All children deserve the care and support they need to have the best start in life. - EYFS September 2025
Although this quote is drawn from EYFS it would serve us well to keep these words in mind throughout the entire education system. Organisations such as Edurio continue to evidence a decline in the wellbeing of our children. Edward Timpson’s 2019 review of school exclusion highlighted the negative impact of a school system reliant on progressive punishment, and the disproportionate negative impact this methodology has on vulnerable individuals and groups. The more recent document Too Young to Leave Behind, produced by Chance UK, provides research into how disadvantage can be baked in from a child’s earliest interaction with education, especially if that early experience comes with a sense of failure and rejection.
For many years working within special schools, this sector of education has often led the way in acknowledging the importance of relationships. With the current direction of travel and the anticipated content of the DfE’s white paper, supported by the new Ofsted framework, it will be crucial that the relational practice can be seen not only within interactions but embedded through policy, systems and plans.
With so much known about the impact of attachment, ACEs and Trauma and further established knowledge about how these experiences can intersect with SEND, Mental Health and disadvantage, education must do far more than simply teach to an academic curriculum. All children, especially those with SEND, need an education experience that considers attachment, trauma and Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs), is consciously aware of mental health needs and adapts to ensure children thrive. Children with SEND need an experience delivered by staff who embrace meeting need as a normal and everyday expectation at every age and stage. It needs to reframe behaviour as a form of communication and a sign of unmet need and prioritise the creation of safe, therapeutic cultures in which children and staff can thrive.
Children face a rapidly changing world in which the outcomes that ensured opportunities now feel less certain and where those capable of independent employment may no longer have as many opportunities. Technology and social media have already rapidly changed how young people interact with the world around them. AI is likely to accelerate change for children and young adults.
Education needs to consider what constitutes success. Although no longer the Government’s narrative, education needs to hold onto the idea that ‘every child matters.’ Success is not just about Ofsted ratings or statistics around academic progress; a successful special school will ensure every child, regardless of their predicted academic attainment, will have optimism for a future.
Schools should emphasise the importance of attendance and academic attainment, but they also need to help young people understand their feelings and experiences and look for evidence of authentic engagement with learning. Children deserve more than a methodology reliant on external discipline, which ultimately leads to feeling rejected or embattled. Children deserve an education that helps them develop true internal discipline and equips them with the broadest range of academic, practical and emotional skills to face an uncertain and rapidly changing life experience.
Schools’ policies, particularly around behaviour, often focus on how adults can control and manage the behaviour of children with little regard for the experiences that inspire and motivate. Even academically able children may believe school is ‘done to them’ rather than ‘done for them’.
A relational approach attempts to embed helpful values and beliefs about self, others and our wider communities. It plans interactions to prioritise connection, belonging, self-regulation and empathy. It aims to create school environments where children feel safe, relationships are prioritised, and staff feel confident in their ability to meet need.
Over a decade of experience working with special schools to prioritise a relational approach has evidenced that those who embrace this ambition create learning environments where children staff and parents feel a sense of belonging.
Since we can not know what knowledge will be most needed in the future, it is senseless to try to teach it in advance. Instead, we should try to turn out people who love learning so much and learn so well that they will be able to learn whatever needs to be learned. - John Holt
A solely academic curriculum can only try to predict what knowledge young people will need in the future.
A ‘relational approach’ is limited if it is embraced in a narrow and formulaic way, as little more than an alternative to continuous use of bribery systems and punishment ladders.
Children do not care how much you know until they know how much you care. - Theodore Roosevelt
A true restorative approach is about ‘connection before content’ in the delivery of the curriculum; and it is about ‘connection before correction’ in our responses to children’s behaviour. The bedrock of a relational approach takes us beyond the idea of making children more compliant to a place where everyone is equally valued. A relational approach accepts that we have little right to expectations simply because of the authority bestowed upon us.
A relational approach rests on the idea of ‘connection before expectation. - Jane Nelson
A relational approach within an SEND setting takes deliberate creation. It requires us to invest in the relationships between staff and children, but it also requires us to invest in relationships between staff and their colleagues, children and their peers, school staff and parents, children and the community. The idea that every interaction is an opportunity to build a sense of positive connection and shared purpose.
A relational approach will be difficult. It will not be easy to build a connection with a child who has experienced trauma or build a connection with a parent embattled by the system, or to build a connection with a staff member who has felt sidelined within their work role, or build a connection with a community that has become divided. Some connections are easily built, but the victory is the connections we battle hard to establish.
Our ambition for relational practice, starts with our families, becomes part of our special schools, impacts relationships in our communities and eventually influences national and international relationships.
Within special schools, our commitment to relational practice is based on a belief that we underestimate how brilliant all our children can be, that with help and support they can take their place in the world as equal and valued collaborators. A belief that we can create schools where every child believes education is done for them rather than the experience that school is done to them.
Children, let your dreams and aspirations be proud. Set your sights high. Try to win glory. Something will always come of it. - Janusz Korczak
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Therapeutic Thinking has emerged over the past decade as a unique, evidence-informed approach to behaviour in schools. It offers consultancy, advice, and guidance to local authorities, large multi-academy trusts, schools and other similar organisations who wish to develop training based on relational practice grounded in evidence-based research.
As a NASS Partner, Therapeutic Thinking is members its Therapeutic Thinking Relational Practices 3-day tutor course at a reduced rate for 18 schools. To register your interest, please email: spatterson@nasschools.org.uk