‘Student behaviours are too complex, teachers are leaving, everybody is struggling’
We have all heard this narrative many times, from teachers, from school leaders, from parents, from students. As an experienced principal in diverse alternative settings, Perri Broadbent-Hogan has experienced first-hand the challenges of leading in these environments and managing the day-to-day complexities.
“For years I specialised in working with the students who were deemed too challenging, too complex, too unsafe for mainstream education. These young people were completely disengaged and disconnected from school, and their parents were left wondering what do I do now?”
Ms Broadbent-Hogan loved leading the schools she worked at, which had consistent, predictable, reliable learning environments, and relationships that supported everybody to grow. However, the alternative education sector is small, the waitlists are long, and the need everywhere is great. That’s why she made the challenging decision to leave her principal role to help other school leaders and educators support their most complex young people.
“The big challenge I saw as a principal was that all schools have their own unique strengths and challenges, but many professional learning programs were one-size-fits-all, and you could often get a research expert or experienced leader but rarely both.”
This was the motivation for Ms Broadbent-Hogan and her colleagues to set up the Saints Knowledge Institute (SKI), bringing together experts in research and practice to co-design contextualised solutions for schools.
“The reality today is that classrooms are remarkably diverse, and that’s an amazing thing, but we need to equip educators with the resources to meet this diverse need. Students come into our spaces with an array of complexities, and if we aren’t given the strategies to work alongside them effectively, they become more disengaged, challenging behaviours escalate, and everybody’s learning suffers. We want to change this reality,” she says.
For the past three years, SKI has been working with a large outer metropolitan government school with a diverse and complex student cohort. Initial teacher education didn’t prepare staff to co-regulate and build the kind of consistent, predictable, reliable relationships that the students needed to thrive.
Professional Learning and Training at SKI.
This led to increasingly challenging behaviours, with students regularly excluded from class and safety issues in the yard. The school chose to work with SKI to improve student outcomes because SKI’s trainers are experienced leaders, their programs are evidence-based, and they align with High Impact Wellbeing Strategies.
The school’s strong leadership team had a clear vision for success. They worked alongside the SKI team to complement other initiatives, such as improved instructional practices, refined processes, whole school inclusion, safety, and positive classroom management strategies.
After numerous co-design conversations with school leaders, the SKI team started by building the capacity of middle and senior leaders. They did this through a full-day training program on creating team environments of trust, safety, collaboration, empowerment and choice.
This was followed by consultation with the Social-Emotional Learning PLC to design a bespoke SEL curriculum for Year 7 and 8 students. SKI also co-designed a contextually appropriate and effective critical incident response system and supported implementation with leaders.
After the system was implemented, SKI facilitated professional learning for the whole staffing group to grow its understanding and capacity to create regulating and relational classrooms through high expectations and trauma-informed strategies.
School leaders saw their staff changing and becoming a more proactive and less reactive team that implemented consistent relational classroom strategies, and used positive language about complex students.
Importantly, the 2024 School Performance Report showed an increase in self-awareness and self-regulation amongst students. Internal assessment data from their SEL program revealed 95 per cent of students could identify dysregulation in their bodies and had personalised strategies to regulate.
Middle leaders reflected that the students who had been excluded from class most often, now came to their office asking for help co-regulating. In addition, the school identified its work with SKI as a pivotal factor in the significant decrease in classroom exit data from over 1600 in 2023 to under 300 so far in 2025.
Saints Knowledge Institute have worked with a large number of government, Catholic and Independent schools across Australia and internationally.
“What I love most about this work is that every school is different, whether it’s training, coaching, consulting, working with the whole school, leadership or even one staff member, we get to meet our schools where they are at and journey with them on a solution.”
SKI supports schools with diverse challenges such as safely responding to edged weapon violence, avoiding escalation when a student refuses an instruction, forming consistent routines and reactions, and building individual teacher or leader capacity.
“We know the importance of sustainability when it comes to professional learning. Because of this, we offer a range of implementation supports to schools that provide additional avenues for growing the impact of their professional learning.
“We do this through consultancy, staff coaching and an Employee Assistance Program where you always meet with a highly qualified professional who also understands the contextual challenges of schools.”
Despite this success, Ms Broadbent-Hogan says she still sometimes misses the daily joy and energy of the classroom and staffroom but finds the rewards of SKI unbeatable.
“When you step away from the young people and try to scale your impact there’s always that lingering doubt. Sometimes I wonder, is this really the right path, should I just be working directly with students, running a school?
“I was having this existential crisis recently when an email from an AP in another very large and complex government school popped into my inbox. This leader dropped me a note to say, ‘I have been teaching for 17 years, have been to many PDs, what you delivered yesterday is the best I have been to. Everything you presented resonated with what I have experienced. Theory matched the practice. Your delivery was great too. Very obvious that you walk the talk.’”
The challenges in the system remain significant but for the schools partnering with Saints Knowledge Institute, the narrative is changing. Student behaviours are becoming more manageable, their needs are being met, teachers feel confident to stay and everybody is beginning to thrive.
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