Buy Books by Tom Bennett

                                           The Behaviour Guru, 2010





                                      Not Quite a Teacher, March 2011




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Impressively wrong- why Alfie Kohn’s advice on running rooms is not great

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Enough is enough- it's time to stop taking bad advice about behaviour when children's futures are at stake


Years ago I waited tables in TGI Fridays, where they used to run competitions for staff to see who could sell the most sticky, smoky meat and goldfish bowls of margaritas. Until one day the good times stopped rolling and the managers decreed there would be no more. The reason? One of them had read a book: ‘Punished by rewards’, and claimed that it described how people shouldn’t be incentivised by something so gaudy as an incentive. The author was Alfie Kohn. Years later when I became a teacher I discovered his advice was following me around like eyes on a painting in Scooby Doo. Kohn has become one of the most influential writers in education. His books have found homes in libraries from Beirut to Bearsden. Sadly, rarely have trees been so needlessly pulped.

I frequently hear him described as a behaviour expert. But I find this strange, because surely one of the defining …
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It's still a wonderful job- because teaching saved me

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It’s still a wonderful job

Nb: this is an edited version of a previously published post
I usually have a Christmas ritual: I republish a post I wrote a few years ago called ‘It’s a wonderful job.’ It was a Winter rumination about why teaching was still one of the best jobs you could do, despite the aggro and the paperwork and rats carrying lasers*. It was a sentimental meditation, me on my rocking chair smoking a pipe and chuckling as I read Christmas cards from cherubic children. 
Love, Actually says at Christmas you have to tell the truth. This year it would feel insincere to regurgitate so straightforward a love letter to the profession- mainly because since September last year I’m not teaching. Four years ago I started researchED as a kitchen table project, and I ran it on top of full time teaching for 18 months until the banjo string of my psyche threatened to snap. So I went part time. researchED grew and grew, more and more conferences in more and more countries and continents, b…
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White lines, don’t do it? Behind the media spin, Spielman’s misquoted comments on behaviour are cause for celebration

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Brace yourself: Tom Brown’s School Days are about to make a comeback. According to recent headlines, Ofsted have indicated they’ll soon be expecting schools to make like Bash Street and get medieval on their classes: 
‘Ofsted backs return to old-school punishments’ thundered the Times. ‘Ofsted boss: give pupils lines, community service and detention for misbehaviour,’ gasped iNews. The Daily Mail, sensing blood in the water, put gas in the tank with ‘Ban phones in schools and bring back old-fashioned punishments like lines and litter picking, Ofsted chief demands,’ and it wasn’t clear if this made them happy it was happening or sad that it didn’t go far enough. 
That was nothing. Half an hour before the Chief Inspector of Ofsted, Amanda Spielman delivered a keynote speech at the Wellington Festival of Education this week, I appeared on a radio talk show. The host opened with, ‘So, Ofsted wants to bring back old punishments like the cane and the belt. Tom Bennet…
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