Functional Behaviour Assessment in South Australia: A Parent's Guide

When a South Australian school calls to report that your child is "having behaviours" — disrupting the class, refusing to work, leaving the room, or escalating to physical responses — the conversation often focusses on the behaviour itself. What happened. How many times. What the school is doing about it.

What that conversation rarely centres on is the question that actually matters: why is the behaviour happening?

A Functional Behaviour Assessment (FBA) is the structured process for answering that question. It's used in South Australian schools — and in SA's equivalent terminology — to understand the function a behaviour is serving, so that the support plan addresses the cause rather than just managing the symptom.

What a Functional Behaviour Assessment Is

An FBA is an investigation into the relationship between a student's environment, their disability or developmental profile, and their observed behaviour. It identifies:

• The antecedents — what consistently happens before the behaviour occurs (triggers, settings, times of day, specific demands, sensory conditions)
• The behaviour itself — described in precise, observable terms, not labels ("he hits when asked to transition from maths to writing" rather than "he's aggressive")
• The consequences — what happens after the behaviour, and whether those consequences inadvertently reinforce it (being removed from an overwhelming classroom can function as a reward if the classroom was the problem)

The output is a hypothesis about the function of the behaviour — typically one of four: to obtain something (attention, a preferred item or activity), to avoid or escape something (a difficult task, sensory input, social pressure), to communicate something (especially in students with limited verbal communication), or driven by sensory regulation needs.

Who Conducts an FBA in SA Schools

In South Australian government schools, an FBA can be initiated and conducted by several people, depending on the complexity of the situation:

Classroom teacher and inclusion coordinator — For lower-level concerns, the classroom team observes and documents behaviour patterns, interviews the student and parents, and reviews existing data to form a hypothesis. This is sufficient for developing an initial behaviour support plan.

Department for Education Student Support Services (SSS) — For complex or serious behavioural concerns, a referral to the SSS team brings in a departmental behaviour support coach, school psychologist, or speech pathologist. However, SSS access is triaged, and individual referrals are not available on demand — waiting periods can be significant.

Private behaviour support practitioners — Families with NDIS funding can use their child's NDIS capacity-building supports to engage a private Positive Behaviour Support (PBS) practitioner who can conduct an FBA on school grounds. Access to school grounds for external providers requires principal approval and a formal license agreement, but it can be arranged.

NDIS-funded behaviour support plans — For students with complex needs who are NDIS participants, a Behaviour Support Practitioner can produce a formal behaviour support plan under NDIS requirements. This plan can be shared with the school and should be referenced in the One Plan.

The Connection to the NCCD Framework

Under SA's NCCD framework, behaviour-related support sits within the social-emotional disability category. Students who require significant behavioural adjustments are categorised at Supplementary, Substantial, or Extensive levels — and the NCCD category determines the disability funding loading the school receives.

An FBA is directly relevant to accurate NCCD categorisation. If a student is consistently presenting with significant behavioural responses and no FBA has been completed, the school may be making adjustments based on incomplete information — or worse, implementing reactive responses (exclusions, time-out, frequent calls to parents) rather than the proactive, function-based interventions that would actually reduce the behaviour.

Under the Disability Standards for Education 2005, schools are required to make reasonable adjustments to enable a student with a social-emotional disability to participate in education. Disciplinary exclusion is not a reasonable adjustment. Behaviour support, informed by an FBA, is.

What the FBA Process Looks Like Step by Step

1. Referral and data gathering — The school documents existing incidents using ABC (Antecedent-Behaviour-Consequence) logs over 1-3 weeks. Teachers, SSOs, and parents contribute observations.

2. Interviews — The practitioner interviews the student (where possible), classroom teacher, SSO, and parents. The goal is to identify patterns that ABC logs alone may miss.

3. Direct observation — Where possible, the practitioner observes the student across multiple settings: structured academic tasks, transition times, unstructured play, and activities known to be challenging.

4. Hypothesis development — The practitioner synthesises the data into a functional hypothesis: "We believe the student engages in this behaviour because it allows them to escape unstructured peer interaction, which is a source of anxiety."

5. Behaviour Support Plan development — Based on the hypothesis, a plan is developed that includes:

   • Proactive strategies (modifying the environment or the task demands that trigger the behaviour)
   • Teaching replacement behaviours (what the student should do instead)
   • Reactive strategies (how staff respond when the behaviour occurs, in a way that doesn't reinforce it)
   • Crisis protocols where relevant

6. Documentation in the One Plan — The behaviour support plan, or its key strategies, should be embedded in the One Plan's "Aims and Goals" and "Support" screens so that every teacher who interacts with the student is working from the same framework.

How Parents Can Drive This Process

Schools under pressure sometimes skip the FBA and go straight to reactive management — additional restrictions, increased supervision, or informal pressure on parents to "look at a different setting." If your child is having repeated incidents and no FBA has been initiated, you can request one directly.

Put the request in writing. Frame it as: "Under the Disability Standards for Education 2005, [child's name] has a right to reasonable adjustments that address their disability-related needs. I am requesting a Functional Behaviour Assessment to understand what is driving the current behaviour so that a proactive behaviour support plan can be developed and embedded in their One Plan."

If the school does not have access to SSS support in a timely way, you can ask whether the NDIS can fund a private PBS practitioner to conduct the assessment, and whether the school will facilitate access under the standard non-education service provider protocol.

The 2024–2025 SA Reforms and Exclusionary Discipline

The SA Department for Education revised its Suspension, Exclusion, and Expulsion (SEE) procedures in 2024–2025 to give staff better guidance and reduce the use of exclusionary discipline for students with disability. The principle is clear: a student whose "behaviour" is a manifestation of an unmet disability need should not be suspended; they should be assessed and supported.

If your child has been suspended multiple times without a completed FBA, that's a significant gap in the school's compliance with DSE 2005 obligations. Document it in writing and raise it at the One Plan review.

The South Australia Disability Support Blueprint includes specific scripts and templates for requesting behaviour assessments, pushing back on exclusionary responses, and translating FBA recommendations into enforceable One Plan adjustments.

The Bottom Line

A Functional Behaviour Assessment in SA schools is the evidence base for behaviour support. It asks why the behaviour is happening, not just what the behaviour is. Without this foundation, schools tend to respond reactively — which often worsens outcomes. Parents can request an FBA directly, reference their rights under the DSE 2005, and insist the findings are embedded in the One Plan as specific, proactive adjustments rather than generic management instructions.

See more Australia guides →