School climate policies have, broadly speaking, been analysed in terms of their effectiveness against violence in schools, or from critical perspectives that question the normative nature of their discursive 'truths'. In this paper I propose a complementary approach, inspired by Norbert Elias's processual sociology to address the long-term and unintended directions that school climate policies and laws have taken. Drawing on historical secondary sources from the nineteenth century up the present I demonstrate the spurts of civilizing tendencies that have brought about greater sensitivity to dialogue-based approaches to conflict in schools. I propose that although these policy turns do not occur outside power relations and specific interests (what Elias calls power ratios), the complexity of how they have developed over time cannot be reduced to disciplining or regulatory governance. In this regard, figurational perspectives have a lot to contribute to analyses of school climate specifically, and education policies in general.