Hi Jodie,
You make some good points, and we'd totally agree that every school should be trauma sensitive, and part of the work we do here is to encourage that. Our aim in seeking to collect ACEs information at school-entry level is to be in a better position to resource and provide targeted support to families outside the school context (by local area, type of need, etc., and utilising nurse-home visiting approaches, for example). Unfortunately, the resources aren't available to establish trauma-sensitive communities (though, this should be a goal), and schools can only do so much when it comes to school-based support for children and their families. So, targeting of family and community services according to need is the approach we envisage. A number of Australian states already do this through collecting information at school entry level using family-stressors/broad adversity indicators. We think that the ACE indicators provide more reliable and researched information than these indicators, when it comes to service provision and support. Moreover, ACEs indicators can provide a very powerful argument for funding for services (by local area, need, etc), given their strong capacity to predict future outcomes. Of course, skill and sensitivity needs to be exercised in how the information is collected and responded to.
So that's our general thinking around this at the moment, and again, we'd agree with you about trauma-sensitive schools. Our focus is collecting ACEs information at school-entry level for family support outside schools in the broader community, where we know what can be done differently to improve outcomes.