Strict school 'harmful' to some pupils, review says

[6Foot2]

Link: Mossbourne's Hackney school 'harmful' to some pupils, review finds - BBC News

 

Quote

A secondary school in east London celebrated for its high academic results fostered a "particularly harmful" disciplinary culture for vulnerable students, an independent safeguarding review has found.

 

The review, commissioned by the City & Hackney Safeguarding Children Partnership, external, into Mossbourne Victoria Park Academy (MVPA) found that shouting, public humiliation and a lack of support for pupils with special needs took place.

 

It examined 73 accounts relating to MVPA, alongside testimony from parents, pupils, teachers and external professionals.

 

The Mossbourne Federation said it is "committed to doing everything in its power to ensure the best outcomes for every child who attends its schools"....

 

[psydii]

Its made even more damning when you realise that the report is written by one of the people who helped Mossbourne  into existence.

 

I do wonder if they are / going to take a look at the rest of the Mossbourne Federation. I can't imagine the apple has fallen very far from the tree

 

As a side note, I can't find that BBC article in their app, only via the website.

 

 

[TwistedHelixis]

My son dropped a pen on the floor and scraped his chair trying to pick it up, the teacher said he had done it on purpose, which obviously rattled my son, so he answered back saying he hadn't (they were not allowed to answer back), but because he did answer back, the teacher told him to leave the class and go to detention after school, when he refused to go to detention, as he hadn't done anything wrong he was give a week in solitary lessons, basically a hut that you don't leave.

 

My son refused to go back in to school after that.

 

This was a couple of years ago now.

 

I cant even imaging going to a secondary school like that, they had to walk in silence through the corridors etc. There was no middle ground or anyway for a pupil to put their side if they were told off.

 

How to make your childhood memory's a nightmare experience.

[psydii]

That’s awful. Hope they were able to move on and find somewhere more reasonable.

 

This report is so damning, they even throw IT under the bus:

 

“

4.27 The CHSCP initially requested MVPA’s behavioural incident logs in January 2025, although no data was released by the Federation until April 2025. The original dataset shared with me was extremely basic, consisting of a 22,000-page PDF document that listed individual sanctions and rewards. It was unusable for the purposes of detailed analysis, and further to requesting an alternative format, I was subsequently advised that a ‘special database query’ was required and that no staff member was available to recompile it.

 

4.28 I was eventually provided with a CSV copy in November 2025. Whether this

substantial delay reflects weak IT functionality, transparency or internal capacity

issues, MVPA’s arrangements in this regard point towards an inefficient and unagile system.
”

 

though to be fair if they had to redact the entire behaviour log, that could easily be 3 months work, but that  doesn’t excuse taking until November.

 

The federation also comes in for criticism so I wouldn’t be surprised if MVPA gets taken off them.

[psydii]

Wow. @TwistedHelixis

“

6.31 As one senior leader told me, he could totally see a place" where a child would be sanctioned for turning around looking at the clock, dropping something on the floor, or looking out the window”. He argued that failing to sanction these things is "failing children" because it teaches them that it doesn't matter. There was a biblical like sense that ‘fear was the beginning of wisdom’.”

”

[TwistedHelixis]

Quote

6.31 As one senior leader told me, he could totally see a place" where a child would be sanctioned for turning around looking at the clock, dropping something on the floor, or looking out the window”. He argued that failing to sanction these things is "failing children" because it teaches them that it doesn't matter. There was a biblical like sense that ‘fear was the beginning of wisdom’.”

 

When I went to school many many years ago, we were definitely treated like mini adults. At work now, can you imagine being sanctioned for turning round to look at the clock, or looking out the windows. 

[Davit2005]

I wonder how they treat support staff if that is the attitude shown to students.

[jthompson]

As a parent needing to lean heavily into PACE and therapeutic parenting, I find this such uncomfortable reading. How is such an ignorant organisation able to come into existence and staff itself with enough ignorant people so as to persist? I would have hoped that the laws of probability would mean that it would end up employing at least a few people with some understanding that SEND, adverse childhood experiences and childhood trauma are 'things' in the world that can have a bearing on a person's ability to learn.

 

"Neuro-diversity? F*** that, I'm just going to carry on being shit at teaching."

[psydii]

Reading between the lines, such people are not a good cultural fit, so would not be likely to persist within the organisation for very long.

 

As for how they treat support staff, I imagine support staff would wisely say that they are happy and grateful to be working for such a bold and successful school/trust.

[jthompson]

Yeah, to these people, a Victorian attitude to discipline may have the appearance of working, but you really don't want it to. Whenever I see a headteacher boasting about their "zero-tolerance" approach to e.g. behaviour, it makes my eye twitch. It's such an obvious and well documented fallacy.

[psydii]

1 hour ago, jthompson said:

Yeah, to these people, a Victorian attitude to discipline may have the appearance of working, but you really don't want it to. Whenever I see a headteacher boasting about their "zero-tolerance" approach to e.g. behaviour, it makes my eye twitch. It's such an obvious and well documented fallacy.

...except it appears to get the results. If you can get the 'bottom' 15%  out of your classes, then off your books , *and* ensure they underperform where ever they land (outside your Trust), you both juice your numbers,  and lower the  results of your "competition".   Really no downside, because that 15% were going to fail anyway, and who cares if another school has a cohort with disproportionate  additional needs?

[TwistedHelixis]

Quote

...except it appears to get the results. If you can get the 'bottom' 15%  out of your classes, then off your books , *and* ensure they underperform where ever they land (outside your Trust), you both juice your numbers,  and lower the  results of your "competition".   Really no downside, because that 15% were going to fail anyway, and who cares if another school has a cohort with disproportionate  additional needs?

 

This is so true.

One of the primary schools I work for used to make life so bad for special ed pupils, they would end up leaving the school. They would normally go to another school I worked for, which was full of special ed kids, even though it wasnt a special ed school, but they wanted to take these kids in.

 

I have seen both extremes of this issue.

Edited December 10, 2025 by TwistedHelixis

[nicholab]

I can't see anything wrong with strict discipline.  My child is autistic, but I still believe he should have discipline.

[psydii]

19 minutes ago, nicholab said:

I can't see anything wrong with strict discipline.  My child is autistic, but I still believe he should have discipline.

Read the report. It is even-handed in this regard.

[msi_school]

18 minutes ago, nicholab said:

I can't see anything wrong with strict discipline.  My child is autistic, but I still believe he should have discipline.

 

There is a line between strict discipline and abuse. it is good to expect students to conform to the the schools standards and to be receive a reasonable punishment if they don't.

 

As shown above a student should be admonished for looking out of the window or disturbing the class with a chair but for a single incident this should be an in the classroom correction not a major incident.

 

It has been alleged above that students with additional needs where deliberately targeted to force them out of the school which is not only bad for the student but it affects the school they are leaving and the one they are joining.

[6Foot2]

From my personal experience, both at home and at school, I know that overly strict discipline can be incredibly destructive and crushing to a child's spirit.

While my experiences weren't even the worst, they were impactful enough that I would never want them replicated for any other child. My concern is that these methods often teach fear rather than understanding, which ultimately harms long-term development.

[psydii]

I'm not sure that the report quite supports that allegation. It does make it pretty clear that those with SEN  (and black boys) were disproportionately harmed by the implementation of the policies.

While permanent exclusion is the end result of enough behaviour problems, and it follows that SEN/ Black Boys are *likely* to be excluded, that avenue of investigation/discussion wasn't in scope for the report.

Generalising to speak to the wider championing of the sorts of policies that lead to this report being necessary,  IMHO anyone who works in a school that has to pick up the pieces from one of these ultra-strict academies knows the impact they are having.

[jthompson]

4 hours ago, 6Foot2 said:

My concern is that these methods often teach fear rather than understanding, which ultimately harms long-term development.

 

This. That's why I say that whilst it may appear to 'work', you really don't want it to, given that it comes at the cost of children's ability to form healthy relationships throughout their life.

 

In fact, the BBC article even quotes 'healthy fear' as the title of a staff training session, which blows my mind. These people should not be in education.

[psydii]

Probably worth reading Appendix 4 to better understand what “Healthy Fear” was supposed to mean, why it has merit and what the risks are.

 

It strikes me that actually naming their strategy/policy this way set it up, for those less well versed in the theory and nuances, to be execute in the worst possible way.