Tony Blair chaired the brain-storming session in Downing Street

By Mike Baker BBC News education correspondent

Sunlight bounced off Horse Guards Parade and sparkled in the Downing Street meeting room's rather grand chandelier.

The prime minister, in shirt sleeves, asked the 12 teachers and head teachers if they could identify the portraits on the wall.

They couldn't.

So it was just as well that the Leadership Group on Behaviour and Discipline had not been invited to Number 10 to display their knowledge of art history.

In fact, they were there this week to brief the prime minister and the education secretary on what could be done to improve school discipline.

Mr Blair interjected, with a surprised air: 'Do any schools allow pupils to have mobile phones?'

They each had five minutes to explain what had worked at their own schools.

It was a fascinating set of presentations and the prime minister listened intently, occasionally asking questions.

At one point, as head teachers explained how they had banned mobile phones at their schools, Mr Blair interjected, with a surprised air: "Do any schools allow pupils to have mobile phones?"

It looked for a moment as if he might be conjuring up the next Downing Street initiative: a target for reducing the numbers of pupils carrying mobile phones into schools.

But then it was pointed out to him that, particularly in rural areas, students sometimes needed mobiles in order to contact their parents for lifts home after school.

In a sense, that highlighted the sort of practical problems that can arise whenever someone has a bright new idea for improving school discipline.

Own goal?

One of those ideas had been floated that morning in a letter from Mr Blair to the leadership group.

He had told them he was particularly keen to hear whether they thought it desirable to take new powers to require parents to stay at home to supervise their children when they were suspended from school.

It was an interesting suggestion although most commentators were quick to point out its impracticality.

How would it help, asked one, if parents lost their jobs because they had to stay at home to supervise their children?

Some thought it was a Downing Street own goal, like the suggestion that young offenders should be marched to cash machines to pay on-the-spot fines.

However I suspect this was rather more calculated than that. If the real aim was to focus the debate on the responsibility of parents, then it worked perfectly for the spin doctors.

The more outraged the commentators and interviewers, the more the government succeeded in moving the debate onto its chosen ground: the responsibility of parents for their children's behaviour both inside and outside school.

We should be wary of instant solutions

In the end, rhetoric may be the only effective weapon. Sending parents to prison for the persistent truancy of their children seems not to have worked.

There may have been an immediate shock factor but even the first woman to go to jail, Patricia Amos, subsequently failed to make her daughter attend school.

As well as imprisonment, there have been on-the-spot fines for parents of persistent truants.

There have been home-school contracts, parenting orders and national targets to reduce exclusions and truancy rates.

Yet behaviour is still a problem in schools. Indeed the chief inspector of schools for England reported earlier this year that discipline had deteriorated in secondary schools over the previous five years.

This was the very period when all these initiatives had been happening.

So we should be wary of instant solutions. Indeed the chairman of the leadership group, Sir Alan Steer, has already cautioned against expecting any "magic bullet" to solve pupil indiscipline.

Yet this is not a counsel of despair. Each of the head teachers who presented at Downing Street this week had improved, sometimes dramatically, the behaviour at their schools.

Better buildings

Take Dame Maureen Brennan, head of Hillcrest School in Dudley. When she arrived there almost five years ago it was branded a failing school.

She says the school then had "no structures, systems or routines".

One of her recipes for changing that was the introduction of a "house system and a prefectorial system".

She introduced formal routines such as pupils standing up when someone walks into the classroom.

Yet if that sounds rigid and formalised, she also got rid of the bells that sounded the end of each lesson.

As she explained, there are no bells in the workplace or at universities so why should children have to endure them?

Other measures included a sin bin or exclusion room (dubbed the "doom room" by the pupils) where misbehaving pupils could go for a period of isolation from their peers.

Mutual respect

Another vital factor, she said, was the quality of teaching. When selecting new staff she always insisted on seeing them teach a class. The pace of lessons had to be fast, otherwise pupils became bored.

Dame Maureen said "the Hillcrest way" included a "two-way respect agenda". If the school expected respect from the students, it had to return that respect.

So teachers will sometimes hold open doors for pupils. All areas of the school are of a standard an adult could expect in the workplace. The cockroaches in the kitchen had to go.

According to Sir Alan Steer, 80% of low-level disruption arises from issues of teaching and management

She is a great believer in the importance of the quality of the buildings. The old school had "rat-run corridors" and she knows "we can do better with better buildings".

Clearly all this takes great energy and drive from staff. They "do the gates", patrolling as pupils arrive and leave. They remove mobile phones.

They faced a drug-dealing problem outside the school. So they recorded the numbers of the cars and informed the police and the problem was reduced.

There were similar stories from the other head teachers.

Certain themes were repeated: the importance of good buildings and an environment which made the pupils feel they were respected, high expectations of pupils, clear structures and boundaries, a strong and active policy for special needs, and negotiated rather than imposed rules.

The real key, though, was what happened in the classroom. According to Sir Alan Steer, 80% of low-level disruption arises from issues of teaching and management.

Well-paced teaching, energetic teachers, and a "bespoke" curriculum, suited to each child's needs, seem likely to be central to the group's recommendations when they are published in October.

Sir Alan also dropped a strong hint that the group is likely to suggest a national charter or code of responsibilities and rights for pupils, parents and teachers.

However, to judge from this fascinating session in Downing Street, it is not so much any new charter that will make the difference but the way in which individual head teachers and teachers implement it.

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