To review a school behaviour supervision trial, choose one location, one defined duty change and comparable opportunities over two school weeks. Check whether the change was delivered, what pupils experienced and whether difficulties moved elsewhere. Agree who can keep, adapt or stop the arrangement, with an earlier safety review if needed. A lower incident count alone can't tell you whether supervision improved.
This guide is for behaviour, pastoral and inclusion leaders in England. Two weeks is a suggested management review window, not an evidence-based dose or a statutory timetable. Start when the school has ordinary comparable sessions available. Term dates and half-term breaks vary; ten calendar weekdays may contain very little school.
The DfE behaviour advice encourages objective analysis using several perspectives, including recorded incidents, attendance and pupils' experience. The EEF implementation guide distinguishes how an approach is delivered from its outcomes. Neither source establishes that this particular supervision change will work.
Write the duty change before collecting the result
Choose a point where adults can change their own practice. “Improve corridor behaviour” is too broad to review. “Move the existing duty position to the entrance side of the junction during the lunch return” can be checked, provided the duty lead first confirms that the position is suitable and coverage elsewhere remains adequate.
Check sightlines, access, emergency arrangements and the needs of pupils using the space. Brief the adults involved and agree cover if the allocated adult is absent. Don't reduce required supervision or leave inadequate coverage elsewhere, remove agreed support or expose anyone to harm to obtain a comparison. Urgent safety problems need action now.
The shared-space observation guide helps investigate access and environmental demands. This trial asks a narrower operational question: should the school retain this particular adult-duty arrangement?
A trial card with three separate evidence questions
The following card is an invented planning example. It describes no actual school, pupil or customer result. Adapt it through the school's existing procedures. It doesn't authorise a staffing change.
- Decision, owner and window
- The pastoral lead proposes moving one existing duty position at the corridor junction for the lunch return. The duty lead approves the coverage plan. In this fictional school, the ten taught days run from 2 to 13 November 2026, and the pastoral lead owns the review on 13 November. This assumes its own calendar confirms those sessions; other schools must choose dates from their actual timetable. The agreed greeting and response routine stays the same.
- Delivery: did the arrangement happen?
- For each planned session, record whether the adult was at the agreed position for the agreed window, whether cover was needed and any interruption. An uncovered session isn't evidence that the change failed; it is evidence that this session didn't test the planned arrangement. It still needs an operational response.
- Outcomes: what happened for pupils?
- Use a consistent description of the incidents being reviewed. Record access through the junction, requests for help and pupil feedback as well as incidents. Quiet movement can coexist with feeling unsafe or being unable to join peers. Keep uneventful observed sessions in the record.
- Balancing evidence: what happened elsewhere?
- Ask the adjacent duty adult whether crowding, incidents or calls for help shifted to their area. Check whether the new position left another route less supported, increased waiting or made access harder. Record these effects even when the original hotspot looks quieter.
- Comparison and missingness
- Use the same location boundary, activity, time window, incident definition and recording process for the baseline and trial. Note how many comparable sessions and pupils passing through were actually observed. Mark cancelled sessions, absence, incomplete observations and unknown counts separately.
- Review and earlier stop
- The pastoral lead brings the delivery record, pupil experience, incidents and adjacent-area evidence to the duty lead. They record a keep, adapt or stop decision, reasons, unresolved gaps and the next review date. Any worsening safety or access prompts an earlier review and appropriate protective action.
Use safe, already available baseline evidence where possible. Don't recreate an unsafe arrangement for a tidier before-and-after chart. If the original recording is incomplete, state the limitation and collect better evidence while maintaining safe supervision.
Keep exposure visible. Fewer incidents during fewer observed lunch returns, or with fewer pupils using the route, don't demonstrate improvement. Compare like opportunities and explain any difference in attendance, timetable, weather or group movement. Small counts are unstable; resist impressive percentage reductions assembled from a handful of events.
Check the recording-change annotations if categories, thresholds or entry routes changed. A blank entry means the observation is unknown. It doesn't certify an incident-free session.
Let pupil experience change the question
Ask before and during the trial: where can you get help, what makes this route harder, and what would make it easier? Offer speech, writing, symbols, a simple route plan or a trusted adult, suited to communication and access needs. Record who was invited, whose views are missing and any disagreement. Silence isn't agreement.
In the invented card, the incident log looks quieter. Attendance information then shows fewer pupils present during the relevant sessions. It can't show who used the route. Separately, a pupil explains through a route plan that they have begun waiting for the crowd to clear. Reliable counts of pupils passing through haven't been collected, so that comparison remains unknown. The adult was present at the new position, but an adjacent duty colleague reports longer queues.
Behaviour, attendance and pupil voice now complicate the first impression. The question becomes whether pupils can pass through and reach help without delayed access. The pastoral lead checks the route with the pupil and duty staff, invites relevant parent or carer knowledge through an appropriate channel, and reviews the position before continuing. The records don't establish why the pupil waited or whether the change caused the queue.
Preserve the pupil's account separately from the adult interpretation. Where accounts differ, record the difference and the next evidence request. Keep only the information needed for this review, with authorised access and the school's retention arrangements. The ICO data-minimisation principle applies; a general supervision card doesn't need copied safeguarding narratives or other pupils' names.
Keep, adapt or stop with reasons
Keep the arrangement when delivery is workable, access and experience support continuing, and the balancing checks raise no unresolved concern requiring change. Record the uncertainty and a later check. This is a proportionate management decision, not proof of causal efficacy.
Adapt when delivery was inconsistent, the evidence is too incomplete, or a specific access problem needs a revised arrangement. State exactly what will change and who will check it. Don't quietly extend a trial whose safety question remains unanswered.
Stop the trial arrangement when it worsens access or safety, leaves another area inadequately covered, or cannot be delivered acceptably. Put safe cover and agreed support in place immediately. Stopping the trial doesn't mean stopping support.
A short, uncontrolled comparison can't isolate the effect of one adult position from changes in pupils, relationships, attendance or recording. It can inform the next owned decision. It can't diagnose, establish intent or parenting, predict future behaviour or justify an automatic sanction, referral or exclusion.
Keep Equality Act reasonable adjustments, SEN Support and any EHC-plan provision in place. The SEND Code supports involving pupils and parents in reviewing needs and support. A trial doesn't suspend those duties or remove the need for a proportionate response to harm.
Safeguarding concerns require the school's child protection route and the DSL or deputy without delay. Follow local referral or emergency routes when needed; don't wait for the trial review or use it to investigate a disclosure. Any suspension or permanent-exclusion decision follows the applicable policy and statutory guidance. These are distinct from lesson removal and internal arrangements. This card authorises none of them, and never an unofficial exclusion.
Where enabled, Student Radar's Behaviour Analytics helps staff inspect recorded patterns within a selected scope and time window. Authorised staff can explore pupil context through the Heatmap. Check available fields and coverage. These views don't verify the adult's duty delivery, measure every pupil's experience or decide whether supervision worked. Keep the trial card in the school's agreed process. A behaviour-focused walkthrough can show those recorded views and their limits.
Sources and further reading
Sources checked on 29 October 2026. School duties and DfE guidance cited here apply to England; the EEF guide informs implementation practice.
- Department for Education, Behaviour in schools, February 2024 advice, page updated 19 February 2024; monitoring and evaluating school behaviour, pages 29 to 30.
- Education Endowment Foundation, A School's Guide to Implementation, third edition, 24 April 2024; delivery, monitoring and stakeholder feedback.
- Department for Education and Department of Health, SEND code of practice: 0 to 25 years, January 2015 statutory code, page updated 12 September 2024; paragraphs 6.27 and 6.39.
- Equality Act 2010, section 85, including subsection 6, and section 20, reasonable adjustments.
- Department for Education, Keeping children safe in education 2026, effective 1 September 2026; Part one, paragraphs 57 to 65.
- Department for Education, School suspensions and permanent exclusions, statutory guidance effective 26 July 2026.
- Information Commissioner's Office, Principle (c): Data minimisation, accessed 29 October 2026; guidance under review following the Data (Use and Access) Act 2025.