Positive Behavioural Interventions and Supports (PBIS)

PBIS is a framework, not an intervention. It organises a school's behaviour support into three tiers: Tier 1 sets universal expectations and reinforcement systems for every student, Tier 2 adds targeted group supports for students who need more, and Tier 3 provides individualised, function-based plans for students whose behaviour persists despite the first two tiers.

The framework's strength is consistency — when every adult in a building teaches and reinforces the same expectations, students stop having to guess the rules. Its common failure mode is stopping at Tier 1: posters and reward assemblies do nothing for a student whose behaviour is maintained by escape from work. PBIS works when the tiers actually escalate to functional assessment and individualised support, not when it substitutes for them.