When it comes to student behaviour data, we’ve followed the lead of professional sports into endless excel interrogations, and obsess too hard about the statistics.
We’ve defaulted to counting suspensions, tracking incident types, colour-coding spreadsheets and presenting behaviour dashboards like they’re stock market reports.
As a result, we’ve ended up chasing numbers instead of chasing understanding.
A drop in suspensions doesn’t mean your culture is better. A rise in incident reports doesn’t mean your teachers have lost control.
It just means… you’ve got some numbers.
Real behavioural shifts aren’t just about suppressing incidents – they’re about strengthening relationships. Our data should show us where and how to next invest in our staff capacities, not who to blame.
If your behaviour data isn’t leading you to deeper questions about connection, belonging and trust, it’s leading you astray. It’s leading to negativity and distracting you from growth. It’s taking the habits of the petrified and exhausted teacher spending all day putting out classroom spot fires to the scale of an entire school, thus encouraging collective fear and burnout.
School leaders that crack the code don’t worship the spreadsheet. They use it as a clue – and then they go do the messy, human work of asking questions like, “So what?” and, “Now what?”
In the same way your students are not their NAPLAN or ATAR scores, you are not your behaviour data.
After you know your data, it’s your proactive actions and the supports you put in place that define your school.
Keep fighting that good fight,
P.S. My next online workshop is called the Teacher Consistency Code. It’s designed for school leaders who are struggling to get all their teachers on the same page.
You’ll get a restorative, resistance-proof system for building real consistency in your school, without killing staff morale, and you’ll walk away with a school-wide system your team can follow – and a unified teaching approach that actually works.
The Teacher Consistency Code Online Workshop
Thursday 19 June 2025
4.00pm AEST
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