“It came to a head when he was excluded for half a day, a day, two days, then for nearly a week,” Lisa Seagrave recalls. “The teachers were scared of him and didn’t know how to handle him. The head thought it was my fault.”

Ms Seagrave is a mother of an adopted child, who was forced to pull her son out of school due to a lack of awareness among staff of so-called attachment disorder.

The issue is often associated with children who have undergone trauma prior to entering into an adopted family and who find it difficult to form relationships with others. It has led the charity Adoption UK to partner with the NAHT headteachers’ union in a bid to raise awareness of the disorder among teachers and help them better manage children who may be affected by it.

‘The new school was willing to change his environment to prevent his behaviour being triggered’

Ms Seagrave said that it wasn’t until she moved her son to another mainstream school, which had staff who were better trained to handle his outbursts, that she started to see progress with his behaviour.

“I was beginning to doubt my own parenting and started to think I was making things worse,” she says. “His emotional age had regressed by about nine months. It was really horrible. But it all changed with the new school. They were willing to change his environment to prevent his behaviour being triggered.”

If left unaddressed, the problems around attachment disorder can have a detrimental impact on adopted children’s education. According to Adoption UK, less than half of adopted pupils reach expected levels at key stage 2 in 2013, compared with three-quarters of all children.

The problem is carried into secondary education. Government figures show that less than a quarter of adopted pupils secured five or more A*-C grades at GCSE, including English and maths, in 2015, whereas the figure among all students was 57.1 per cent.

Neglect, violence and abuse

Lisa Rutter-Brown, deputy head of Kingsmead Primary School in Northwich, Cheshire - who is an adoptive parent herself and has been trained to be “attachment aware” - believes it is important for teachers to understand the disorder and what can trigger bad behaviour for looked-after children.

“Many children who have been adopted have had a very traumatic start to life, they may have been neglected, suffered violence or come from homes with a background of drug or alcohol abuse,” she says.

“Their brains become hardwired through the neglect, meaning their attachment is very insecure. As a result, they need constant attention and they will get it either through positive or negative behaviour. It can be easy for teachers to think that they are just very naughty children.”

Having a designated teacher in school who is trained to be attachment aware and who can disseminate that information to other members of staff is crucial to help both adopted children - and to prevent their behaviour disrupting other pupils in their class.

The NAHT has produced guidance for school leaders to gain a better understanding of the difficulties that adopted children face in school. Russell Hobby, general secretary of the NAHT, says that schools can often lack such knowledge. “What children have experienced at home will affect how they behave in school and interact with other children and adults,” he says.

“By knowing the signs around attachment, things that can trigger challenging behaviour and potential ways to make the school environment more adaptable, school leaders can help all children to get the most out of their time at school.”

@RichardVaughan1