In a survey commissioned by the authority, the views of nearly 500 parents were canvassed, finding some 45 per cent flagged this as the most important factor in the school experience.
When considering a quality education for their child, participants highly rated teaching quality and methods (46 per cent), wellbeing/student support (38 per cent) and student outcomes and academic performance (34 per cent).
CEO of Catholic Schools NSW Dallas McInerney says the findings only reaffirm the system-wide approach to behaviour management that's followed by Catholic schools across the state.
And while research has highlighted the issue of ‘problem parents’ who complain and contend with disciplinary decisions made by schools, McInerney suggests the solution to this is relatively clear.
“I think we know what parents want. They want the best for their kids and well-ordered, good behaviour policies, which are all known and understood, support great learning outcomes for children," McInerney tells EducationHQ.
Making school behaviour policy visible to the community is critical, he adds.
“And I think that's the great investment schools can make, when their behaviour policies are known, publicised and accessible, all stakeholders - parents, students and teachers - know what's expected. Everybody has the same understanding.
“And if you achieve that, the possibility for people becoming upset or trying to re-litigate decisions becomes less so."
Last week Catholic Schools NSW hosted its annual Behaviour Symposium, which was headlined by prominent UK behaviour expert Tom Bennett OBE, alongside Dr Jacqueline Amos and other experts in the field.
Bennett delivered two keynote addresses and a 'Social Cohesion Case Study - Key Learnings from Challenging Schools in the UK' presentation, along with a session on building student reslience.
McInerney says Bennett's insights were incredibly well received by delegates.
“He's an international, world-renowned expert on classroom management and student behaviour, and how if you get that right, you optimise the learning outcomes of school…
“These past two days have focused on classroom management and well-ordered schools, which support good learning outcomes - this is something which we will always bring a focus to in Catholic education…”
Bennett, who has recently been touring Australia delivering behaviour management training to educators, has been openly vocal about the failure on the part of ITE providers to prepare aspiring teachers for the practicalities of classroom management – an experience he himself went through, and one which he says is all too common.
Speaking in a series of three lectures run by the University of Notre Dame last year, Bennett took aim at the teacher training system’s common ‘throw them in the deep end’ approach to behaviour management.
“Let’s not train airline pilots like that. Let’s not train heart surgeons like this….
“No, we wouldn’t, because the cost of failure is too high. And the competence required to succeed is too high. We wouldn’t dream of it.
“Thrown in the deep end is one of the worst educational paradigms I could imagine.
“I don’t even know why it’s a metaphor for learning and training. What happens if you throw people in the deep end? … they drown,” he said.
Bennett has also laid out a case for Australia to adopt a ‘behaviour curriculum’, urging a Senate inquiry into disruptive classrooms to follow the UK’s lead and put school behaviour at the centre of education reform.
It’s widely reported that Australian students are among the world’s worst behaved, ranked 69th out of 76 countries on the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA)’s index of school disciplinary climate.
The ‘behaviour curriculum’ advocated by Bennett is based around the idea that good behaviour should be explicitly taught to children.
“Because if we see behaviour as a curriculum, we see it as something to be taught, we see it as ‘Hang on, we know how to teach stuff. We teach things all the time.’ So that’s a start, you know, your methodologies are there already,” he previously told EducationHQ.
But what exactly fills out the nuts and bolts of the expert’s proposed behaviour curriculum?
The beauty here, Bennett said, is that rather than simply listing what we don’t want students to do, we can begin to think about positive behaviours: what will enable the most personal growth, the most learning? What specific behaviours will allow teachers to teach and learning to flourish?
This is the part that has been neglected the most, he pointed out.
And while sanctions and prohibitions are “part of the mix”, they are not the focus.
“What do we actually want them to do? And when you use that question as a lens, you can then start to think, ‘Well, hang on a minute, let me think, how do I need them to be in my classroom? OK, so I need them to line up outside my class’… So you say, ‘OK, let’s teach them to line up. Let’s teach them how to take their seats. Let’s teach them what equipment they are going to need and let’s teach them what to do when they don’t have the equipment. Let’s teach them what to do when they’re in an assembly, or when they go to canteen at lunch or break’.
“Let’s teach them not just unacceptable behaviours in the playground, but what good behaviour looks like in the playground.
“Let’s teach them social skills, let’s teach them how to share. Let’s teach them how to wait your turn, let’s teach them to be patient, let’s teach them to be kind. Let’s teach them how to be quiet.
“And literally discuss the reasons for it and sell it because you’ve got to sell the ‘why’ of the behaviour to children as well: ‘Here’s why it matters’.
"But also, let’s teach them how to speak, when to talk, when to be assertive, when to make your point and how to make a point,” the expert explained.
But McInerney says Bennett’s call for Australian schools to adopt a stand-alone behaviour curriculum had been misunderstood.
“That's something of a misunderstanding,” he said.
"He doesn't endorse a behaviour curriculum, but (rather he advocates that) as part of the school ecosystem, behaviour supports the curriculum.”
