Tom Bennett OBE is the DfE advisor on school behaviour, the founder of researchED, and a Professor of School Behaviour at Academica University. He was a teacher for 14 years, and currently lives in Scotland.
The Education Act of 1880 made it compulsory for all children in the UK to attend school between the ages of 5 and 10. The 1918 Education Act saw that rise to 14; in 1944 it went to 15. In 1972, the age crept up to 16, and finally in a gasp of heroic ambition,
London’s schools are about to become less safe. The city’s mayor, Sadiq Khan, has decided to appoint Maureen McKenna to join its violence reduction unit (VRU), with a view to reducing crime by ‘driving down exclusions in schools’ while ‘increasing a sense of students’ belonging’. The VRU has equally noble aims: ‘we believe violence is
