VNET EDUCATION CIC

Transforming Behaviour Project 25/26

A Practical, Whole-School Approach to SEMH and Inclusion

A programme for leaders navigating real challenges, right now.

Why this? Why now?

We know you’ve tried behaviour training before. You’ve updated policies, run CPD, and urged staff to stay consistent. But behaviour challenges persist, SEMH needs are growing and the pressures on your school are real:

  • Rising levels of emotional need and dysregulation
  • Fewer staff available to respond
  • Tightening budgets and stretched resources
  • Increasing pressure on leaders to do more with less.

This course is built for this reality.

It’s not about adding more to your plate. It’s about helping your existing team work smarter, with greater confidence, clarity and consistency so that every adult can respond to behaviour and unmet need with purpose, not panic.

Audience: Headteachers, senior leaders, SENCOs

Project Objectives

This three-part, interactive programme helps Headteachers, senior leaders and SENCOs build a behaviour and inclusion culture that works, even in a stretched system. It equips leaders to:

  • Understand what’s driving challenging behaviour and emotional dysregulation
  • Strengthen staff confidence and capacity without relying on extra adults or funding
  • Embed sustainable, consistent strategies across your school
  • Support colleagues who are struggling without burning yourself out.

You’ll leave with usable tools, practical strategies, and a whole-school framework that can be applied immediately and sustained long-term.

Project Outcomes

Throughout the Programme: A Thread of Realism and Hope
This isn’t about ideal scenarios. It’s about your reality: supporting your team, working within budget constraints, and finding strategies that stick. At every stage, you will:

  • Build staff capacity without adding pressure or workload
  • Learn coaching techniques to support those who are struggling
  • Gain tools to implement change that’s scalable and sustainable.

Key Benefits

  • Practical strategies you can implement the next day
  • A shared language and consistent approach across staff
  • Greater confidence for leaders to coach, model and support behaviour practice
  • Tools to drive whole-school change without new funding or external services
  • A more inclusive, emotionally intelligent culture that benefits every pupil.

 

Session 1

Nailing the basics: Getting behaviour right from the start

In a high-pressure system, prevention is powerful.

This session lays the groundwork for a calm, consistent school climate by focusing on the everyday routines, rituals and responses that make the biggest impact especially when staffing is tight.

We’ll explore:

  • The ‘big three’ rules, routines and transitions
  • How low-level disruption starts and how to stop it before it escalates
  • The psychology of predictability, safety and classroom control
  • How leaders can coach and support staff who struggle with consistency or authority.

Why it matters now:

With fewer staff and rising pupil need, prevention is not a bonus, it’s essential. Calm classrooms reduce the demand for reactive support and create space for real learning.

Session 2

Big behaviours: what am I supposed to do?

When support is stretched, your response in the moment matters most.

This session addresses what happens when things do escalate – from meltdowns to refusals, shutdowns to aggression. We focus on practical de-escalation strategies and the neuroscience behind big behaviours, so staff understand what’s happening and what to do.

You’ll learn:

  • The roots of big behaviours: stress, anxiety, dysregulation
  • What to say (and not say) when emotions are high
  • Co-regulation strategies when you’re the only adult in the room
  • How to build a consistent, calm response model across the school
  • How leaders can support colleagues who feel overwhelmed or demoralised by behaviour.

Why it matters now:

With fewer available staff to ‘step in,’ your whole team needs confidence in what to do when behaviour escalates. This session equips every adult to feel steady and capable, whatever the situation.

Session 3

Seeing the Unseen – Reframing Behaviour and Driving Whole-School Inclusion

We can’t afford to wait for diagnoses. We can’t wait for extra funding. We need to act now, together.

This powerful final session goes deeper: helping leaders identify unmet needs early, build truly inclusive classrooms, and shift their school culture from reactive to proactive.

We’ll explore:

  • Spotting the hidden signs of distress or neurodiversity before behaviour escalates
  • Understanding autism, ADHD, sensory needs and masking in real classrooms
  • How to avoid bias and ensure inclusion isn’t reliant on an EHCP or a label
  • Making low-cost, high-impact environmental adaptations
  • Leading cultural change: inclusion through mindset, modelling and micro-adjustments
  • How to support staff who worry about “getting it wrong” with complex pupils.

Why it matters now:

Diagnosis pathways are delayed. Specialist support is limited. But inclusive, emotionally intelligent teaching doesn’t have to wait. This session shows how to build it within your existing staff, systems and classrooms.

Transforming Behaviour Project

  • All sessions take place via zoom
  • We recommend that two delegates attend the project
  • Access to the project includes access to an area on VNETCIC.com with all resources
  • VNET members can access one project as part of their membership package, additional projects cost £500+VAT
  • Non-member price £750+VAT
Book now!

Dates

  • Session 1: 4 February 2026, 1.30pm-4.30pm
  • Session 2: 10 March 2026, 1.30pm-4.30pm
  • Session 3: 23 April 2026, 1.30pm-4.30pm

Emma Shackleton

Beacon School Support, SEMH and Behaviour Consultant, Co-host School Behaviour Secrets Podcast

Emma taught in mainstream primary settings where her interest in supporting pupils with SEMH and behaviour really began. She moved to Birmingham and embarked upon her career teaching permanently excluded pupils and leading on inclusion and outreach in an Inner City PRU for 15 years before founding Beacon School Support. Emma is passionate about supporting schools and families when behaviour and SEMH needs get in the way of success. She helps schools to build their capacity for understanding and supporting pupils with SEMH needs by conducting whole school behaviour audits, coaching and writing and delivering face-to-face and online training and webinars. She is also the co-host of the hugely popular podcast School Behaviour Secrets.

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