Grade 9 Behaviour

When parents hear “behaviour”, they usually think of a student being rude. That is part of it. The rarest part.

Most behaviour in a lesson is quieter than that. Arriving four minutes late. Leaving before the end. Not being able to find the link, again. Sitting through an hour without saying anything. Having a phone face-up on the desk. None of it is naughty. All of it decides what the hour is worth.

The Education Endowment Foundation, which reviews evidence for schools in England, uses a phrase we find useful. It calls these “learning behaviours”, and defines one as “any behaviour that supports learning, such as paying attention to the teacher or persevering”.^[1] That is the definition we work to. Behaviour is not about being good. It is about being able to learn.

What the small things cost

Teachers are asked about this every year by the Department for Education. In May 2023, they estimated that about 7 minutes of every 30 minutes of lesson time were lost to misbehaviour.^[2] In the 2025 survey, 74% of teachers said misbehaviour had stopped or interrupted teaching in at least some lessons that week, and 62% of secondary pupils said other pupils’ misbehaviour interrupted their own work.^[3]

These are people’s estimates rather than a stopwatch, so treat them as what teachers and pupils report, not as a measurement. But the direction is not in doubt, and pupils and teachers agree.

The research on engagement points the same way. A review of 69 studies, covering nearly 200,000 students, found that the strongest link with achievement was not how a student felt about school, and not how deeply they thought about the work. It was the plainest kind: turning up, taking part, staying on task.^[4]

Being there, all of it

Part of behaviour is simply being in the room for the whole session.

The Department for Education looked at the Year 11 group who sat GCSEs in 2023. Pupils who attended 95 to 100% of the time were 1.9 times more likely to get a grade 5 in English and Maths than pupils who attended 90 to 95%. Their summary of it is blunt: missing about 10 days of Year 11 reduced the likelihood of a grade 5 in English and Maths by around half.^[5] That figure survives their controls for prior attainment and background, though it still shows a link rather than proving a cause.

Lateness belongs in the same picture. English schools are required to manage it, and teachers themselves put “turning up late” on the list when Ofsted asked them what low-level disruption looks like.^[6] The clearest research on lateness and results is from primary schools in the United States, so we will not put a GCSE number on it. What that study did find is worth knowing: late pupils scored lower, and so did the classmates whose lessons they walked into.^[7]

We wrote about the cost of a late start in The lesson that starts four minutes late.

The screen in front of them

Online sessions add one more behaviour. From the outside it is invisible.

In one study, students who used a laptop for other things during a lecture scored lower afterwards. So did the students sitting where they could see that screen.^[8] In another, researchers logged what students actually did online during class. Students who browsed for reasons unrelated to the class had lower grades. The link held after allowing for motivation, interest and intelligence. Browsing for class reasons brought no benefit either.^[9]

This is why we ask students to be in the session with the camera on and the other tabs closed. Not to police anyone’s bedroom. When everybody’s camera is on it becomes normal, and being seen keeps a person in the lesson. The research on cameras says exactly that: the main reason students turn them off is that everyone else has, and mandating them is not the way to fix it.^[10]

Whose job it is, and in what order

Here is where we would push back on ourselves a little.

It is tempting to say that a student’s attitude is a barrier and they must remove it before anyone can teach them. The evidence does not put it in that order. Official guidance for schools, and the EEF’s review of what actually works, both start with the adults: set clear routines, teach the behaviours you expect, and be consistent about them.^[1][11] Engagement is not a fixed feature of a child either. It responds to how a session is run, which is our job before it is anyone else’s.^[12]

So the order we work to is this.

– Ours first. Sessions start on time and follow the same shape every week. Students are greeted by name. Expectations are said out loud. They do not change from tutor to tutor. – Your child’s next. Arrive before the start, stay to the end, camera on, other tabs closed, and say something at least once. Ask when they are unsure, which is the single most useful thing they can do in an hour. – Ours again when it keeps slipping. If a student is repeatedly late, absent, silent or difficult, we do not simply repeat the rule. Persistent difficulty is sometimes a sign of something else, and the Department for Education tells schools to look for it rather than assume.^[13] We will talk to you, and we will ask what is going on.

What parents can do

Two things, and neither is sitting next to your child while they work.

Back the routine. The government’s guidance to schools is clear that parents matter here, and asks schools to encourage parents to reinforce the same expectations at home.^[11] If a session starts at 5:30, being at the desk at 5:25 is a household rule, not a preference. It sounds small. It is most of the battle.

Talk about why it matters. In a review of 50 studies of parental involvement at secondary level, the strongest link with achievement was not help with homework, which was the one exception with no positive link at all. It was what researchers call academic socialisation: conversations about expectations, about why the work matters, and about plans for after school.^[14]

Behaviour is not about being good

A student who arrives on time, stays to the end, keeps their camera on and asks one question has done more for their grade in that hour than any amount of good intentions afterwards.

That is the whole argument. Behaviour is the difference between attending a lesson and taking one.

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