A school in Yorkshire put a pupil in an isolation booth away from the classroom for more than half an academic year, the BBC’s File on 4 Investigates has learned. The child was one of 23 at Outwood Grange Academy in Wakefield who spent more than 20% of their days in the booths in one of the past two academic years.
The school is run by a trust that has previously faced a legal challenge to its use of isolation to manage pupil behaviour. One former student, who we are calling Ben, described how pupils were seated in booths with plastic dividers on the sides, watched by cameras. They were made to sit in silence and banned from even looking around the room.
“A Yorkshire pupil spent over half the school year in an isolation booth at Outwood Grange Academy, BBC investigation finds.”
Ben was isolated 58 times in 2023-4 – one of his final years at the school – usually for a full day. He said he was often given no work, trivial tasks such as a word search, or work which was too hard – but not appropriate material which could occupy him for the full day. This was despite Outwood Grange Academies Trust – which runs the school and 40 others in the north of England – changing its policies in 2019 to say that students should be given meaningful work. The trust had been threatened the previous year with a judicial review by a student who had spent 35 days in isolation, but said it had planned…
Outwood Grange Academy said students are only sent into isolation after multiple warnings and the policy has successfully improved behaviour. Government guidance says isolation, which it calls “internal exclusion”, should only be used as a last resort, but one study found it is common. An analysis by education consultants The Key Group found 18% of students at hundreds of secondary schools using the practice were isolated at least once during the academic year.
The findings underline growing concerns about how “no excuses” approaches to discipline are being implemented in schools across England. A safeguarding review last year found an east London school’s zero-tolerance policy involved pupils being routinely humiliated by shouting and prioritised control above all else, leaving some children with lasting psychological harm. Another trust in Cornwall – whose discipline policy has been criticised by parents – is considering whether its schools should be run by other trusts.