Functional Behaviour Assessment in NSW Schools: What Parents Need to Know

Your child is being suspended. Or pulled out of class. Or sitting in the principal's office three times a week. The school says the behaviour is "a choice" or tells you there's no funding to do anything about it. Meanwhile, you know — and the research confirms — that behaviour is almost always communication. Something in the environment is not working for your child.

A functional behaviour assessment (FBA) is the tool designed to figure out what.

What a Functional Behaviour Assessment Is

A functional behaviour assessment is a structured process for understanding why a specific behaviour is occurring — not what the behaviour looks like, but what function it serves for the student. Is the behaviour a way of escaping a difficult task? Getting sensory input? Communicating frustration? Accessing attention?

The FBA looks at the antecedent (what happens before the behaviour), the behaviour itself, and the consequence (what happens immediately after). This ABC framework — Antecedent, Behaviour, Consequence — is the foundation of the assessment.

In NSW, an FBA is typically conducted by:

• A school counsellor or school psychologist (within the public system)
• A behaviour specialist or consultant from the Learning and Support directorate
• An external psychologist or behaviour analyst (privately commissioned)
• An NDIS-funded behaviour support practitioner (for students with NDIS plans)

There is no universal legal mandate in NSW requiring schools to conduct an FBA before implementing discipline. However, the DSE 2005 requires schools to make reasonable adjustments for students with disabilities — and if a student's behaviour is a manifestation of their disability, managing it through suspension alone is arguably a failure to provide those adjustments.

Why FBAs Matter for NSW Students with Disability

In 2023, students identified as receiving disability adjustments accounted for 47.9% of all public school suspensions in NSW. That is a staggering figure for a group representing roughly one in four students. The NSW Department of Education has itself acknowledged this disproportionality as a systemic failure.

When a student is repeatedly suspended for behaviours that are connected to their disability — an autistic student who becomes dysregulated in noisy environments, a student with ADHD who is impulsive during unstructured transitions, a student with anxiety who shuts down or runs from the classroom — suspension removes the child from school without addressing the underlying cause. Each removal is a lost learning day. And it often generates the very referral behaviours it's meant to prevent.

An FBA shifts the question from "how do we punish this behaviour?" to "why is this behaviour happening, and how do we change the environment so it doesn't need to?"

How the FBA Process Works in NSW Schools

A thorough FBA in an NSW school setting typically involves:

1. Define the target behaviour — Precisely and observably. Not "Marcus is disruptive" but "Marcus leaves his seat and vocalises loudly during group reading tasks, occurring approximately 8 times per 45-minute session."

2. Collect data across settings — Observation in multiple classrooms, playground, transitions, and specialist lessons. ABC recording charts completed by multiple teachers. Parent input on home and community contexts.

3. Review existing records — Previous ILP goals, suspension records, incident reports, health care plans, and any existing clinical reports from paediatricians or psychologists.

4. Interview key stakeholders — The student (in an age-appropriate way), parents, classroom teachers, the SLSO, and specialist teachers.

5. Identify the function — Based on the data, what is the behaviour achieving for the student? Common functions are: escape/avoidance, attention-seeking, access to preferred items or activities, and sensory stimulation.

6. Form a hypothesis — "When Marcus is asked to read aloud in front of the class, he vocalises loudly and leaves his seat because this removes him from the aversive task (escape function)."

7. Develop the Behaviour Support Plan — Strategies based on the hypothesis: change the task demands, teach a replacement behaviour, modify the environment, adjust the consequence structure.

The Behaviour Support Plan: What It Must Include

The FBA feeds directly into a Behaviour Support Plan (BSP), which should be documented in or alongside the ILP. A robust BSP includes:

• A clear description of the target behaviour and its function
• Antecedent modifications (changing what triggers the behaviour)
• Replacement behaviour teaching (giving the student a functional alternative)
• Consequence strategies (what happens when the behaviour occurs and when it doesn't)
• Crisis response protocol (what to do if the behaviour escalates)
• Data collection method for monitoring progress
• Review timeline and who is responsible for each element

Schools sometimes produce a BSP that lists consequences without addressing antecedents or replacement skills. This is behaviourally incomplete — it addresses the symptom, not the cause, and produces minimal long-term change.

When the School Won't Conduct an FBA

This is a common frustration in NSW. Schools may claim they lack the capacity, that the student's behaviour doesn't warrant a formal assessment, or that the counsellor's caseload won't allow it. Here's what you can do:

Request it in writing. Send an email to the Learning and Support Teacher (LaST) requesting a functional behaviour assessment and asking for a written timeline. This creates a paper trail.

Reference the DSE 2005. If your child's behaviour is connected to their disability, the school has an obligation under the DSE to provide reasonable adjustments — and without understanding the function of the behaviour, they cannot design effective adjustments.

Commission a private FBA. Behaviour support practitioners — including NDIS registered behaviour support specialists — can conduct FBAs privately. The resulting report carries weight in ILP meetings and can be presented as evidence to support a comprehensive BSP.

NDIS pathway. If your child has an NDIS plan with capacity-building funding, they may be eligible for behaviour support from a registered provider. The NDIS Behaviour Support Practitioner framework requires that any restrictive practices (like physical prompting or time-out procedures) be authorised and documented — which incentivises the NDIS provider to conduct a proper FBA.

Be aware that the NDIS and the school system do not automatically share information. The school is responsible for its own reasonable adjustments regardless of what the NDIS is funding.

NSW vs Other Jurisdictions

In the US, IDEA requires that if a student is removed from the classroom for more than 10 days due to behaviour related to their disability, the school must conduct an FBA and develop a BSP. This is a specific legal trigger with clear timelines. No equivalent statutory trigger exists in NSW.

In the UK, the SEND Code of Practice recommends that behaviour plans are underpinned by assessment of need — but enforcement is similarly complaint-driven rather than automatic.

NSW parents need to be the catalyst. The research is clear: when FBAs are done well and BSPs are faithfully implemented, students with disability show significant reductions in behaviours of concern and improved access to learning. The tools exist. The difficulty is getting the school to use them.

For templates, scripts, and step-by-step guidance on requesting and following up a functional behaviour assessment in NSW, the NSW Disability Support Blueprint covers the full process.

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