08/08/2026
Imagine if a whole school became Solution Focused.
Not a new behaviour policy.
Not another intervention.
Not another thing for already stretched teachers to do.
A different way of thinking.
Imagine a school built around some simple assumptions:
People have strengths, skills and resources.
Change is always happening.
No problem happens all of the time.
Small changes can make a big difference.
And we don’t always need to understand everything that has gone wrong before we can start building something better.
So what might that actually look like?
Imagine a student has a detention following an incident in class.
The detention still happens. The boundary is still there. The expectations haven’t changed.
But the conversation does.
Instead of spending the detention going over everything that went wrong:
“On a scale of 1–10, where 10 means lessons are going as well as you’d like them to, and 1 is the opposite, where are you now?”
The student says 4.
“What are you already doing that gets you to a 4?”
“When have you been higher than a 4?”
“What was different?”
“What were you doing differently?”
“If you moved from a 4 to a 5, what would you be doing differently?”
“Who would notice?”
“What’s one small thing you could do in your next lesson that might move you towards that 5?”
Same detention. Same boundary. Same expectations. A completely different conversation.
The student leaves not just knowing what went wrong, but thinking about what they can do differently.
Now imagine that thinking across an entire school.
With students. Teachers. Parents. Leadership.
A school as curious about what’s working as it is about what’s going wrong.
Where progress is noticed.
Where strengths are noticed.
Where children have a voice.
Where teachers’ expertise is valued.
Where parents are partners.
What difference might that make to behaviour, attendance, relationships, staff wellbeing and belonging?
Being Solution Focused isn’t about ignoring problems.
It’s about making sure the conversation doesn’t end with the problem.
Imagine if that became part of the culture of a whole school.
Interested in exploring what this could look like in your school?
Family Based Solutions
[email protected]
https://linktr.ee/familybasedsolutions?utm_source=linktree_profile_share<sid=aadc0068-c048-4d17-a2f6-dc2128e9553c
