Behaviour Curriculum: What It Is and How to Teach It

A behaviour curriculum is the decision to teach the behaviours a school expects, explicitly and in sequence, rather than assuming learners arrive already knowing them. It treats routines, attention, movement and disagreement as content to be taught, practised and revisited, in the same way a school treats phonics or times tables. This guide covers what belongs in one, how it differs from a behaviour policy, and the two failure modes that make most attempts fizzle out.

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Behaviour curriculum versus behaviour policy

They answer different questions, and confusing them is why some schools have a thick policy and disorderly corridors.

• A behaviour policy says what happens when expectations are not met. It is about consequences, and it is largely for adults.
• A behaviour curriculum says what the expectations are, how they are taught, when they are practised and how they are assessed. It is about instruction, and it is for learners.

A school with only a policy is sanctioning learners for not doing something nobody taught them. That is the argument for the curriculum, and it is a fairness argument before it is a behaviour one.

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What actually goes in it

Keep it small enough to teach. Most workable behaviour curricula cover four or five domains and no more.

1. Arrival and transitions. Entering a room, settling, moving between spaces, lining up, packing away. These consume more time than anything else on the list.
2. Attention. What listening looks like here, how to signal you want to speak, what happens when the adult stops talking.
3. Talk. Answering in a full sentence, disagreeing with an idea rather than a person, taking turns in a paired discussion.
4. Independent work. Starting without being told twice, what to do when stuck, working for a sustained period.
5. Repair. What you do after it has gone wrong, on both sides. Most curricula omit this, and it is the one that decides whether a learner comes back willingly.

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How each behaviour gets taught

The same instructional sequence as anything else you teach, which is the whole point of calling it a curriculum:

• Name it. One clear description, in the same words in every classroom. Different wording per teacher is the commonest reason a routine does not stick.
• Model it. Show the behaviour, then show a near miss, so the boundary is visible.
• Practise it. Deliberately, when nothing is at stake, not for the first time in a crisis.
• Give feedback. Specific and immediate, about the behaviour rather than the learner.
• Revisit it. After every holiday, and at any point the routine visibly decays. Assume decay rather than being disappointed by it.

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The two failure modes

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It is written for adults, not taught to learners

A behaviour curriculum that lives in a staff handbook is a policy with a new name. The test is simple: pick a learner at random and ask them what the school expects when they get stuck. If they cannot say it, it has not been taught, whatever the document says.

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It is too big to teach

Twenty-two named behaviours across six domains is a document, not a curriculum. Nobody can teach twenty-two things well, so in practice teachers pick their own favourites and consistency, the entire benefit, is lost. Five behaviours taught properly beats twenty listed.

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Where it meets inclusion

Two cautions, and they are the reason to be careful rather than reasons not to do it.

First, behaviour is communication. A learner who cannot yet meet an expectation after it has genuinely been taught and practised is telling you something, and the answer is the graduated approach under the SEND Code of Practice, not more of the same instruction delivered louder.

Second, a behaviour curriculum should describe what learners do, never what learners are. "Enters the room and starts the first task" is teachable. A label applied to a child is not, and it follows them.

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A reasonable first term

If you are starting from nothing, do not write the whole thing. Take arrival and transitions only, agree the exact words with staff, teach it in the first week, and revisit it after October half term. One domain taught consistently across a school changes more than a complete document nobody has rehearsed.

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Related reading

The graduated approach that a behaviour curriculum hands over to is set out in the statutory guidance. Our summary of the SEND Code of Practice covers assess, plan, do, review and the four areas of need.