals for more structured professional learning for teachers and leaders. This next phase will be taken forward with Dysgu to ensure staff can access high‑quality, evidence‑based training that meets the needs identified by practitioners themselves.
This term, I am rolling out a package of pan‑Wales restorative pilots. Building on successful practice already underway, these pilots will test innovative approaches, through art, sport and theatre to help learners re‑engage with school. Our aim is to map these approaches, understand what works, and work closely with school leaders to co‑design behaviour strategies that suit the unique contexts of their individual school environments.
These pilots are particularly important because attendance and behaviour in schools are deeply interconnected. Poor attendance can lead to behavioural issues and disengagement, while behavioural challenges often lead to persistent absence. I am pleased to see the statistics on secondary school attendance rise to 90.9% in 2024/25. This is a clear improvement on last year, but further progress is needed.
To build on this progress, our work to remove barriers to attendance continues. The Welsh Government is investing £15 million across 2024-25 and 2025-26, including £3 million for enrichment activities, to help schools and local authorities re‑engage learners, tackle the roots of persistent absence, and create more inclusive environments. A consultation on revised attendance codes which launched on launched on 12 February will provide a clearer, more granular picture of the barriers keeping some children from the classroom to ensure support is focused where it is needed most.
Together, these steps represent a significant step forward in strengthening behaviour, attendance and wellbeing across Wales. By combining clearer guidance, stronger partnerships, innovative school‑led practice and targeted investment, we are building a more consistent and evidence‑driven system. This collective effort is laying the foundations for schools to provide the safe, supportive and inclusive environments that every young person needs to flourish.