More Good Days at School

What does this project involve?

More Good Days at School (MGDAS) aims to use whole-school trauma-informed training and support for staff to improve children’s behaviour and wellbeing. Trauma happens when someone experiences something deeply distressing or harmful that has lasting effects on their wellbeing. Trauma-informed practice means shaping services to recognise this impact and avoid causing further harm.  

MGDAS aims to equip teachers to meet the needs of children who have experienced trauma and hopes that by doing so, children’s behaviour will improve. Central to this approach is ensuring children develop at least one trusting relationship with a safe, reliable adult at school. MGDAS also encourages an approach to behaviour management that frames challenging behaviour as an inability to self-regulate and sanctions as an opportunity to learn from mistakes.  

Delivered by Knowledge Change Action (KCA) and Warren Larkin Associates, MGDAS offers two stages of training to all school staff (including teaching staff, leadership teams, pastoral and inclusion leads).  

Stage one, collaborative enquiry, involves focus groups with staff and surveys with children to inform and co-design school training priorities.  

Stage two, training and reflective practice, delivered in person and online, provides school staff with three taught modules:  

1. two hours of training on the brain, attachment and child development, 
2. two hours on behavioural manifestations of trauma and how to respond, and 
3. three hours of emotion coaching training for how to respond to dysregulated behaviour (e.g recognising and validating feelings).  

Senior leadership teams, pastoral leads and inclusion leads also receive three, three-hour modules:

1. supporting the mental health of school staff, 
2. therapeutic techniques, and 
3. reflective practice techniques.  

Senior leadership teams also attend four and a half hours of workshops on reflective practice and action planning, followed by three hours on amending school policies. Pastoral and inclusion leads are offered four and a half hours of additional reflective practice workshops on working with vulnerable children.  

Training is delivered over 15 months, and in this project the programme ran from November 2023 to July 2025.  

Why did YEF fund this project?

Trauma occurs when an event or set of circumstances causes physical or emotional harm that leads to lasting adverse effects on well-being. Research on trauma has often focused on adverse childhood experiences (ACEs). ACEs are negative childhood experiences that can include experiences of abuse or neglect, having a close family member in prison or witnessing violence in the home. We know that ACEs have a long-term relationship with children’s development, including their involvement in crime and violence. 

Acknowledging the impact that trauma can have and continuing to be curious about the causes of children’s behaviour is sensible. Many school, college and AP leaders have sensibly aimed to embed trauma-informed principles into their settings and have reflected these principles in their behaviour policies. These policies and principles may aim to shift a teacher’s perspective of a child’s behaviour from ‘What is wrong with you?’ to ‘What has happened to you?’. Trauma-informed principles can also lead to the targeted support that some children may need. For instance, there is some evidence that trauma-specific therapies, which aim to support children’s recovery from trauma, can reduce children’s involvement in crime and violence. 

However, beyond these general principles, we know very little about how to effectively train teachers to recognise trauma and amend their practice in response to it to improve children and young people’s outcomes. 30% of primary and 38% of secondary teachers in England who responded to our Teacher Tapp survey in October 2023 reported that their school delivers trauma-informed practice training for teachers. However, we do not yet know if this training is effective at preventing children’s involvement in violence.  

YEF and the Home Office, therefore, funded an efficacy randomised controlled trial (RCT) of MGDAS. It aimed to establish whether MGDAS reduced children’s externalising difficulties as measured by the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ). It also aimed to establish whether the programme improved mental health, prosocial behaviours, social connections with teachers and peers, school inclusion, bullying, attendance and exclusion. It also assessed impact on teacher-level outcomes, including knowledge and awareness of trauma, confidence in working with traumatised children, and staff wellbeing.  

The trial was run as a two-armed cluster RCT in 62 schools (13,900 children). All schools continued with existing wellbeing support practices (e.g., a worry box/drop-ins for advice, counselling for staff, and mental health policies), and half of the schools (31) were randomised to additionally receive the training and support. The evaluation also included an implementation and process evaluation (IPE) that explored whether MGDAS was implemented as intended, and participant perceptions. This included interviews or focus groups with 21 children, 23 school staff and nine trainers, and a school survey. 60% of children in the trial were White; 25% Asian or Asian British; 6% Black, Black British, Caribbean or African; 5% from mixed or multiple ethnic groups and 4% identified as from another ethnic group.  

Key conclusions

MGDAS had no impact on children’s externalising behaviours. After the programme, children in MGDAS schools had similar levels of externalising behaviours compared to their counterparts in the control group. This result has a very low security rating.

MGDAS demonstrated no impact on prosocial behaviour, bullying perpetration, children’s perceptions of the impact of their emotional or behavioural difficulties, their perceived relationships with teachers, their perception of peer support, and their perception of the relevance of schoolwork and their sense of agency over it. It had a small negative impact on children’s internalising behaviour, school attendance, suspensions and likelihood of being a victim of bullying. It had a small positive impact on children’s aspirations and goals. These are secondary outcomes and should be treated with more caution. There is also statistical uncertainty regarding these outcomes.

MGDAS demonstrated a moderate positive impact on teachers’ understanding of the underlying causes of behaviour, their confidence in using trauma-informed practices, the extent to which responses to behaviour used trauma-informed practice, teachers’ empathy and on reducing teacher burnout. Teachers in MGDAS schools were also slightly more likely to report fulfilment from helping others and have positive feelings about their roles. There was no impact on teacher stress from exposure to trauma. These are secondary outcomes and should be treated with more caution, and all of these outcomes are statistically uncertain.

The trial suffered from very high attrition. 49.9% of children in the trial at randomisation were not included in the final analysis. All impact findings should therefore be treated with significant caution.

Teachers’ attendance at training was low. On average, teachers attended only 29% of sessions. High workload, competing pressures, and long and frequent sessions impacted staff attendance. Some staff reported feeling better equipped to support children, while others described a lack of change in culture, policies and practices.

How secure is this evidence?

These findings have a very low security rating. The trial was designed to be large enough to detect meaningful impacts on the primary outcome. However, 49.9% of children in the trial at randomisation were not included in the final analysis. We do not know if the effect found for MGDAS would be the same if the children missing from the final analysis were included. 

Should we fund or deliver MGDAS?

The high level of attrition in the trial severely limits our ability to make a recommendation on whether schools should or should not deliver the programme. 

The evidence still suggests that it is very sensible for schools to be aware of trauma, and carefully consider how to respond to the impacts of trauma among their pupils. However, the limited evidence base on the impact of trauma-informed practice training on pupils’ outcomes means schools should think carefully and cautiously about its adoption when the primary aim is violence prevention. The existing evidence base and new findings from this study suggest three important considerations:

1. Attendance at staff training in MGDAS was low. Average staff attendance across all sessions was 29%, with attendance ranging from 5.7% to 65.7%. For the whole-school sessions, only one school achieved 80% session attendance. In interviews, staff frequently cited the pressurised school context and high workload as barriers to engagement and also perceived the sessions to be too long and frequent. School leaders should think very carefully about whether their staff have the capacity to engage in trauma informed practice training and translate that training into organisational change and the opportunity cost of doing so.  
2. Lack of evidence for impact on pupil outcomes. Including this study, we are not aware of a robust evaluation of school-based trauma informed practice training that has demonstrated a notable improvement in pupil outcomes.  
3. If a school leader’s aim is reducing children’s involvement in violence, there are other interventions with a stronger evidence base. This includes mentoring, social and emotional skills training, sports provision, relationship violence reduction sessions, anti-bullying programmes and therapy. See YEF’s education practice guidance for more information on these strategies.  

What will YEF do next?

YEF has no further plans to evaluate or invest in MGDAS.    

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