No.
DfE built the behaviour culture audit and action planning tools to support school leaders, and nowhere does it call them statutory, mandatory or required. The register is permissive throughout: schools can use the audit tool, and are encouraged to survey staff and pupils. This is a good idea DfE published and offered, not a duty it imposed. If your school is doing the audit, that is your school’s decision.
updated 25 Apr 2024last checked 11 Aug 2026
What the source actually says
DfE describes the tools by what they are for, never by an obligation to use them:
“The audit and action planning tools have been designed to support school and academy trust leaders, senior leadership teams, governing bodies and trustees to create a culture that promotes excellent behaviour.”
— Creating a school behaviour culture: audit and action planning tools, DfE guidance, 25 April 2024, opening paragraph DfE
The verb attached to the audit tool itself is “can”:
“Schools can use the audit tool to recognise good practice and identify areas that need further attention.”
— Creating a school behaviour culture: audit and action planning tools, DfE guidance, “Use the audit tool” DfE
The staff and pupil surveys — the part that lands most visibly on classroom teachers — are “encouraged”, not directed:
“Schools are encouraged to collect data from a range of sources, including surveys of all staff, pupils, governors, trustees and other stakeholders.”
— Creating a school behaviour culture: audit and action planning tools, DfE guidance, “Ask pupils and staff about the behaviour culture” DfE
The most directive sentence in the entire document is this one, and it is worth reading closely — it places the tools inside a school’s own improvement work rather than stating any external requirement to complete them:
“The tools should be an integral part of a school’s continuous improvement of behaviour management.”
— Creating a school behaviour culture: audit and action planning tools, DfE guidance, second paragraph DfE
One finding is an absence rather than a quotation, and it is stated here as an absence: across the whole of this guidance the words must, statutory, mandatory, compulsory, required, requirement and duty do not appear once. Equally, DfE nowhere says in terms that the audit is optional — it simply never reaches for the language of obligation at any point. So this card does not claim DfE has disavowed a requirement; it records that DfE never asserted one.
Note also what the audit is not. It is a self-assessment your school scores itself against, not a return submitted anywhere. The separate question of whether your school must have a behaviour policy at all is a legal one, and the answer there is yes — see Does my school have to have a behaviour policy?.
Your school may still require it
Your school can require you to complete the survey, sit in the debrief session and act on the priorities that come out of it, and that instruction is a lawful one — this is exactly the kind of school improvement work reasonable direction covers. Time spent on it sits inside your directed time like any other meeting. What cannot fairly be said is that DfE is asking for it. It is your school asking, using a tool DfE made available.
See also Do I get a say before the behaviour policy changes? and My school is in a RISE attendance and behaviour hub — does that land work on me?.