Tom Bennett

In this episode of Beyond Good Tom Bennett joins Matt and Femi to discuss all things schools and behaviour.

Tom Bennett began teaching in the East End of London, and is currently the Director and founder of researchEd and a Teacher Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge.  From 2008-2016 he wrote a weekly column for the TES and TES online, and is the author of four books on teacher-training, behaviour management and educational research – most recently ‘Running the Room’.

In 2015 Tom was long listed for the GEMS Global Teacher Prize, and was also listed as one of the Huffington Post’s ‘Top Ten Global Educational Bloggers’.  In 2017, Tom published an independent review of behaviour in schools.  He recently chaired the Behaviour Management Group for the DfE and is currently their Independent Behaviour Advisor. He coaches teachers and schools in all aspects of behaviour management and research integration and he currently leads the Department for Education’s Behaviour Hubs project. 

In this discussion we talk about the need for education to be evidence-informed and to move away from the legacy of junk pedagogy, the state of behaviour in schools and what Tom typically does and sees on school visits.  We discuss the case for good behaviour and approaching behaviour as a curriculum.  We talk about experienced vs effective teachers, the importance of detail and clarity around all the micro-behaviours in schools, creating school culture and how that has to come from leadership.  We talk about school priorities, managing and modifying the behaviour of staff – by teaching them(!), leadership and accountability, issues with leadership training and 'non-competent' leaders, teaching behavioural habits as an end in itself in addition to being a means to the end of knowledge acquisition, experiencing the education system as a parent, and other topics.