School behaviour policies in England have developed in recent years as a direct result of government policy attempting to address issues of poor behaviour in schools, against a background of wider social concerns about anti-social behaviour and loss of respect. Since the 1980s there has been an acceptance that earlier authority-based approaches need to be broadened to include more collaborative approaches with students that involve elements of discussion and negotiation. A commonly stated aim of behaviour policies is to encourage personal responsibility on the part of students. However, on examination, many school behaviour policies are morally ambiguous, confuse the moral and conventional domains and take insufficient account of what it means to become genuinely self-directing, as discussed in the literature on moral development. Approaches advocated by many schools towards helping students discuss, negotiate and internalise school rules are superficial and ineffective. The paper argues that clearer links need to be made between school behaviour policies, moral development and citizenship education. The English citizenship curriculum framework is described in terms of its developmental structure, its broad conception and its concept map, which allows citizenship learning to be identified across a wide range of school contexts. The importance of cognitive challenge in the progress towards moral maturity is discussed. Teachers often fail to provide sufficient challenge in relation to behavioural issues and often infantilise students in denying them opportunities to take responsibility. It is argued that a concept-based map of citizenship education allows teachers to construct a morally rich curriculum framework from the early years upwards and to make links with a wide range of citizenship issues across the life of the school, optimising opportunities to promote social and moral responsibility. (Contains 2 notes.)