Success Stories: Sacred Heart Primary School

How Team Teach and PBL can be used together as complementary approaches for effective behaviour support.

• • Name: Sandy Morgan

• • Role: Innovation & Change Leader

• • School: Sacred Heart Primary School

• • Location: Diamond Creek, Melbourne, Australia

About Sacred Heart Primary School

Sacred Heart Primary School is a mainstream primary school and a part of Melbourne Archdiocese Catholic Schools (MACS).

The school currently supports 180 students from Foundation through to Year 6. Enrolments are expected to continue to rise, with plans to add another class in 2026.

There are a high number of students with additional learning needs.

Benefits of choosing Team Teach

Leaders at Sacred Heart Primary School chose Team Teach to help them further develop a safe, consistent, and respectful approach to behaviour support.

Sandy explains, “We were looking for a flexible framework that would complement our existing PBL approach, that placed an emphasis on proactive de-escalation strategies and restorative practices.”

Staff felt that the Team Teach ethos and principles equipped them with practical strategies to build strong, trusting relationships, ensure dignity and understanding for every student, and foster a positive, cohesive whole-school culture of behaviour support.

The objective

To create a consistent approach across a large and expanding team, using a framework that would complement the PBL approach.

Background

Staff at Sacred Heart Primary School were already using the PBL tiered approach to behaviour support.

Post-COVID, staff noticed a change in the student demographic and identified changing behavioural and regulation needs within the student body.

Challenges

Leaders were keen to increase staff buy-in around their approach to behaviour support to ensure consistency at every level and to increase staff wellbeing.

The school supports children from a diverse demographic, with students from both suburban and rural areas, all of whom had widely divergent experiences during COVID lockdowns.

Aims

The aim was to create a sustainable, shared approach to behaviour support that aligned with the PBL framework and that could be understood and used by everyone at Sacred Heart Primary School.

Solution

Central to the school’s strategic vision was embedding Team Teach and PBL principles, to create a future-focused, inclusive school that could meet individual students’ needs.

As Sandy explains, “Three staff members undertook Team Teach Intermediate Trainer training, enabling us to disseminate Level 1 training to the entire teaching, non-teaching, and support staff body. Having in-house trainers has facilitated a sustainable, consistent, and responsive approach to support.”

Calm spaces were set up in classrooms, and staff collaborated to create structured de-escalation and response protocols.

The results

Team Teach training has resulted in a substantial reduction in behaviour incidents. It has also had a positive impact on staff confidence and wellbeing, students’ emotional regulation and resilience, and the overall behaviour culture of the school.

Sandy highlights the positive impact that Team Teach training has had on the entire school community:

• • Staff buy-in: Staff better understand the ‘why’ behind behaviour and are able to use early interventions and proactive strategies to de-escalate situations. Improved confidence has also positively impacted staff wellbeing.

• • Consistency and sustainability: Having in-house trainers means that leaders can be responsive to need, and ongoing training ensures that all team members are equipped with the knowledge, skills, and understanding required to support behaviour effectively.

• • Reduction in behaviour incidents: When triangulating data from a range of recording and reporting systems, leaders highlight fewer behaviour incidents and early identification of students with higher behaviour support needs.

• • Increase in emotional regulation and resilience: Due to improved relationships and understanding of behaviour, students are better able to regulate their own emotions.

Next steps

Sandy and the team at Sacred Heart Primary School are a leading example of effective, inclusive behaviour support.

They are continuing to refine and embed PBL and Team Teach strategies through ongoing training, including for new staff who have recently joined, and by developing resources using the wide range of content available from Team Teach.