This isn't simply a behaviour crisis. It's a capacity crisis.

Nick Burnett and Trystan Williams share their insights on the findings of the latest global TES report.

A new global report from Tes surveyed over 2,800 school staff worldwide. The findings are worth sitting with.

• 58% cite student behaviour as a major stressor.
• 61% identify meeting diverse SEND and learning support needs within a single classroom as their primary inclusion challenge.
• 53% point to a lack of support staff as a major barrier to effective inclusion.

Read those three figures together and a different picture emerges.

This isn’t only a behaviour problem. It’s a capacity, systems and training problem that is presenting as a behaviour problem.

One teacher in the report put it plainly: students with special needs “get overwhelmed and because of this they can get disruptive. This is because their needs are not being met.“

That sentence contains the whole argument.

We’ve misnamed the problem

When schools experience rising behaviour challenges, the instinct is often to look for better behaviour management strategies. Tighter policies. Clearer consequences. More consistent application of the rules.

Those things matter. But they treat the symptom.

What the TES data tells us is that the root cause is sitting one step back: inclusion policy has outpaced the systems, staffing and training needed to deliver it. Teachers are being asked to meet increasingly complex and diverse needs, in larger classes, with less specialist support, and without the time or training to do it well.

When a student’s needs are not being met, they communicate that. Often through behaviour.

That’s not a discipline failure. That’s a signal.

What the gap actually looks like

The report describes a “grey zone” where teachers are expected to support students who are clearly struggling but don’t meet the threshold for additional funding or specialist intervention. Half of respondents said they find it difficult to support these students.

This is where the pressure concentrates. Not at the extremes, where there are at least some systems and processes. But in the middle, where need is real, resource is absent, and the teacher is left to bridge the gap alone.

The contrast with safeguarding is instructive. Safeguarding works relatively well, the data suggests, because it has clear processes, defined ownership and consistent escalation pathways. Staff know what to do and feel supported doing it.

Inclusion, by contrast, is fragmented, locally interpreted and administratively heavy. Teachers navigate complex documentation and competing demands while still managing classroom behaviour and learning outcomes.

The lesson isn’t that inclusion should become more bureaucratic. It’s that clarity, shared responsibility and fit-for-purpose systems make a material difference to how confident and supported staff feel.

What this means in practice

For school leaders, the question this report raises isn’t only “how do we manage behaviour better?” It’s “what are we doing to ensure the needs driving that behaviour are being identified and met?”

That distinction matters because the responses it generates are completely different.

One leads to consequence frameworks and behaviour policies. The other leads to investment in staff capability, specialist support, and the kind of early identification systems that mean needs don’t have to escalate before they’re noticed.

In my experience, the schools that handle behaviour most effectively are rarely the ones with the most detailed behaviour policies. They’re the ones where staff feel equipped, supported and confident in reading what a young person is communicating and responding in a way that actually helps.

That requires training. Not as a one-off event, but as an ongoing part of how the school operates.

There’s a real overlap here between what this report describes and what PRICE works on every day: building the staff capability to read behaviour as communication, respond in ways that reduce rather than escalate risk, and create the conditions where fewer interventions are needed.

The data from TES confirms what many practitioners already sense. The challenge is whether the sector names it correctly and responds accordingly.

What is your experience of this gap between inclusion policy and the training and systems needed to deliver it?

Trystan Williams commented on the TES report saying;

“What the schools getting this right tend to have in common is that they do not treat behaviour, inclusion, safeguarding and attendance as separate conversations. They understand behaviour as communication, but they also recognise that staff need the training, systems and confidence to interpret that communication accurately and respond consistently. The strongest schools are not simply policy-heavy either. They have clear expectations, but those expectations sit alongside early identification, relational practice, trauma-informed thinking, SEND expertise and practical escalation routes that staff understand. Crucially, staff are not left alone to absorb complexity classroom by classroom and it is owned at every level in the organisation. For leaders, I would prioritise three things.

1. Invest in staff capability so that behaviour is read through the lens of need, risk and context, not just compliance
2. Build joined-up systems so that the information around SEND, safeguarding, attendance and behaviour creates one coherent picture of the child.
3. Focus on the grey zone: those pupils whose needs are real, but who may not yet meet thresholds for formal support. That is often where preventable escalation begins and early intervention can have its greatest impact. 

The sector does not need inclusion to become more bureaucratic. Afterall, we are a relationship-based profession, where human connections and a sense belonging should be welcomed, understood and celebrated, alongside academic progress and outcomes”. 

Published 7 May 2026