Thrive Approach: A teacher's guide

What is the Thrive Approach?

The Thrive Approach is a whole-school strategy that supports children’s social and emotional development by helping them understand and regulate their feelings. Rooted in neuroscience and child development theory, Thrive provides educators with practical tools to identify emotional needs and respond with targeted support. It is particularly effective in helping children who show signs of emotional distress or behavioural difficulties, offering both universal and individualised interventions.

At its core, Thrive is based on the understanding that emotional well-being is central to effective learning. When children’s developmental needs are not met—whether due to early trauma, inconsistent attachment, or other challenges—they may struggle to access the curriculum. Thrive helps schools create emotionally safe environments where every child can flourish.

Using online assessment tools, Thrive practitioners identify gaps in a child’s social and emotional development. These assessments generate action plans with activities tailored to the child’s developmental stage. Strategies can be delivered at whole-class level (for example, during PSHE), in small groups, or through one-to-one support.

The approach emphasises relational teaching, recognising the role that consistent, positive adult relationships play in helping children feel safe, connected, and ready to learn. Whether in mainstream or specialist settings, Thrive aims to catch issues early and build strong emotional foundations for learning.

Key Features of the Thrive Approach:

• Rooted in child development theory – Uses neuroscience and attachment models to guide interventions.
• Personalised action plans – Based on assessment data that helps pinpoint emotional needs and track progress.
• Supports whole-school mental health – Combines universal strategies with targeted interventions to build resilience across all pupils.

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What are the Origins of Thrive?

The Thrive Approach is a trauma-sensitive, developmental and dynamic approach to develop the social and emotional skills within the children. It is through this approach that Thrive aims to achieve its goal of a world where the social and emotional needs of children are well understood and met.

Thrive was established over 25 years ago with the sole purpose of providing tools and training to help adults promote the emotional and social development of the young people and children they are working with. Thrive works with local authorities, pre-primary, primary & secondary education settings, health and social care professionals, multi-academy trusts (MATs), and carers and parents. Currently, Thrive is offering a yearly subscription, depending upon the sizes of educational settings.

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What is included in a Thrive session?

Many children face difficulties at school. Some of these difficulties are:

• Difficulty to get settled in the classroom;
• Difficulties with friendships;
• Difficulty in managing strong feelings on their own;
• Difficult situations and trouble at playtime.

These difficulties can result in many different feelings which may seem hard at times. These may cause anxiety, confusion, sadness, frustration, anger and loneliness. To feel this way is normal and will happen with most children. The Thrive sessions promote children's learning at school and help them to manage their feelings. Both secondary schools, primary schools as well as pre-schools use Thrive Approach to make children more emotionally resilient. This makes children better equipped to handle the ups and downs of life.

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How does Thrive help children?

Thrive Online Profiling and Action-Planning Tool provides adults with the required skills, insights and tools needed to help children catch up on any gaps and interruptions they may have due to a challenging childhood. Thrive Online assessments provide an all-inclusive way to measure and monitor children's performance; assess student outcomes and help young individuals in better dealing with various issues in life. According to empirical evidence, the Thrive Approach makes staff feel more capable to manage distressed behaviour. The Thrive Approach provides age-appropriate activities and strategies for adolescence, childhood and early years draws from the fields of attachment theory, established neuroscience, play and arts, development and creativity transactional analysis.

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What are the two main elements of Thrive Approach?

Thrive has 2 main elements:

• The Thrive-Online assessment and planning tool, and
• The Thrive Training and Mentoring for Teaching Staff.

Thrive-Online is a web-based intervention. Thrive supports the individual assessment of social skills and emotional wellbeing based on whole-class screening as well as baseline skills and observed behaviours. Every child’s needs and the ways to address them begin from the targeted, individual action plans, which may be applied from weeks to several years on basis of the individual needs of the child. Education professionals can assess groups of young people against age-related expectations, and recommendations on curriculum strategies, classroom organisation and environmental changes, will be provided to fulfil the learning needs identified.

Childcare settings looking to implement Thrive are suggested to train one (or two for larger schools) staff member at a minimum by sending the staff on the professional training programme. After attending a 10-day training session the staff may use the online tool to guide their work, in class with a small group of children to apply the personally designed action plans into the class.

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What is the impact of Thrive on children and teachers?

The positive impact of Thrive on young persons, children, the environment for children and the communities around them are provided in some studies. These mainly include:

• The Thrive Approach guides class teachers on how to deal with each child’s unique and sometimes challenging behaviour;
• Thrive journey makes children more self-assured and ready to engage with learning while they spend time in school and in after school life;
• It helps to develop resilience in young people;
• It enables adults to prepare young people and children to face emotional ups and downs of life;
• It narrows the gap for vulnerable young people across a range of criteria including self-confidence, attainment, relationships, attendance and behaviour;
• The use of Thrive techniques makes Staffs feel more able to support vulnerable children and to manage unwanted behaviour;
• Thrive gives training for secondary & primary school teachers that work closely with young people and children all through their lives, and it also involves parents in this process;
• Thrive training opportunities offer a targeted intervention for child development based on current neuroscience and attachment research;
• Thrive processes are underpinned by extensive assessment and action planning tool that measures outcomes and charts progress;
• It is considered as an initiative that promotes and supports mental wellbeing in young people;
• Schools have reported many benefits of the friendly environment created as a result of Thrive Approach. These mainly include improved academic results, reduced exclusions and the fewer disruptive situation in class;
• The Thrive Approach may lead to improved staff morale, a calm environment in the classroom and better parent-school relationships.

The Department for Education aims to support schools to develop approaches and build whole school environments where each student can achieve full potential. While discussing the impact of Thrive School Approach, inspectors said that Thrive helps to manage student behavioural difficulties on an individual basis, especially when used for early intervention, helping learners in becoming more open to learning.

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Further Reading on the Thrive Approach

Although research on the Thrive Approach itself is limited, several studies explore its principles—such as supporting emotional skills, developing brain connections through relationships, and targeting individual and identified children. Below are five key papers that investigate Thrive or related interventions, summarizing their findings and relevance to school practice.

1. To What Extent Is the Thrive Intervention Grounded in Research and Theory?
(Gibby-Leversuch, 2020)
This critical review concludes that while the Thrive Approach is grounded in attachment theory—which is evidence-based—the specific application of this theory within Thrive lacks robust empirical backing. It highlights the need for more evaluation of Thrive’s effectiveness on mental health and outcomes for identified children.
Summary: Thrive is conceptually sound but lacks strong direct evidence; more empirical research is needed to support its claims about improving emotional wellbeing and brain development.

2. ‘EPs Views on Thrive’: Educational Psychologists’ Perceptions of the Thrive Approach
(Bonitto, 2019)
Educational psychologists who are Thrive Practitioners value it for promoting understanding of emotional skills and supporting dialogue with individual children. However, concerns were raised about the lack of impact data and the cost of training.
Summary: Thrive is perceived by practitioners to support mental health and relationships in school, though evidence of measurable outcomes remains thin.

3. Family Day Care Educators’ Knowledge, Confidence and Skills in Promoting Children's Social and Emotional Wellbeing: Baseline Data from Thrive
(Davis et al., 2014)
This study evaluated Thrive-based training for educators and found moderate confidence and knowledge in identifying early signs of emotional distress. While promising, it identified areas for development in professional practice and educator-child interactions.
Summary: Thrive training boosts educator awareness of emotional health, but support is needed to translate this into high-quality interactions that benefit identified children.

4. An Evaluation of Survive and Thrive: A 10-week Group Psychoeducational Course for Trauma Survivors
(O'Donald et al., 2024)
While not part of the school-based Thrive Approach, this similarly named intervention echoes Thrive principles by addressing the impact of negative experiences on mental health. It showed improvements in emotion regulation and reduced distress, indicating promise for structured emotional support interventions.
Summary: Targeted emotional skills interventions can help individuals process trauma and improve mental health—principles aligned with Thrive’s support for vulnerable children.

5. Promoting Students’ Emotions and Achievement—Instructional Design and Evaluation of the ECOLE Approach
(Gläser-Zikuda et al., 2005)
The ECOLE approach, like Thrive, integrates emotional and cognitive development. It significantly improved students’ emotional skills and reduced negative feelings during learning, underscoring the value of emotionally informed teaching practices.
Summary: Emotionally supportive instruction enhances achievement and reduces anxiety, aligning with Thrive’s goals of improving emotional wellbeing and learning for all children.

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