Isolation booths, frequent suspensions and strict behaviour regimes look set to be phased out in England as the Labour government shifts focus on how to keep the most vulnerable pupils in school.
Education leaders close to the new government say ministers are planning to change the inspection regime so that all schools are judged on whether they are properly representative of their local community, and aiming to stop schools telling parents their child with special educational needs would be better off at another school, or being repeatedly suspended because they aren’t meeting strict behaviour rules.
Anne Longfield, the former children’s commissioner whose Centre for Young Lives has been working with the Labour education team, said: “Looking at the data and talking to young people it is clear that a large group of kids have been made to feel school isn’t for them and that has to change.
“I’ve talked to kids who weren’t able to cope with all the rules, who kept ending up in isolation, and some children said it was happening week after week.”
Longfield stressed that many schools were already doing “amazing things” to ensure they were inclusive and supported all their children to learn. But she said the largely academic results-focused accountability system, which does not look at things such as whether one school has more pupils with additional needs than another, meant these schools were effectively punished for taking them.
The Tory government’s behaviour tsar, Tom Bennett, is widely expected to exit the Department for Education soon. Bennett has championed a culture of silent corridors and strict sanctions for infringing any school rules, including not having the correct uniform or equipment. He said this weekend that his appointment was “not party political” and he would continue to advise on good behaviour in schools and what children need to succeed for “as long as required”. He said he was contracted to lead the behaviour hubs programme until 2025.
Bennett added: “Schools should try to meet the needs of all students wherever possible. That is a completely different question to whether children should be allowed to behave as they please at school.”
One source close to the Labour government predicted that it would remove funding for the Department for Education behaviour hubs that have rolled out training for schools following Bennett’s strict model.
Last week ministers described “shocking” new data showing that a record 787,000 pupils were suspended in England in 2022-23 as a “wake-up call”. Education minister Stephen Morgan said the government would always support teachers to create calm, safe classrooms, but stressed they were “determined to get to grips with the causes of exclusions”.
Dan Rosenberg, partner and education expert at law firm Simpson Millar, who has represented families unhappy that their child has spent too much time in isolation, said: “In some strict academy trusts I’ve found schools with over 25 pupils who have spent over 40 days of the year in isolation.”
He said children with ADHD or autism (sometimes not yet formally diagnosed) were more likely be sent to isolation rooms repeatedly, as well as children with “a lot going on at home” because they were living in poverty.
Bennett said: “Removal rooms are essential in a school with any level of challenge, so that students who seriously misbehave can be temporarily removed from the classroom to a designated safe, monitored space to calm down, talk to pastoral team members, or carry on with their work away from the lesson they are disrupting.”
Rosenberg said: “One big impact is that they fall behind. They aren’t taught in these rooms, and these are the pupils who really need proper teaching, education and support.”
Rosenberg acknowledged many of these children were challenging to teach, and said teachers must have the freedom to send a child out of the classroom when they were misbehaving. But he argued that allowing pupils to clock up multiple days of isolation only made them more likely to “act up” as they fell further behind, with some refusing to go to school.
“High use of isolation appears to be an effective tool for improving a school’s headline academic results in a short space of time, but at a very big price for every child who ends up being shut out,” he added.
Paul Dix, a former teacher in challenging schools who now trains schools on how to manage behaviour, said: “Labour simply needs to say that an outstanding school is one that succeeds for all of its pupils.
“There are schools fixed-term excluding or isolating hundreds of kids a week and expecting their behaviour to get better … it won’t.”
He added: “By all means have discipline. But there is no need to have cruelty behind it. This sort of thing has to stop.”
