Fiji may be at a tipping point in how schools respond to growing classroom disruption, a visiting New Zealand principal warned at a trauma‑informed educators’ workshop in Suva yesterday. Lynda Knight, principal of Glenview School in Wellington, told teachers and education professionals organised by Thrive Fiji Trauma‑Informed Consultancy and Care Services that Fiji is confronting the same pattern of disengagement, poor self‑control and rising behavioural incidents New Zealand experienced several years ago.
“We were seeing some big behaviours, and we didn’t really understand what was happening there,” Knight said, describing how New Zealand schools grappled with unexplained spikes in challenging student behaviour. She told the Suva audience that Fiji is “at a place that New Zealand was at maybe about six years ago,” and urged stakeholders to treat behaviour as a signal of underlying issues rather than simply an issue of discipline.
Knight outlined the neuroscience behind that reframing, explaining that stress and emotional dysregulation can shut down the brain’s executive functions—decision‑making and self‑control—making it difficult for children to regulate behaviour or remain engaged in learning. “When they have things going on for them where other parts of the brain are on fire, are dysregulated, it makes it really hard for them to access those executive functions,” she said.
The principal also highlighted shifts in family life that may be affecting children’s emotional development. Pointing to increased technology use by parents, Knight said parent‑child emotional connection is often weakened. “I know if I was a young parent now, I’d probably be guilty of going on my phone and not connecting with the child enough,” she said, adding that reduced connection can compound stress and behavioral problems for children.
Knight offered a practical example of what trauma‑informed approaches can achieve in schools. After training staff to understand brain development and changing management strategies accordingly, one school she worked with reduced recorded behaviour incidents from around 400 a year to just five. “Once our teachers start to understand some of the basic neuroscience about how brains work, they better understand the children and their behaviours,” she said. “We did some learning, we did some studying, we made some changes and as a result of that we cut our behaviour incidents down.”
At the Suva workshop, the message was clear: behavioural issues should not be automatically labelled as “bad behaviour” but regarded as symptoms of stress, trauma and emotional dysregulation that require different responses from schools. The session aimed to introduce educators across Fiji to trauma‑informed strategies that prioritise emotional connection, classroom practices informed by neuroscience, and parental engagement.
As Fiji confronts reports of increased classroom disruption and student disengagement, Knight’s presentation underlines a shift in thinking for educators — from punitive discipline to supportive, brain‑aware interventions. The workshop organisers said the training is part of broader efforts to equip teachers with tools to recognise and respond to trauma and stress in students, although plans to scale such programmes nationally were not announced at the event.