As schools and education systems face growing pressure to improve attendance, behaviour and educational attainment, a growing body of research shows that early intervention can nip these issues in the bud before they have a chance to materialise.
On Wednesday 21 October 2026, a conference will bring educators and sector leaders together to discuss the neuroscience of belonging, behaviour, attendance, disengagement and re-engagement.
Facilitated by cognitive neuroscientist and former MIT researcher Dr Mark Williams OAM and Life Skills GO founder and CEO Nikki Bonus, conference – held in-person and virtually – will help educators better understand what is driving the outcomes they eventually see in attendance, behaviour and attainment data.
What the research says
Dr Williams, a professor of cognitive neuroscience with 25 years in the field, said belonging, attention and emotion are deeply connected in the brain.
“When students feel safe, connected and that they belong, threat responses reduce and the brain is better able to engage the prefrontal systems involved in attention, regulation and learning,” Dr Williams told The Educator. “We don’t learn what we don’t attend to, and the brain has evolved to pay more attention to people we trust.”
Emotion also shapes what the brain notices, remembers and learns, Dr Williams said, pointing out that for teachers, emotional literacy has the greatest impact when it is modelled, not just taught.
“Build trust, notice emotions with curiosity, and model how you name and regulate your own emotions,” he said. “Importantly, there is no ‘wrong’ emotion when a student tells you how they feel. Every emotion gives us information.”
Dr Williams said students learn emotional literacy through repeated, real experiences with calm, connected adults who show them that emotions can be named, understood and managed safely.
“When you are in the fight, flight, or freeze response, you narrow your attention,” he said. “You narrow your focus and you are not learning during that period because all you are doing is reacting to what is actually around you.”
Why behaviour is a message, not just a problem
Another speaker at the event will be Claudia Bou-melhem, Head of Wellbeing K-12 at Maronite College of the Holy Family, located in Greater Western Sydney.
Bou-melhem said before adopting an early identification and whole-school approach, the school’s approach to wellbeing was “largely reactive”.
“Students were typically referred after significant concerns emerged, such as behavioural incidents, poor attendance, academic decline, or family crisis,” Bou-melhem told The Educator. “Support was often managed by the wellbeing team, with limited use of data or coordinated intervention across K–12.”
Bou-melhem said that under the new approach, teachers, leaders, counsellors, and learning support staff regularly review attendance, engagement, behaviour, and wellbeing data to identify students who may need support before concerns escalate.
“Wellbeing is everyone's responsibility, with clear referral pathways and collaborative case management,” she said. “Our focus is on prevention as much as intervention, through universal wellbeing programs, student voice initiatives, strong family partnerships, and targeted supports for at-risk students.”
Bou-melhem said success is no longer measured only by crisis response, but by students feeling known, connected, engaged, and supported from Kindergarten to Year 12.
“This enables earlier intervention and better outcomes for all students,” she said. “Rather than the 'What's wrong with you?' it's more now becoming, 'What's happening for you? How are you arriving to my class?”
How small check-ins can reveal big patterns
Nikki Bonus, CEO of Life Skills GO, said that in her work with schools, educators who intervene early do four things – build trust, know each student's baseline, stay curious, and teach emotional literacy.
“They prioritise connection and establish trust through consistency,” Bonus told The Educator. “Disengagement rarely arrives suddenly. It shows up first in small shifts: a student who stops putting their hand up, drifts to the edge of the group, or starts arriving late.”
Bonus said educators only notice shifts if they know the student.
“They know each student's baseline,” she said. “Regular student voice, connected with school data, makes change visible.”
Bonus said staying curious is another habit of educators who intervene early.
“Like our own lives, things outside a young person's control happen, and life can get very lifey at times,” she said. “Many students can't yet explain what's happening, so they treat change as information, not misbehaviour. They ask why and apply professional judgement to what the student needs.”
Finally said, Bonus, these educators teach emotional literacy and self-regulation explicitly.
“When a student says they feel angry or sad, educators validate it,” she said. “Early intervention is noticing, then acting before patterns set.”
Every emotion check-in is an opportunity for connection, said Bonus.
“It also offers teachers the chance to see trends they might not otherwise see,” she said. It might be okay for Timmy to be upset on Monday, but if Timmy is upset Monday through Thursday every week, we can get underneath it.”
‘A quiet revolution in the classroom’
Bonus said that by applying these practices, educators can find out what's really going on before it gets to the point where a student displays behaviours or withdraws from the classroom altogether.
“The issues facing young people cannot be found in an attendance roll, a behaviour report or an anonymous survey. Not because educators do not care; they do, deeply,” she said. But the systems available to schools were built to measure compliance, not to surface the whole picture of a young person or identify early signs of distress before the window for intervention closes.”
Bonus said Life Skills GO has seen firsthand that through consistency and routine, it's been “a quiet revolution” in the classroom.
“Students who are regularly asked to reflect on how they're feeling – their emotional awareness, their ability to name and identify what's happening – grows really quickly; and it's not just about the students,” she said. “Teachers gain insights they wouldn't have had. Every student voice is an opportunity for connection.”
Bonus said she wants schools to rethink what it truly means to know a student.
“My hope is that Life Skills GO changes the way you see your school, classroom and students and the profound difference that early intervention makes, ensuring that no child moves through school unseen, no early signal goes unnoticed, and every young person is given every opportunity to learn, belong and thrive.”
Early action doesn't have to mean more work
Karen Robertson is the CEO of Life Education Australia and Vice President of the Australian Parents Council, will be opening the ‘The neuroscience of belonging, behaviour, attendance, disengagement and re-engagement, plus whole-school reporting done for you’ event on 21 October 2026.
When asked if a Principal could take away one learning from her talk at the conference that they could apply in their school tomorrow, Robertson said it would be “don’t wait until the behaviour, absence or disengagement becomes the story.”
“Look for what is happening earlier,” Robertson told The Educator. “Children and young people rarely disengage overnight.”
Robertson pointed out that while the signs are often there in changes to connection, belonging, behaviour, confidence or readiness to learn, these things are too often seen separately rather than as part of the whole child.
“So, the practical challenge for schools is to bring those pieces together earlier: student voice, teacher insight, wellbeing information and the data you already hold,” she said. “For me, prevention starts there. See earlier. Understand why. Act in time.”
Robertson said this is not about creating more work for schools.
“It is about using what we already know, more intentionally, so we can respond before a young person reaches crisis point,” she said. “Trusted relationships are the protective mechanism. One of the strongest protective factors for children is connection.”