After working in a variety of education and care settings, in 1999 Dean Cotton pursued his interest in behaviour and started work at a school for children with Social, Emotional and Mental Health (SEMH) needs. During this time, he trained the staff team in positive behaviour strategies resulting in a 95% reduction of serious incidents, exclusions were also reduced to zero.

​Dean completed a Masters Degree in Teaching and Learning at Leicester University and founded Positive Behaviour Strategies Ltd. Dean is a Principal Team Teach Tutor, Independent Researcher, Behaviour Consultant, Conference Speaker in the UK and abroad.​

Dean's talks cover a wide range of topics including:

​Creating a safe learning and emotionally literate environment.

-Understanding behaviour.

-Emotional intelligence.

-Preventing, managing and resolving conflict

-Forms of communication

-Effective post incident learning.

-Policy and documentation.

Dean’s talks are humorous, entertaining and full of useful information.

What do our customers say?

“We unanimously found the review to be extremely beneficial. Dean shared his experience, knowledge and wisdom openly and honestly in order to help us improve”.

“Dean helped us to recognise and celebrate the good work we were doing and to shape our ideas. He was extremely professional, supportive and offered challenge and insight to help develop our reflection and thinking. All of the staff felt empowered, enthused and excited about what we could achieve across our MAT”.

“Too often, external reviews leave staff feeling inadequate and deflated and our experience today was the exact opposite so; on behalf of our schools, thank you”.

​”Without any doubt, I would highly recommend your consultancy and review work to other schools and would be happy for any school to contact us about our experience”.

​”We contacted Dean following a recommendation from a nearby service. From the first contact, our experience was fantastic, Dean was easy to communicate with to arrange details and the work he did on his day consulting with us, gave us all food for thought on the areas that we needed to improve on, but also great confidence in the work we were doing, Dean was insightful, diligent and to the point, we greatly valued his contribution to Homefield College and will certainly use his expertise in the future.

Our courses cover all aspect of managing distressed behaviour including understanding aggression, Behaviour as a language, De-escalation techniques, Environment aspect of behaviour, Post Incident Learning (PIL), Policy and documentation, Behaviour support plans, Recording and reporting, etc.

What are people saying our services?

The training provided by Positive Behaviour Strategies Ltd was like a breath of fresh air in terms of reinvigorating the tutorial team across College. The training was interesting, challenging and fun. Teachers and tutors were asked to reflect on their practices and behaviours and to consider trying new ways of working with students. This training was a fundamental part of the College's achievement of Outstanding in the Ofsted inspection in the area of care, guidance and support offered to students. The tutorial strategy wouldn't have had the positive and lasting impact that it has without Dean and the team.

Angela Foulkes (Vice Principal Students) Barnsley College.

I recommend the superb training provided by Dean Cotton of Positive Behaviour Strategies Ltd. It made a huge impact on the behaviour and well being of children and staff working in our inner city nursery school and children's centre. There has been a significant decrease in serious incidents, and when these happen they are managed very well.

Children and staff are able to resolve issues that led to incidents, using strategies explored in our training. Staff report that Dean's training has made a significant difference to the way they work, more so than any other training they have received.

​I recommend Positive Behaviour Strategies Ltd without reservation.

Julie Morrow (Head Teacher) Stoneygate Children's Centre