TheParagon

Government policies shape the behavioural landscape of children not just in classrooms, but within the home; often in ways that are indirect, cumulative and quietly corrosive.

Within the Home: Economic Pressure and Parental Strain
This can be broken down into the following points as typical contributional factors:

Austerity and Welfare Cuts: Reductions in child benefit, housing support and universal credit have left many families in precarity. Stress, food insecurity and unstable housing environments contribute to emotional dysregulation in children, which manifests as aggression or withdrawal in school.

Mental Health Services: Long waiting lists and underfunded CAMHS (Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services) mean that early signs of trauma or neurodivergence often go unaddressed. Parents are left unsupported and children arrive at school carrying unprocessed distress.

Parental Blame Culture: Recent government rhetoric, such as the Labour Education Secretary’s Bridget Phillipson, (August 2025), call for parents to “do more” to tackle bad behaviour, shifts responsibility away from systemic failures and onto families already under strain. This erodes trust and creates adversarial dynamics between home and school.

Within Schools: Surveillance and Exclusion
Behaviour Hubs and Attendance Drives: The RISE programme aims to improve behaviour and attendance in 5,000 schools, but

critics argue it prioritises compliance over care. Schools are incentivised to reduce exclusions, yet given few tools to support relational repair.

Inconsistent Guidance: The Department for Education has not updated its guidance on the use of force in schools since 2013, despite calls for reform. This leaves staff navigating violent incidents without clear, rights-based protocols.

Exclusion and Restraint: The UK has not banned restraint or seclusion in educational settings, despite UN recommendations. Children, especially those with disabilities or from racially minoritised backgrounds, are disproportionately excluded, compounding trauma and reinforcing cycles of behavioural crisis.

Government policies shape the behavioural ecology of children through a web of economic, educational and social pressures that converge in both the home and the classroom. Austerity measures have hollowed out support systems, cutting welfare, mental health services and community programmes; leaving families to absorb the shock of poverty, instability and unmet needs. In homes, this manifests as heightened stress, fractured routines and emotional volatility, which children carry into school as unresolved tension. Within classrooms, policy-driven emphasis on attendance, compliance and performance metrics reduces pupils to data points, eroding relational trust and pastoral care. Behaviour hubs and zero-tolerance models offer the illusion of control, yet fail to address the trauma, neurodivergence and systemic neglect that fuel disruption. Meanwhile, racially minoritised and disabled children are disproportionately surveilled, restrained and excluded,