The neuroscience of belonging, behaviour, attendance, disengagement and re-engagement, plus whole-school reporting done for you.
From Early Signals to Proactive Evidence Based Action
"The attendance officer sees the pattern once it is already a pattern. The behaviour officer sees the incident, not what led to it. By the time it reaches the principal's desk, the full picture has arrived too late to act on early."
Together they bring the neuroscience of how the brain learns, regulates and connects into direct, practical dialogue with what belonging, engagement and attendance actually look like in a school day — joined in Q&A by school leaders sharing practice from the ground.
Our promise to you
By 3.00 pm, you will be able to tell a one-off behaviour incident from a signal of something more, and respond to each differently. You will understand the neuroscience of learning, and what drives belonging, engagement, attendance and re-engagement, not just what changed, but why.
See earlier. Understand why. Act in time. Measure impact. Improve continuously. Repeat.
That is not a slogan, it is the model this whole day is built on, grounded in the neuroscience and evidence you will hear from Dr Mark Williams OAM and Nikki Bonus. It does not stop when the day does. The same cycle runs through the new automated reporting for your school every day after, triangulating attendance, belonging, wellbeing, engagement and student voice in real time, so the heavy lifting of analysis is done for you, not by you. Because it starts with student voice collected in an evidence based way, it is preventative and protective, not just a record of what has already happened. For school leaders, that means the evidence informed decisions you are already being asked to make are surfaced and ready to act on, without becoming one more thing to manage. You see the whole student, the whole class, cohorts and the whole school in real time, and more than that, you understand why, early enough to intervene. You will also be among the first to see what is next: the new whole school reporting and surveys, and the new online professional learning framework Dr Mark Williams OAM and Nikki Bonus have built together, 26 modules connecting the neuroscience of learning with whole child practice, from the classroom through to system leadership.
Where does the story really start?
Education does not lack student data. Schools already collect plenty of it—attendance, behaviour, academic results, wellbeing, survey responses and learning support records. The challenge is that the information is often fragmented, retrospective and viewed in isolation. As a result, a young person can be reduced to a single data point, long after the first signs of meaningful change appeared.
The share of Australian students who say they do not feel they belong at school, 2003 to 2022 (OECD, PISA), a trend consistent with declining student belonging seen across many OECD countries over the same period.
The 2025 national attendance rate for Years 1 to 10, with only 62.1% of students attending at or above 90% of the time, still below pre COVID levels.
A linked data study published by the UK Department for Education and the University of Cambridge in August 2026 found that students moving from strongly agreeing to strongly disagreeing that they belong at school showed a statistically significant drop in attainment of around 8 points on the Attainment 8 measure, roughly equivalent to dropping a full grade across eight GCSE subjects. Separately, an international meta analysis of 51 studies covering more than 67,000 students found low belonging predicts absenteeism, disengagement and dropout. This is UK research, not Australian, but it confirms exactly the pattern this day is built around: belonging is a leading indicator with a measurable downstream effect on attainment.
No single role sees the whole picture
Support teams see one part of the picture, school leaders another. This session is built to close that gap.
Attendance officers
See the pattern only once it is already a pattern, after the roll has already recorded the decline.
Behaviour officers
See the incident, but not what led to it in the days or weeks before.
Learning support staff
See the referral, but not the earlier signal that came before it.
Principals and school executives
See the whole picture eventually, often too late to intervene early.
"By the time a teacher is dealing with serious disruption in the classroom, we are often looking at the end of the story rather than the beginning. Behaviour is highly visible. Changes in a student's sense of belonging, engagement or readiness to learn can be much harder to see."
"Attention drives information into working memory. We are not aware of anything unless we actually attend to it. What you hold in working memory long enough gets transferred to a temporary store, and then to long term memory during sleep."
Five sessions, one connected evidence base
The day is built around five sessions that move from the neuroscience of learning itself, through belonging and connection, the neuroscience of emotion and emotional literacy, behaviour as a signal rather than a starting point, and the whole school reporting that brings it all together. Four of the five sessions are grounded entirely in neuroscience and school practice.
Arrival, registration and coffee
Welcome and opening
Karen Robertson opens the day and delivers the Acknowledgement of Country.
Session One
How the Brain Learns
This session provides the foundation for everything that follows: understanding how the brain processes information, forms neural connections and builds lasting learning, as well as the neurological and environmental conditions needed for attention and memory to develop.
Table discussion: leaders map where these conditions are, and are not, currently present across their own school day.
Short break
Session Two
Belonging, Connection and Why Attendance Comes Second
Why connection, safety and belonging are essential conditions for attention and learning—not outcomes of attendance—and why student voice is the clearest early indicator of all three.
Paired discussion: participants work through real, de-identified attendance patterns and identify what may be sitting underneath them.
Working Lunch
Patterns, Signals and the Reporting in Practice
This session is a facilitated walkthrough of real, de-identified student data, followed by a hands-on demonstration of the new automated, role-based reporting. Participants will see the reporting in action and explore how it aligns with the School Excellence Framework. The session concludes with an open Q&A with school leaders already using Life Skills GO across their schools, including Stephanie Giles, Claudia Bou-melhem and Kristy Jubb.
Session Three
The Neuroscience of Emotion and Emotional Literacy
How emotion is processed in the brain and body, and why emotional literacy, the capacity to recognise, name and communicate emotion, is a skill that can be taught rather than an outcome left to chance.
Participants will gain an understanding of how the brain and body process emotion and why emotional literacy—the ability to recognise, name and communicate emotions—can be explicitly taught rather than left to chance.
Short break
Session Four
Behaviour as a Signal and the Path to Re-engagement
In this session, participants will explore how to reframe behaviour as a signal rather than a starting point, applying their understanding of learning, belonging, emotion and regulation to support students, staff and families to reconnect after conflict or disconnection.
Small group scenario work: participants apply the day's framework to a real school based case.
Session Five
Dynamic Reporting: Data That Works For You
Discovery session: participants will explore the new whole-school, automated, role-based reporting available from next year. The reporting brings student voice, wellbeing, attendance, behaviour and learning information together in one live view—without adding to staff workload.
Practical planning: participants begin mapping how to set their school up for dynamic reporting in the year ahead.
Closing reflections and key takeaways
"About 60% of what we do is ritual, we do it automatically, without thinking about it. Our brains are set up to do that because working memory capacity is so limited. We need to make sure those habits are positive habits rather than negative habits."
"When you are in the fight, flight, or freeze response, you narrow your attention. You narrow your focus and you are not learning during that period because all you are doing is reacting to what is actually around you."
What you'll leave ready to do
- Distinguish between a one-off behaviour incident and a signal of something more—and respond appropriately to each.
- Explain, with evidence, why belonging and connection support attendance rather than simply follow it.
- Use student voice, teacher observation and school data as three distinct but complementary sources of insight.
- Apply an understanding of stress, attention and emotional literacy—and recognise how these capabilities can be explicitly taught.
- Use the new automated reporting to access role-relevant information without adding to your workload.
- Develop a clear plan to strengthen earlier identification and support across your school next year.
Who it's for
Principals and school executives, attendance officers, behaviour officers, learning support staff and educators. The day opens and closes on what school leaders need to decide, while the middle gives every role concrete, practical proof of how this changes their day-to-day work, without adding to it.
Schools would get the most benefit if they send a team – discounts apply.
Grounded in what is already happening in real schools, not theory
"Life Skills GO integrates with all of our other existing systems. The system actually lifts up those invisible students, those masking students to the right people so that you're getting information. And the number one thing that we hear is: 'We had no idea that was going on for that young person.'"
"Traditionally we're very reactive. Something happens and then we all react. Whereas I think now in particular our approach needs to be as proactive as possible, and try and get in front of it."
"That big picture and that real full picture is something that I think can't be optional, if you want to be proactive."
"I just felt I was still presuming things and making assumptions. And if someone was to come to me and say, why did they do that? I didn't have anything to stand on, whereas I feel like now I can see, you know, there's a pattern of something."
Read the full stories from Maronite College of the Holy Family and Shortland Public School, and more, at lifeskillsgo.com/casestudies.
Assessed, listed and integrated with the platforms and government bodies that matter most to schools
AssessedSafer Technologies 4 Schools (ST4S)
Assessed by Education Services Australia under the ST4S framework.
Learn more →
ListedARC, Victorian Department of Education
Listed on ARC, the Victorian Department of Education's catalogue for Victorian government schools.
Learn more →
Quality AssuredStudent Wellbeing External Programs Catalogue
Listed on the NSW Department of Education's Student Wellbeing external programs catalogue, quality assured for use in NSW public schools.
Learn more →
ListedACER Wellbeing Program Guide
Listed on the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) Wellbeing Program Guide, a national directory of quality school-based wellbeing programs.
Learn more →Online Learning Tools Panel
Life Skills GO is part of NSW DoE Online Learning Tools Panel.
Online Learning Tools Marketplace catalogue →
Sentral
Integration Partner
School Bytes
Integration Partner
Opening the day
Karen Robertson
Karen Robertson is CEO of Life Ed Australia and Vice President of the Australian Parents Council, with more than three decades of experience in education leadership, policy and program innovation. She is a recognised voice in children’s health, wellbeing and digital safety, contributing to national policy discussions, Senate inquiries and global education networks. Karen is passionate about translating evidence into action and building partnerships that create meaningful, lasting impact for children and young people.
Led by a neuroscientist and a practitioner who has spent two decades inside Australian schools
Dr Mark Williams OAM
Dr Mark Williams OAM is a cognitive neuroscientist and former MIT researcher whose work focuses on how the brain drives decision making, memory, focus, resilience and connection. A former university professor with more than 25 years of research and teaching experience and over 70 published scientific papers, he has presented to corporate leaders, government bodies and universities across five continents. In 2026 he featured on 60 Minutes' Brain Drain episode, and has been interviewed by major Australian and international outlets. At this session, Dr Williams brings the neuroscience of learning, attention and regulation directly into the classroom and staffroom, translating the evidence into what school leaders and educators can do differently on Monday morning.
Nikki Bonus
Nikki Bonus is the Founder and CEO of Life Skills GO, an Australian-built, evidence-led early identification, engagement, learning and school improvement platform. Before founding Life Skills GO, Nikki spent 15 years working directly inside Australian schools delivering social-emotional learning programs, and has now spent more than two decades ensuring every child is seen, safe, heard, connected and capable, regardless of background, identity, postcode or circumstance. Life Skills GO was co-designed over nine years in direct partnership with more than 1,000 Australian schools, and its more than 18 million student check-ins form one of Australia's largest real-time evidence bases on student wellbeing. At this session, Nikki works alongside Dr Williams to translate the neuroscience into practical, whole school approaches for belonging, engagement, attendance, attainment and thriving.
School leaders joining the open Q&A
Stephanie Giles
Stephanie Giles is Deputy Principal at Guildford West Public School and has worked across a range of settings, including primary schools, support classes, SSPs, and has lectured in the area of special education at university. She has expertise in special education, trauma-informed education and whole-school wellbeing. She joins the open Q&A to share how early signals show up in practice.
Claudia Bou-melhem
Claudia Bou-melhem is Head of Wellbeing K-12 at Maronite College of the Holy Family. She joins the open Q&A bringing a school leader's perspective on engagement, belonging and what early signals look like across a whole-school setting.
Kristy Jubb
Kristy Jubb is Relieving Deputy Principal at Westmead Public School, a large primary school with an enrolment of approximately 1,050 students, and also serves as Assistant Principal, Curriculum & Instruction with a focus on learning and support. She has worked for over 20 years as a teacher and executive staff member in schools across South Western Sydney. Kristy has a passion for student wellbeing and has been leading the implementation of Life Skills GO in her school. She joins the open Q&A to share how early signals show up in practice.
Conference pricing
Available until Monday, 12 October 2026.
Full-day access to all five sessions.
Register three or more people from your school or organisation and receive 25% off your booking.
Please note: Conference registrations are non-refundable.
Questions before you register
No. Four of the five sessions are grounded entirely in neuroscience and school practice, with no product content at all. Session Five specifically introduces the new automated reporting available to schools, so you can see it and decide for yourselves whether it fits.
An opportunity to participate online, including asking questions of the presenters is available.
Unfortunately, we will not be able to provide a recording to those unable to attend.
The day runs 9.30 am to 3.00 pm, with each session building on the one before it, so attending the full day gets you the most out of the sequence.
Reserve your school's place
Seats are limited to keep the room genuinely interactive. Bring your attendance officer, behaviour officer, learning support lead and school executive together for the day.