Improving Student Behaviour in Schools

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Join The Centre for Independent Studies in Sydney on Thursday 7 May to hear from world-leading school behaviour guru, Tom Bennett OBE, and principal of the high-achieving Marsden Road Public School, Manisha Gazula, with CIS education director, Blaise Joseph.

Australian classrooms are among the most disorderly in the world — marked by noise, disruptions, and lost learning time. As many teachers and parents know, there is a need to reclaim Australia’s classrooms from this disruption and disorder. Students in unruly classrooms don’t perform as well academically and often face difficulties with attendance. For many teachers, this contributes to a challenging workplace and excessive workloads. The task to improve student behaviour in Australian schools is both important and urgent.

The CIS education program is launching a new research project Improving Student Behaviour in Schools, led by program director Blaise Joseph. The project will focus on how school systems and schools can effectively improve student behaviour across Australia.

In this evening discussion, we’ll launch the new research project, hearing from two distinguished educators about how we can improve student behaviour to improve student learning.

Tom Bennett OBE is Director and founder of ResearchED, a grassroots, teacher-led project to help make teachers more research-literate. He was a teacher in the East End of London for 13 years, and serves as an advisor to the UK’s Department of Education, including leading the Department’s Behaviour Hubs project. Tom was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 2022 for services to education. He is author of Running the Room: The Teacher’s Guide to Behaviour (John Catt Educational) and CIS analysis paper Conduct Becoming: The importance of the Behaviour Curriculum.

Manisha Gazula is Principal of Marsden Road Public School in the outer south-western suburbs of Sydney. Under her leadership, Marsden Road has become a well-known success story in Australian education, having radically improved academic performance through a focus on evidence-based early literacy and numeracy instruction, in addition to explicitly teaching a student behaviour curriculum. Her school has become a case study for educational researchers, and regularly hosts local and international visitors to observe teaching practice.

Blaise Joseph is Director of the Education Program at The Centre for Independent Studies and a former secondary school teacher. His PhD research at New York University focusses on high-achieving schools in disadvantaged neighbourhoods, and how improvements in student behaviour predict subsequent improvements in academic achievement. He is author of Overcoming the Odds: A study of Australia’s top-performing disadvantaged schools.