Training & Professional Development
The single biggest in-school factor in pupil outcomes is the quality of teaching, leadership, and support that surrounds every child. That quality…
ExploreAdverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) Training
Staff in every school meet the effects of adverse childhood experiences every day. A child who cannot settle after lunch. A Year 9 pupil whose anger seems to arrive from nowhere. A family that misses every appointment. What is often missing is not care or commitment, but a shared language for what staff are seeing and a consistent way of responding to it.
Below, we explain what our ACEs training covers, who it is designed for, and how it strengthens the work your staff already do.
What Is Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) Training?
Adverse childhood experiences are potentially traumatic events in childhood — abuse, neglect, and forms of household adversity such as parental substance misuse, severe mental illness, domestic abuse, imprisonment, or separation. Research consistently shows that as these experiences accumulate, the likelihood of poorer health, educational and social outcomes rises with them.
Our training translates that research into classroom and corridor practice. It gives staff a clear grounding in what ACEs are, how early adversity shapes behaviour and learning, and what schools can realistically do about it. It is delivered for your whole staff team or for a specific group, and it is built around your setting rather than delivered from a script.
Who Is This ACEs Training For?
It is designed for maintained schools, academies, multi-academy trusts, alternative provisions, SEND units, and independent schools. We deliver to whole staff teams including support staff, site staff and office teams, and we run more detailed sessions for designated safeguarding leads, pastoral teams, SENCOs, senior mental health leads and governors. It suits primary, secondary and post-16 settings, and we adjust the examples and the pitch accordingly.
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What Does Our ACEs Training Include?
We agree the focus with you in advance. A typical session covers the following:
- What ACEs are, where the evidence comes from, and what it does and does not tell us
- How early adversity affects the developing brain, stress response and capacity to learn
- Recognising trauma responses that are commonly misread as defiance, laziness or attention-seeking
- Practical regulation and co-regulation strategies staff can use the same day
- Relational and restorative approaches to behaviour, and where sanctions still have a place
- Protective factors, and the role a trusted adult in school genuinely plays
- Working with families without blame, and knowing when to escalate
- Staff wellbeing, secondary trauma, and protecting your own team
How Does ACEs Training Help Your School, Academy, Trust, or Alternative Provision?
1
Give staff a shared language
When a whole team understands what it is looking at, responses stop depending on which adult happens to be in the room. Consistency is what children affected by adversity need most, and it is the hardest thing to achieve without common understanding.
2
Reduce lost learning
Much of the time lost to behaviour incidents is spent on escalation that could have been avoided. Staff who can recognise and interrupt that cycle early keep more children in lessons, and spend less time on the paperwork that follows an exclusion.
3
Strengthen your safeguarding culture
Understanding adversity sharpens professional curiosity. Staff notice more, record better, and raise concerns sooner — which is exactly what your designated safeguarding lead needs from the wider team.
4
Support pupils with SEMH needs
Social, emotional and mental health needs and early adversity often overlap. Training helps staff separate what is a need from what is a response, so support plans are built on an accurate picture rather than an assumption.
5
Protect your staff
Working closely with distressed children carries a cost. We address secondary trauma and compassion fatigue directly, because a team that is running on empty cannot hold anyone else steady.
6
Move from awareness to practice
Plenty of training leaves staff moved but no clearer about Monday morning. We finish with agreed, specific changes to practice, so the day produces something you can actually see afterwards.
Book a quick, friendly callTwenty minutes with Shaun, our Founder and CEO, to explore how we can help you.
How Our ACEs Training Works
- We talk to you first about your context, your cohort, and what has already been tried.
- We agree the audience, length and focus — from a twilight session to a full training day or a phased programme.
- We deliver the training in your setting, using examples drawn from schools like yours.
- Staff leave with practical strategies and a short set of agreed next steps.
- We follow up with you to see what has held and what needs reinforcing.
What You Get at the End
After the training, you receive:
- A staff-facing summary of the key principles, suitable for sharing with anyone who missed the session
- The agreed changes to practice, written down and ready for your improvement plan
- Practical resources staff can use straight away
- A short written summary for governors or trustees
- Clear recommendations on what to strengthen next
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Key Features of Our Service
Delivered by experienced practitioners
Our trainers have led schools, run alternative provisions and worked directly with children affected by significant adversity. They have had the difficult conversations they are training your staff to have.
Honest about the evidence
ACE scores were never designed as an individual screening tool, and we say so. We are clear about what the research supports, so your staff are not left with a number that predicts nothing about the child in front of them.
Built for your setting
A rural primary and an urban AP need different examples and a different pitch. We tailor the training rather than delivering the same day everywhere.
Why Choose Jarvis Education?
We work only in education. Our associates are former headteachers, senior leaders, designated safeguarding leads and AP practitioners who have carried the responsibility your staff carry now. That matters with a subject like this one — trauma-informed training delivered by someone who has never had to hold a school together on a difficult Monday tends to show. We bring the evidence, but we bring it with a realistic sense of what is possible in a busy school with finite staffing.
Next Steps & How to Get Started
- Speak to one of our experts. We will ask about your setting, your staff and what you want the training to change.
- We agree the audience, format and focus in writing, and confirm a date that works around your calendar.
- Contact us today to discuss how ACEs training can support your school, academy, trust, or alternative provision.
- We are ready to help.
Who We Work With
We support settings of every type across England and internationally.
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