SEMH stands for social, emotional and mental health. It’s one of the four broad areas of need in the SEND Code of Practice, so a pupil with SEMH needs has a special educational need in the same way a pupil with dyslexia does. The difference is that SEMH needs usually show up as behaviour, which makes them easy to punish and hard to adapt for.
Good SEMH training helps staff see the need behind the behaviour, then change the room, the lesson and the way they talk so the pupil can learn. Here’s what that looks like.
What is SEMH, and what does it look like in class?
SEMH is an umbrella. Under it you’ll find pupils who’ve lived through trauma, abuse or neglect, pupils with attachment difficulties, and pupils living with anxiety, low mood or other mental health problems right now. Some have a diagnosis. Many don’t.
Most of them find it very hard to put what they need into words, so it comes out another way. A desk goes over. A pupil swears at a supply teacher. Or you get what behaviour specialist Adele Bates calls “the blank”: you introduce yourself and get nothing back, or a grunt if you’re lucky.
It helps to start from the idea that all behaviour is communication. The behaviour still needs a response under your school’s policy. It just isn’t the whole job.
Why does SEMH get in the way of learning?
A pupil who feels unsafe goes into fight, flight or freeze. Adults do too. In that state nobody learns anything new, however good the lesson.
The trigger might be something you’d never guess. Blinds pulled down for a video, so the room goes dark. Being asked to work one to one in a small room with an adult they don’t know. A library, for a pupil whose whole school life has been about failing at reading.
So the most useful question a teacher can ask is “why?” Why did that happen? Did they feel unsafe? Are they scared of failing at this subject? Is someone in the room setting them off? Spend time with the pupil, and ask colleagues who’ve worked with them, now or in the past. Until you know the unmet need, you can’t adapt for it.
If what you learn makes you worried that a child is being harmed, that’s a safeguarding concern rather than a teaching one. Tell your DSL and follow your school’s procedures.
How do you adapt the classroom for pupils with SEMH needs?
Start with the room, because small changes cost nothing. Some pupils need to sit near the door so they know where the exit is. Some can’t bear anyone behind them, so they go towards the back. Some work better by a window, and others find it far too distracting.
The simplest way to find out is to ask. You might say to a class, “We’ll try this seating plan for two weeks, then see how it’s going. If something’s not working for you, come and tell me.”
Watch the small rules too. Asking a pupil to take off their coat or put their bag at the back sounds trivial. For a child who has been homeless, that bag might be the only one they own. You can’t change the school rule, but you can have a quiet word away from the others and agree a minute’s grace before you prompt them.
Why do relationships come first?
Many pupils with SEMH needs have learned that adults come and go, or that adults aren’t safe. So they push you away before you can let them down. It isn’t personal, though it’s very easy to take it that way.
The idea that helps most is “connection before correction”, from the work of Kim Golding and Dan Hughes. Consequences still happen. But if your first contact with a pupil is a sanction, you start from nothing and it only gets harder. Build the relationship first, or at least alongside.
That can take a long time. Adele describes taking six weeks to get one pupil through the library door. With another boy who hated English, she sat in his DT lesson and asked him to teach her how to change a drill bit. Weeks later she could say, “Remember when you helped me with the drill? Can I help you like that with this word?”
What is PACE, and why shouldn’t you start with the P?
PACE is a framework from Dan Hughes that you’ll see used in a lot of pupil referral units and alternative provision. It stands for playfulness, acceptance, curiosity and empathy. Annoyingly for the acronym, you don’t start with playfulness. Cracking a joke at a pupil who’s furious with you can blow up in your face.
Start with acceptance. That doesn’t mean saying the behaviour is fine. It means not meeting shouting with more shouting, and saying something like “I can see you’re having a hard time.” Then curiosity, which works well as “wondering aloud”: “I’m wondering if maths feels hard today.” It gives the pupil something to agree or disagree with, which is much easier than answering “What’s the matter?” Sometimes the answer is simply that they haven’t got a pen.
Empathy comes next. Think about the subject you found hardest at school and imagine being taught it. Playfulness comes last, once there’s some trust. One of Adele’s colleagues defuses angry pupils by quietly asking how many types of cheese they can name. It’s hard to stay furious while you’re thinking about cheddar.
How do you adapt lessons and communication?
When you plan, look first at transitions. Pupils with SEMH needs often struggle with the gear change from lunchtime football to a written task. A short settling activity helps, and so does a quick colour check-in: green for ready, orange for fizzy and unsettled, red for angry, blue for tired or low. It doubles as formative assessment.
A few other moves that work:
- restate your expectations at the start of each lesson, calmly and positively, without threats
- break tasks into small chunks the pupil can finish, because a pupil who expects to fail won’t try
- plan movement breaks, ideally disguised as a job (“Could you take this book back to the library for me?”)
- end with a quick self-assessment, and point out what went well, because many will mark themselves lower than you would
Offer ways to communicate that don’t need talking. At the register, try asking for one word about how they feel instead of “Yes, Miss”. Most days it’s “bored”. Over time, though, it tells you a lot.
What should SEMH training for schools cover?
Classroom technique is only half of it. Ask whether every adult who works with these pupils knows what SEMH is, including lunchtime supervisors and teaching assistants, who often spend the most time with them. Ask whether that training gets refreshed, too, because something learned fifteen years ago is hard to recall with a chair flying at you. A short course such as Adapt learning for SEMH pupils is one way to give the whole team, TAs included, the same grounding.
Think about giving a pupil a key adult who isn’t their teacher. Someone who checks in regularly and can pass on what other staff need to know, so the child doesn’t have to explain their worst week in every lesson.
And look after the staff. This work takes its toll, and some pupils are very good at finding an adult’s sore spots. Supervision, coaching or simply twenty minutes a week to talk it through makes a difference to whether good people stay. Adele’s advice to anyone doing this work is that you’ll sometimes get it wrong, and that’s allowed.
You’ll find more on supporting pupils with additional needs on our SEND topic page.
Adapt learning for SEMH pupils is a short online course for teachers, teaching assistants and support staff, presented by Adele Bates. It covers what SEMH is, adapting the room and your lessons, communication, whole-school approaches and looking after staff, with three modules on building relationships (PACE in practice included). One person can take it alone, or you can share it across a team as part of your school’s SEMH training.