The impacts of Relational and Restorative Practice in schools

Project overview

Relational and Restorative Practice (RRP) is concerned with building, maintaining and repairing relationships across the whole school community. It includes both proactive work to strengthen belonging, trust and school culture, and responsive approaches to addressing harm when it occurs.

RRP is not limited to responding to incidents of harm. It is a whole-school approach that seeks to strengthen relationships, build belonging and create a positive school culture through both proactive and responsive practices.

This project will examine the prevalence of RRP adoption in England and whether and under what conditions this approach influences outcomes for schools and teachers.

Why is this important?

The management of pupil behaviour is one of the most pressing problems in English schools. In the National Education Union’s State of Education 2026 survey, two thirds of state-school teachers in England said pupil behaviour has a negative impact on learning in lessons either regularly or all the time. There are impacts on teachers too. Analysis by the National Foundation for Educational Research finds that time spent dealing with pupil behaviour plays a significant role in teachers’ decisions to leave the profession.

In recent years schools have made greater use of suspensions and exclusions to manage behaviour. More than 900,000 suspensions and almost 10,000 permanent exclusions are now regularly issued each year in England, and the most common reason for both is persistent disruptive behaviour. The burden falls unevenly: children eligible for free school meals and children with special educational needs are suspended and excluded at several times the rate of their peers.

The policy context is focusing more clearly on these issues. The government’s February 2026 white paper Every child achieving and thriving commits to refresh guidance on suspensions and permanent exclusions and proposes a set of strategies that aim to keep pupils in school and repair relationships after things go wrong.

The Theory of Change below describes what Relational and Restorative Practice (RRP) aims to do, how, and what impacts it may have. Many English schools already adopt it, but nobody knows how many, or what difference it makes. This project aims to find out.

Our Theory of Change
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What we are doing

The project runs from April 2026 to March 2028 and has two parts.

Workstream A — how widespread is RRP in English schools?

Many schools in England use relational and restorative practices (RRP), but there is currently no clear national picture of their prevalence. State-funded schools have a statutory requirement to publish a behaviour policy. In this part of the project, we will collect published behaviour policies from a representative sample of 10% of primary and secondary schools in England. In collaboration with the Restorative Justice Council, we will use large language models (LLMs) to identify which schools adopt RRP and the extent to which these practices are embedded in their policies. This will provide a national estimate of the prevalence of RRP across English schools and can be used to document how adoption varies by local area context, school phase, school size, and school governance.

Workstream B — what difference does it make?

Our evaluation of the impact of RRP on pupil and teacher outcomes proceeds in two steps.

James Simon, Chief Executive of the Restorative Justice Council (RJC) is a co-investigator on the project and convenes a Scientific Circle of around 25 to 30 members — school staff, consultants who have supported schools through implementation, trainers, and academics working in the field. Schools are drawn from the RJC’s existing Register of Restorative Schools and from schools that have demonstrated a commitment to restorative practice. They are assessed against the RJC’s Registered Restorative Educational Setting framework, which looks at five things: whether restorative values are reflected in the school’s vision and culture; whether staff are trained and supported, including new arrivals; how often and how well restorative approaches are used, both proactively and in response to conflict; whether they are applied equitably across a diverse pupil population; and whether pupils, parents and the wider community are involved in shaping them. The Circle draws on in-depth case studies, published school documents and other records, as well as qualitative interviews with the senior leadership teams. It also collects information about when a school adopted RRP and what other behaviour-related support is in place.

The evaluation team – consisting of researchers at the University of Essex and the University of St Andrews – then compares what happened in those schools with what happened in otherwise similar schools, before and after adoption, looking at pupils’ attainment, attendance, suspensions and exclusions, and later contact with the criminal justice system, and at whether teachers stay. Because schools adopted RRP at different points over the past decade, we can separate the effects of a restorative approach from wider changes affecting all schools.

Governance structure

The project is overseen by an Advisory Group of eight to ten members. Its members are drawn from academia, school practice, professional bodies and unions, policy, and civil society organisations.

The Advisory Group provides constructive challenge at each stage. It reviews the analysis plans before the research begins, monitors progress against milestones, and comments on the final reports and academic outputs before they are published. It also advises on how findings should be interpreted and where they are most relevant to policy and practice.

Alongside this external oversight, roles within the project are deliberately separated. The Restorative Justice Council and the Scientific Circle identify and assess restorative schools; the evaluation team at the University of Essex and the University of St Andrews carries out the analysis. Neither takes part in the other’s work beyond specifying what data is required.

The analysis plan will be registered publicly through the Open Science Framework before the evaluation team receives the list of restorative schools.

The project has been approved by the University of Essex Faculty of Social Sciences Ethics Subcommittee.

How will it make a difference?

Findings will be shared with teachers, headteachers, unions, RRP training providers, non-governmental organisations, policymakers, and the public. Dissemination activities will include interim and final reports, policy briefs, and workshops. Ultimately, the project aims to inform practitioners and policymakers by highlighting how RRP influences outcomes for pupils and teachers, and by exploring how the effectiveness of RRP depends on mode of implementation, other behavioural policies, and the broader school context.

Project updates

Paulo Morais joins the team to work on identifying school behavioural policy documents, 14 July 2026
First meeting of the Scientific Circle, 21 July 2026

Team members

Emilia Del Bono

Principal Investigator, Professor of Economics - University of Essex

James Simon

Co-Investigator, Chief Executive - Restorative Justice Council

Angus Holford

Co-Investigator - University of Essex

Luca Favero

Co-Investigator - University of St Andrews

Paul Garcia Hinojosa

Researcher - University of Essex

Victoria Biagi

Researcher - University of Essex

Paul Morais

Researcher - University of Essex

Louise Cullen

Head of Communications & Engagement, ISER - University of Essex

“Relational and Restorative Practice prioritises relationships as the foundation of a healthy school community. It seeks to build and sustain positive relationships proactively, to respond to conflict or harm through dialogue and repair with participation that is voluntary and informed, and to support accountability through acknowledgement, responsibility-taking and meaningful action to make amends, rather than punishment alone. It aims to create safe, inclusive and participatory spaces in which pupils, staff, families and the wider school community can be heard, understand the impact of what has happened, express their needs and repair harm where possible.”

There is no single agreed definition of Relational and Restorative Practice. The working definition above draws on the Restorative Justice Council’s Principles of Restorative Practice, which set out the ethical framework underpinning restorative practice across all sectors, and on the RJC’s standards for educational settings specifically: the Registered Restorative Educational Setting Framework and the Restorative Educational Setting Code of Practice. It reflects RJC principles including prioritising relationships, voluntary engagement, repairing harm rather than assigning blame, accountability through acknowledgement and responsibility, safe and supportive practice, inclusive participation, and attention to participants’ needs.

What do we know from previous research?

The evidence base is small, and the findings mixed. In England, the INCLUSIVE trial evaluated Learning Together, a whole-school programme combining staff training in restorative practice with a school action group and a social and emotional learning curriculum, across 40 secondary schools. After three years, pupils reported less bullying, though the effect was small and there was no change in aggression (Bonell et al., 2018). A separate evaluation using GCSE results found pupils in participating schools made around two months’ additional progress (Wigelsworth et al., 2023).

Internationally, the picture is also varied. In the United States, two randomised trials of the same whole-school restorative programme found little overall effect: in Pittsburgh suspensions fell and teachers reported better school climate, but academic outcomes did not improve and worsened for pupils in grades 6 to 8 (Augustine et al., 2018), while a two-year trial in 13 middle schools found no significant changes at all, with better outcomes reported only by pupils who said they had experienced more restorative practice (Acosta et al., 2019). Evidence from the phased rollout of restorative practices across Chicago’s public schools is more positive, showing reduced suspensions and out-of-school arrests, concentrated among Black students, with no effect on test scores (Adukia et al., 2025).

Restorative approaches can therefore reduce exclusionary discipline, but their wider effects are unclear and much appears to depend on how they are implemented and in what context.

The gap in the evidence

Several questions remain unanswered:

First, we know that many schools adopt a restorative approach but have no systematic evidence on how prevalent this approach is across the whole education sector in England. We also need to understand whether and how the adoption of these policies varies according to the education stage (primary vs. secondary), type of school (e.g. local-authority-maintained vs. academies), size, and local contexts (e.g. low vs. high crime area).
Current studies only consider the impact of restorative practices on pupil outcomes within a short window from adoption. We need to investigate pupils exposed to restorative practices in schools for long enough to know whether restorative practice shapes their later education, e.g. post-16 trajectories, or contact with the criminal justice system.
Existing work focuses primarily on pupil outcomes, but it is equally important to consider teachers and the impact that restorative approaches can have on their retention rates.
Any effect on academic achievement needs to be unpacked: results could mask gains for some pupils and losses for others, depending on their age, prior attainment, or whether they are themselves at risk of exclusion.

References

Acosta, J., Chinman, M., Ebener, P., Malone, P. S., Phillips, A., & Wilks, A. (2019). Evaluation of a whole-school change intervention: Findings from a two-year cluster-randomized trial of the Restorative Practices Intervention. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 48(5), 876–890. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-019-01013-2

Adukia, A., Feigenberg, B., & Momeni, F. (2025). From retributive to restorative: An alternative approach to justice in schools. American Economic Review, 115(8), 2722–2754. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1257/aer.20230971

Augustine, C. H., Engberg, J., Grimm, G. E., Lee, E., Wang, E. L., Christianson, K., & Joseph, A. A. (2018). Can restorative practices improve school climate and curb suspensions? An evaluation of the impact of restorative practices in a mid-sized urban school district (RR-2840). RAND Corporation. Available at: https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR2840.html

Bonell, C., Allen, E., Warren, E., McGowan, J., Bevilacqua, L., Jamal, F., Legood, R., Wiggins, M., Opondo, C., Mathiot, A., Sturgess, J., … Viner, R. M. (2018). Effects of the Learning Together intervention on bullying and aggression in English secondary schools (INCLUSIVE): A cluster randomised controlled trial. The Lancet, 392(10163), 2452–2464. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(18)31782-3

Wigelsworth, M., Thornton, E., Troncoso, P., Humphrey, N., & Black, L. (2023). INCLUSIVE (Learning Together): Evaluation report. Education Endowment Foundation. Available at: https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/projects-and-evaluation/projects/inclusive-behavioural-programme

The impacts of Relational and Restorative Practice in schools

Project overview

Why is this important?

What we are doing

Governance structure

How will it make a difference?

Project updates

Team members

Emilia Del Bono

James Simon

Angus Holford

Luca Favero

Paul Garcia Hinojosa

Victoria Biagi

Paul Morais

Louise Cullen

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