Ready to Learn

Ready to Learn expections on a classroom poster and printed in a student planner at West Exe School, Exeter in 2018.

For the American funding scheme for educational television programmes, see Ready-to-Learn.

Ready to Learn (RTL) is a controversial zero-tolerance behaviour policy template used in some British secondary schools. Under RTL, students receive a warning for any minor infraction; on committing a second minor infraction, they are sent to an "isolation" room for five lessons (looping around to the next day if necessary) and a one-hour detention after school. This is described as an "extremely simple, binary system".

Ready to Learn was developed by Henbury School in Bristol in 2016. It has since been adopted by many other academies nationally. Some schools have implemented RTL under alternative names, making it challenging to estimate the extent of its usage.

History

Ready to Learn was created at Henbury School, Bristol in January 2016. Headteacher Clare Bradford and assistant headteacher Matthew Stevenson have both claimed sole responsibility. Conservative MP Charlotte Leslie praised the system, and invited former Labour schools minister Jim Knight to tour the school, resulting in Knight also evaluating the system favourably. Ofsted subsequently assessed in November 2018 that school leaders' "attention to the implementation of the school's behaviour strategy, 'ready to learn', has diverted their attention from tackling the school's sharp and severe decline in pupils' academic performance", and rated the school Inadequate.

It has been argued that Ready to Learn emerged as the result of an interaction between, on the one hand, socially conservative rhetoric from the Department for Education under Michael Gove's tenure as Education Secretary, and central pressure to adopt whole-school policies on "low-level disruption", and on the other hand, an existing Blairite synthesis of a progressive and behaviourist approach to behaviour management with a neoliberal "language of management" and willingness to exclude pupils to improve a school's average results (with this aspect emerging out of the Baker reforms of the 1980s). Journalist Michal Grant has called RTL a "symptom of school leaders not seeing children as complex young people", a view similar to that espoused by some pupils subject to the system. Stevenson himself cited a training course at the Ambition Institute and a fact-finding mission to other schools as the inspirations for the policy.

Local press cited the introduction of Ready to Learn to West Exe School, Exeter in 2017 as the reason for the school's improvement in results. The Ted Wragg Multi-Academy Trust had also introduced RTL to other schools in Exeter, including Isca Academy. The Ted Wragg Trust renamed RTL to "Reset" at their schools in 2020. In April 2023, a parents' campaign group, Reset Ted Wragg, was established to oppose the policy, stating "Reset / RTL are finished ... We do not consent to these archaic punishments". The Trust initially agreed to review its policies, but the group dismissed the proposed amendments to the RTL system as inadequate. As of September 2024, the group remains active, accusing the Trust of "doubling-down on outdated and unpleasant" policies.

Bristol City Council's independent review into alternative learning provision in 2020 found that most Bristol secondary schools were using Ready to Learn or a similar policy. The report states that there "appears to be an evidence base that says 'Ready to Learn' is an effective whole school behaviour approach and some schools have described it in positive terms as 'transformational'", but also that RTL results in disproportionate numbers of pupils with additional needs being excluded and put into alternative provision.

In popular culture

The fifth episode of School (2018), a BBC Two documentary, focuses on the introduction of Ready to Learn to the Castle School Education Trust in South Gloucestershire. The programme describes RTL as "strict" and frames it as a cost-saving substitute for more expensive bespoke measures for children with complex needs. A senior leader at Marlwood School concedes that RTL is unfair on students with complex needs. When headteachers raise concerns about RTL's fairness, the trust's CEO encourages them to "hold our nerve" in enforcing it, saying that he would "rather have the problem" of a minority of students missing lessons than see lessons be disrupted.