Positive behaviour support in schools: what it looks like when a child struggles
The first time I noticed the change was during morning circle time. A four-year-old named Leo was sitting cross-legged with the rest of his preschool class, but his knees were bouncing, and his hands were pulling at the carpet. The teaching assistant leaned over and whispered something. Leo shook his head. She pointed toward the corner where the soft cushions were. He got up, walked over, and flopped down face-first. No one told him off. No one made him sit back down. The story continued. That was it.
A few months ago, Leo would have been asked to come to the front table to “think about his choices.” He might have cried. The assistant would have guided him out of the room, and his parents would have received a note at pickup saying that Leo had a difficult morning. Instead, the note said: “Leo used his calm-down space when he needed it. He came back to the group after a few minutes.” That was the first small sign that positive behaviour support had actually arrived at our school.
It’s being rolled out across the country now, in early years settings and primary classrooms, and it’s changing how staff talk about children like Leo. The old approach was reactive: a child disrupts, a consequence follows. The new approach is built on the idea that behaviour is communication. Leo wasn’t being naughty because he wanted to ruin the story. He was overstimulated, or tired, or unable to sit still for one more minute. The “calm-down space” wasn’t a reward for bad behaviour—it was a way to help his nervous system reset so he could rejoin the group when he was ready.
That’s the principle most parents hear first, and it can be hard to swallow. It sounds like permissiveness. It sounds like we’re letting kids do whatever they want. But the reality in the classroom is more structured than that. The roll-out includes staff training, a clear set of expectations for every area of the school, and systems for tracking what happens before, during, and after incidents. What it doesn’t include is removing every consequence.
One of the first things we did as a team was look at the school day through a new lens. We stopped asking, “What’s wrong with these kids?” and started asking, “What’s happening in this environment that’s making it hard for them?” For some children, it was the noise level during transitions. For others, it was the demand to sit through a long carpet session. The solutions were surprisingly simple. We split the class into two groups for carpet time. We dimmed the lights after lunch. We added a “movement break” between phonics and maths, which for many of us just meant standing up and stretching. For a few children, it meant walking to the water fountain down the hall and back.
The key isn’t just the environmental adjustments, though. It’s the language. Teachers are being trained to describe what they see without judgment. Instead of “Stop shouting,” we say, “Use your quiet voice.” Instead of “Why are you throwing that?” we say, “The blocks stay on the floor.” These are small shifts, but they change the direction of the conversation. When a child is already dysregulated, asking a complex question like “Why did you do that?” often pushes them further into defensiveness. A simple instruction is easier to process, and it leaves room for them to choose a different action.
At pickup, parents are hearing more specific feedback too. Instead of “He had a good day,” you’re more likely to hear something like, “This morning he struggled with sharing, but after lunch he joined the group and took turns for ten minutes.” It feels more honest, and because of that, it’s more useful. When a parent knows exactly which part of the day is hard, they can help at home. One mum told me she had no idea her son was struggling with transitions between activities because at home he moved freely between toys all afternoon. Once she knew, she started giving him a two-minute warning before dinner, and he stopped fighting the change.
There’s a misconception that positive behaviour support means no one ever gets “punished.” In practice, complications still happen. Children who hurt others are separated from the group. Toys are taken away when they’re thrown. The difference is in what happens after. The old model might have sent a child to sit in the hallway. The new model has the teacher sit with them, once they’re calm, and talk through what happened—what they were feeling, what they were trying to get, and what they could do next time. This is called a debrief, and it’s where the real learning happens. It doesn’t always work. Some children are too upset to talk for a while. Sometimes the debrief is two sentences long. But over time, it gives children a script for talking about feelings and choices, rather than just experiencing the consequences of them.
I saw this with Leo again a few weeks later. Another child, Maya, accidentally knocked over his tower of blocks. Leo’s face went red, and he raised his hand as if to push her. The assistant stepped in quickly, not with a sharp “No!” but with her body language—kneeling down, placing a hand lightly on his arm. “I see you’re upset,” she said. “Your tower is down. You can tell Maya that with your words.” Leo said, “Maya, I’m mad.” Maya said sorry. The assistant helped them rebuild the tower together. Later she told me that, before the training, her instinct would have been to scold Leo for almost hitting. That might have stopped the immediate behaviour, but it wouldn’t have taught him anything about how to handle frustration—and it would have made Maya more afraid to say sorry.
At home, positive behaviour support looks a lot like what parents have been doing naturally for years, but with more intentionality. It’s noticing what happens right before a meltdown. It’s lowering your voice instead of raising it. It’s giving a child two choices when neither of them is a power struggle: “Do you want to clean up the toys now or after your bath?” It’s not about being a pushover. It’s about deciding which hills are worth dying on, and which are just exhausting sideshows.
There are still bad days. Leo has thrown things at other children since the calm-down corner was introduced. A year five student stormed out of maths class last week and knocked over a chair. The staff didn’t punish him for the chair; they waited until he cooled down and then talked about the maths problem that set him off. He was frustrated because he didn’t know how to start. The chair was how that frustration looked on the outside.
What’s more uncertain is how this will hold up as the roll-out continues. Funding is patchy. Staff turnover means training has to keep happening. And not every teacher is convinced. I’ve heard one veteran teacher mutter that it’s “just another trend.” She has a point—in education, trends come and go. But the difference this time feels like it’s less about classroom management and more about relationships. It’s harder to let go of a framework that makes you actually listen to children instead of just managing them.
At the end of the day, Leo sat next to his mum at pickup. He was tired but calm. She asked how his day was. He said, “I used the cushions.” She didn’t know what that meant yet, so the teaching assistant explained. She nodded, then looked down at her son. “Did it help?” she asked. He shrugged. “The cushions are soft.” That was enough for both of them. We’re all still figuring it out, one small moment at a time.
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