PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT FOR SCHOOLS
Two-Day School Refusal & Re-engagement Training
A practical, evidence-informed program for school teams supporting persistent non-attendance, school avoidance and emotionally based school avoidance.
Designed for principals and deputies, guidance officers, heads of student services and wellbeing, inclusion staff, school psychologists and counsellors, attendance teams, and teachers supporting students whose participation in education has become increasingly difficult.
A method, not a collection of strategies
New for 2026, the program has been substantially redesigned. It brings current evidence on attendance, neurodivergence, student voice, environmental barriers, family collaboration, reasonable adjustments and gradual re-engagement into one practical school decision-making method. It is designed as a whole-school re-engagement system, giving schools a shared process for recognising concerns, building a working formulation, coordinating responses and reviewing progress across staff and teams. Rather than teaching a catalogue of causes and strategies, participants learn a repeatable process they can apply to individual students: notice the pattern, understand the barriers, act on the formulation and review what happens next.
The training is built around four practical stages: NOTICE → UNDERSTAND → ACT → REVIEW. Where the initial picture is unclear, participants also learn when further investigation is needed and when it is not.
The aim is not simply to increase attendance. It is to build sustainable participation in education.
What participants learn
Day 1: Understand and formulate
Participants learn to identify meaningful attendance and participation patterns, gather student, family and school perspectives, consider neurodivergence and environmental barriers, distinguish evidence from assumption, and develop a working formulation before deciding what to do.
Day 2: Decide, respond and re-engage
Participants learn to select appropriate adjustments, distinguish access support from participation-narrowing avoidance, plan realistic next steps, work more effectively with families and external professionals, coordinate staff responses and review setbacks without simply increasing pressure.
Topics covered
The program addresses current school attendance patterns and terminology, functions and maintaining factors, student voice, family collaboration, neurodivergence, sensory and executive-function barriers, bullying and belonging, learning mismatch, transitions, reasonable adjustments, gradual re-engagement, professional coordination, setbacks and whole-school consistency.
Clinical diagnosis and treatment remain the role of appropriately qualified health professionals. The training focuses on educational formulation, access, adjustments, coordination and re-engagement within the school context.
Applied case work, not passive PD
Participants work through realistic student cases across the two days. Information is revealed progressively, requiring teams to update their understanding as new evidence emerges and decide what they need to know next, what they should change, and what a meaningful re-engagement step looks like.
The program concludes with a practical case clinic in which teams move from a working formulation to a priority barrier, first intervention, adjustment, re-engagement step, communication plan and review point.
What your team leaves with
Participants leave with a clearer shared language, a repeatable school re-engagement method, practical implementation tools and greater confidence in deciding what to do next when attendance difficulty becomes complex.
“As a Guidance Officer, I enjoyed the practical strategies I can now give to parents.”
Guidance Officer
Feedback from Now Generation school refusal professional development.
Move from attendance crisis to a coordinated re-engagement plan.
Delivery options
The training can be delivered as a two-day program for a single school, a scheduled Gold Coast or live online open workshop, or a network or cluster event. Open workshops will run on selected published dates, while schools and networks can suggest preferred dates for on-site or live online delivery. Shorter professional development, conference speaking, specialist briefings and consulting are also available.
Gold Coast · Brisbane · South East Queensland
Interstate enquiries welcome.
About Dr Lynette Maguire
Dr Lynette Maguire is an educator, researcher and professional-development facilitator whose work spans school refusal and emotionally based school avoidance, youth mental health, neurodiversity, digital behaviour and adaptive learning. She holds a PhD and was awarded a Chancellor’s Medal for her doctoral work, and brings extensive university teaching and applied education experience to the program.
Enquire about training for your school or network
Tell us your location, audience and preferred timing. We can discuss the most appropriate format for your school, cluster or professional event.
Training enquiries: training@nowgeneration.com.au
Parents and carers looking for direct family support should visit School Refusal Recovery.