I recently read on this website that a parent in a Ted Wragg Trust school likened the way their children are coerced and managed in school to the Post Office scandal. I have heard this observation before and indeed other similar ones voiced in educational, psychological and psychiatric circles where notable figures are becoming more and more concerned about the way Trusts are micromanaging their students leading to significant absenteeism and mental health issues for many children.
Common threads with the Post Office scandal are -
Protecting own interests.
Refusal to acknowledge concerns.
Covering up wrongs perpetrated on children e.g. banishing them to windowless cupboards in silence for a whole day and calling it reflection
Complete lack of transparency.
Professor Priscilla Anderson from UCL Institute of Education has already compared schools to ‘echoes of the Post Office scandal’. She writes that parents are blamed and fined for their children not attending school but they are removing their children because schools are punishing failure to learn whilst enforcing petty rules and detentions. Children are routinely excluded from class and sent to isolation rooms in a culture of coercive control.
Children experiencing these punitive behaviour policies are like ‘canaries in a coal mine’ subjected to untried and untested government policies adopted by schools without thought to the ramifications - poor mental health, disaffection and absenteeism.
Dr. Lorna Chessum, Principle Lecturer in education at Brighton writes of ‘unprecedented levels of authoritarianism now in UK schools’. She goes on to say that ‘strict enforcement of uniform punishments for infringements of draconian rules and liberal use of isolation and exclusion have created a harsh culture in many schools. If a rigid and narrow curriculum with reduced opportunities for creativity plus endless testing is added to students’ experiences it is hardly surprising that many are anxious. Such a culture is anti educational and anti learning’.
Professor Diane Reay from Cambridge University has written ‘Sadly the harsh discipline, excessive rules, regimented daily timetable and teaching to the test have been a further deterrent to attendance.
Even Rachel De Souza, the children’s commissioner who was recently in a Ted Wragg Trust school, presumably on a fact finding mission, has this to say -
‘Children are not absent from school because they don’t want to learn. They are desperate to learn but every day thousands of children find themselves without the support that they need to engage in education and attend school’.
It has been some time now since I first contacted members of the Ted Wragg Trust with these very concerns. I am heartened to see that the concerns are now gaining traction around the country and need to be addressed both at national and local levels.
Some TW schools listened last year at the sessions and made minor changes. That was good. Some schools, like West Exe did not and seem to have doubled down. According to many parents and carers they are punishing the children more than ever even for the most minor transgression.
Dr. Naomi Fisher, a clinical psychologist specialising in trauma, autism and alternative approaches to education, has essentially renamed the term ‘Behaviour Policy’ to ‘Compliance Policy’. She’s right. Most of the ‘behaviours’ that children are routinely punished for are absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with behaviour. It is about compliance. Having the wrong shoes on isn’t a behaviour issue, it’s about complying and in the end shoes don’t make a blind bit of difference to learning ability.
Until the Trust management itself takes seriously their responsibility and addresses these issues no real change for the better can be effected. Many children are already leaving Ted Wragg schools so much worse off than when they entered, many long before Year 11.
What an indictment.
So, Moira, Tim, Trustees.
STOP PUNISHING CHILDREN FOR THINGS THAT DON’T MATTER.
Until next time.
Rosie Cook
March 2024
"This report takes us for absolute fools...." read more
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