The Growing Need for Trauma-Informed Approaches in Schools.

In recent years, schools across England have faced an alarming rise in violence and disruptive behaviour among students. The latest data reveals a staggering 33% increase in suspensions for physical assaults on adults in schools, with nearly one in five teachers reporting being hit by a student this year. The emotional and physical toll on educators is immense, leading many to leave the profession altogether.

As one teacher shared, "I was hit, kicked, bitten, and sworn at, by pupils." Her experience, like that of so many others, highlights the urgent need for a new approach to managing behaviour in schools.

At Rock Pool, we believe that trauma-informed approaches are essential in addressing the root causes of such behaviours. The traditional methods of discipline—suspensions, exclusions, and punitive measures—often fail to recognise the underlying trauma that many students carry with them into the classroom.

The Department for Education has invested ￡10 million in behaviour hubs to support schools, but as the data shows, the issue is not just about resources—it's about the approach.

Many children who exhibit violent or disruptive behaviour are themselves victims of trauma—be it domestic violence, neglect, or other forms of abuse. Without proper support and intervention, these children are left to navigate their emotions in ways that are often harmful to themselves and others. This is where trauma-informed training for school staff can make a profound difference.

To be clear, being trauma informed is not about making excuses or accepting bad behaviour as some of its critics will claim. It’s about having understanding of the neuroscience that is keeping children in a hyperarousal fear state even when they are away from the actual stimuli.

But is also about understanding our responses, if we become hyper-aroused in response to young people’s behaviour the situations escalate. Understanding our body language, how to speak, how we are breathing all give out unconscious messages to the dysregulated child.

There is also the social element of trauma. Children living in poverty, with unsecure housing and food poverty are not best placed to be making some of the best choices about their behaviour on a daily basis. Again, we would argue that these factors also cause fear resulting in an over stimulated autonomic nervous system that keeps the children in a perpetual flight or fight mode. So common that it feels ‘normal’ to them.

The Importance of Early Intervention and Specialist Support

As Matt Paterson, Headteacher at Shears Green Junior School, notes, "We have got to be better equipped to deal with the wide range of behaviours and needs we are seeing." Early intervention is crucial, but it requires more than just identifying problematic behaviour. It requires understanding the context in which that behaviour occurs. Schools need the tools to support children in identifying the reasons for their behaviour, and to help them de-escalate, before situations become violent.

However, the increasing complexity of students' needs and the overwhelming demand on local services have left many schools struggling to provide the necessary support. As Pepe Di'Iasio of the Association of School and College Leaders points out, "Early intervention is key to solving this issue—but schools lack the resources to offer specialist support, and local services have become overwhelmed by the increased demand."

At Rockpool, our view is that it is less about specialist support, and more about upskilling those staff already working with the children, to understand what is happening with their behaviour, and be supported to manage situations differently. It needs to be recognised that pre-school and school staff are often managing children with complex emotional needs, and far to often, these children are labelled as ill or naughty!

Our concern is that in this country at the moment, we are seeing children being criminalised or medicalised, rather than resources being put in place to support the emotional distress, that often gets talked about as ‘challenging behaviours’.

This gap in support services is where organisations like ours can play a pivotal role. By offering trauma-informed training programmes, we equip front-line workers including teachers and school staff as well as parents, with the skills needed to manage behaviours in a compassionate and effective way. This not only helps to create safer school environments but also fosters a sense of understanding and empathy among students and staff alike.

Our programmes are designed to address the impact of childhood trauma and the understanding of inter-generational trauma.

We provide transformational training for staff, to increase understanding of the emotional and physical impacts of childhood trauma.? We also have programmes that can be run in schools or community hubs that are specifically for children and parents (in separate programmes).

It is vital to engage parents, who may themselves have experienced trauma as children, and are unwittingly and unconsciously passing the trauma down the generations.

Our trauma informed programmes are designed to be part-educational and part-experiential, to enable adults and children to recognise why they behave the way they do, and how they may make different choices about their behaviour, given the right information.

As schools continue to face increasing challenges in managing student behaviour, the need for trauma-informed approaches has never been more critical. At Rock Pool, we are committed to supporting schools in this endeavour, ensuring that educators are not only equipped to handle the immediate challenges but are also empowered to create lasting, positive change for their students.

The feedback we receive from teachers, parents and children has been amazing. Many talk about ‘light bulbs’ going on, as they suddenly understand why they, and others, behave the way they do.

We ALL have a responsibility to understand that behaviour is linked to emotions and, for some, an indicator of earlier distress. There is no need necessarily to know what that distress was, the most effective help can be in reducing the shame of the behaviours, and teaching children it is not their fault what happened to them, and that they have the power of agency to make different choices moving forward.

To find out more about our work, go to Rock Pool Life C.I.C | Training In Trauma Informed Approaches