Mossbourne Academies: investigations into alleged emotional harm and abuse. Why are needlessly strict academies unaccountable?

[ParentOfOne]

The Guardian has published a story https://www.theguardian.com/education/2024/dec/07/london-academies-emotional-harm-mossbourne-schools-observer-investigation

about allegation of emotional harm and other forms of mistreatment at "one of the country's leading academy trusts", which runs the following schools in Hackney, North London: https://www.mossbourne.org/our-schools/

It is a follow up to a similar story, on the same topic, published a couple of weeks ago: https://www.theguardian.com/education/2024/nov/23/teachers-at-mossbourne-academy-in-hackney-screamed-at-and-humiliated-pupils-say-angry-parents

The previous story was based on testimonials from 30 parents, but now 70 parents, more than 30 former students and eight former teachers have come forward

"A dossier of allegations, shared with the Observer and sent to the education secretary, Bridget Phillipson, included Mossbourne teachers being trained in “healthy fear” and “screaming” sometimes “centimetres apart” from children’s faces, several reports of children fainting in line-ups while being shouted at, and children with special educational needs and disabilities (Send) being punished unfairly and “pushed out” to other schools. Many former students said they had suffered mental health issues due to being afraid in school which had lasted long after they left."

Here there were some discussions about how notoriously strict these schools were https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/secondary/5019841-mossbourne-community-academy-any-experiences but no one mentioned this kind of emotional abuse.

My opinion remains that:

• I hate how so many schools have become academies. That's a backdoor privatisation, with teachers being paid less, while the CEOs of these academy trusts earn more than many University vice-chancellors
• I hate that academies are de facto unaccountable to anyone
• It is false that academies do a better job. Some work well, some don't, but lack of transparency and accountability remain big issues. E.g. see academic research by the LSE https://www.lse.ac.uk/social-policy/Assets/Documents/PDF/Research-reports/Academies-Vision-Report.pdf .
• Academies are simply good at showing Ofsted what they want. If this kind of s* happens in a school rated Outstanding, it means ratings are useless
• I am all for strict discipline, and I will absolutely stand by the school if they punish my child for misbehaving. But I absolutely dread needlessly draconian rules, put together by sexually repressed headteachers who didn't get enough love from their mums, and who get off on exercising this kind of authority to crush their students' spirit. I had made some examples here: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/secondary/5168466-how-common-are-detentions-at-secondary?page=9&reply=138524258 where I also talked about a secondary school in London banning bicycles and giving detentions to students caught cycling to school

Neither is specific to education only, but:

The Tyranny of Metrics is an excellent book on how too much obsession on metrics alone leads to all kinds of distortions and perverse incentives to game the system https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36644895-the-tyranny-of-metrics?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=yyT12PrN6W&rank=2

Calling Bullshit: The Art of Skepticism in a Data-Driven World is an excellent book on how to apply critical thinking and ask the right question to interpret data properly, and call out the nonsense and bull we are constantly exposed to

@napody "For these schools, negative media coverage of their ultra strict culture is what they want. They then become more oversubscribed with the children of pushy parents who prize attainment over all else, and generally children witb additional needa are pushed out or off rolled."

Not just that. Have you ever followed the Twitter account of Birbalsingh, the headteacher at Micaela? She comes across as childish, aggressive and delusional. The impression I got is that she rejoices at being attacked and attacking back; her tweets give me the impression of a needlessly aggressive person, not a balanced one.

It's a huge red flag for me. I would never want to work for someone like this. And I would not want someone like this to run my child's school.

To be clear, I am not attacking her for what she thinks, but for how she behaves, which is very different.

The areas served by the Mossbourne schools and Michaela also include deprived areas. Funnily enough they don’t have students assisting teachers or walking out of lessons like the one in Canvey. Why is that?

It must be the influence of all the "champagne socialists in £1m homes" that PP Uber-someone believes Hackney is stuffed with, with their "leftie" ideas....

Seriously though, I do live in Hackney, and yes, it's very diverse. I've heard a lot of stories about MCA, some good but more bad. (DD shuddered at the thought of going there - we sent her elsewhere.)

As others have said, it's really strange that you, Treesquirrel, can't allow for an institution to be good in some respects (eg academic results) and terrible in others (pastoral care).

What do you make of the NHS? The justice system? Parliament?

Really, abusers dispute that they are abusing people? I guess abuse doesn’t really exist then, it’s all just a difference of opinion.

@zaxxon ❤thank you for explaining the core issue to others.

That's the improvement we'd like to see. Excellent education AND excellent pastoral care. I don't think the two are mutually exclusive.

I don't see why any rational, fair-minded leadership team would consider this a threat.

You cannot really argue that something is short-sighted if you're lagging behind that "short-sightedness" with no prospect of catching up. It's delusional and pathetic.

I've no interest in "defending" China, just point out to the cold hard facts. You won't win the upcoming war with "creative input" (whatever it means 🙄 ).

The type of people who want strict schools have cultural reasons for wanting them. Michaela is 70% ESL. It’s not about what money parents have, it’s about what values they have and these very much include results and behaviour. They don’t want dc to learn in the presence of dc who are disrupting lessons. Poor people can want this above all else.

Inevitably some parents won’t support any school as they are products of generations of poor education here. They are not going to parent dc either. Many other totally rational people don’t want strict schools for DC and don’t believe dc will flourish in one.

@TizerorFizz The type of people who want strict schools have cultural reasons for wanting them.[...] They don’t want dc to learn in the presence of dc who are disrupting lessons. Poor people can want this above all else.

Yes, but, again, there's a middle ground. A school can be strict without terrorising children. There is a difference between i) strict but fair and reasonable and ii) strict and batshit crazy.

I want i) , not ii). And I'm certainly not the only one.

You are right about the cultural reasons, but you should have added that many parents who want to send their children to these schools don't care much about pastoral care nor about the mental health of their children.

I have learnt that the same word has different meanings to different people.

@napody

Except that’s simply not true. Mossbourne has a higher proportion of SEN pupils than average. Many pupils with SEN get on better in a school with good behaviour than one with constant fights, pupils assaulting teachers and chaotic lessons.

@ParentOfOne Do not forget that lots of people don’t use the schools. Others make wrong choices. Where I live, we have grammar schools and some dc are pushed by parents to get into them and then struggle. I’ve seen parents care not one jot about the pressure put on dc to pass the exam in the first place! Lots of the issues you talk about are square pegs in round holes. Obviously some parents want these schools but dc are not suitable. They would be better off elsewhere but parents want these schools because it suits their ideals and don’t consider dc.

I don’t like the schools and I think there is a middle way which most schools find. However Michaela is a free school and was set up to be different with its self publicist head. Parents choose the school knowing that and presumably support its ethos. I would hate all schools to be like this. My DDs learned to engage in debate with fellow pupils and chat amiably. It’s a skill. Who thinks silence is good? Obviously some do but it’s a minority. It’s a bit like army training at 11.

Does anyone know when the incident occurred in relation to the transition day and shouting at 10 year olds?

I only ask as the previous headteacher of MVPA is now headteacher of our local school and so I am wondering if this happened under his remit

That’s so very true my son attended that school and had SEND I couldn’t have asked from more from the school with support he received. I know many other SEND parents feel that way. Yes I did initially gave my concerns prior to him starting but once started couldn’t fault them in that regard

My dd is 21 now, was ok at MVPA, barely any detentions, got fab GCSEs, fulfilled her potentials, made lovely friends. She read the Observer articles and said Yep, that's my experience of the school. All her friends feel the same. Looking back they think the school was awful. Seeing other students being humiliated and in a frequent state of stress is not a good memory to have.

Please, if your kids are/were happy there, that's lovely of course. But I know many parents with really unpleasant stories about their kids. I remember a girl being told off my a male teacher about her skirt being a bit short. She ended up in detention and told to write not sure how many times 'I will dress in a decent way. I will dress in a decent way. I will dress in a decent way,etc"

That's fucking appalling. Add misogyny to the list of this school's failings.

What I am trying to say is to please not dismiss other parents' concerns, just because your kids are ever so happy there. It's hurtful and not helpful. Ideally we all want all kids to be ok. Mvpa is hit and miss and when it misses and it happens to be your child is upsetting. The parents who are part of this campaign group must have been/ maybe still are worried about their kids. Show some empathy please.

Her parents complained at the time. There are lots of stories like this.

So my child went here. It was our local school. It is strict. But for most children this is fine and for a small percentage (from chaotic homes) it is excellent. This includes SEND students. I personally know of two SEND students who went here and both of them were extremely happy and supported.
For an even smaller percentage it doesn't suit them.
I am not ideologically wedded to academies or free schools. All I can say is that before this school opened there was a local authority Catholic school here to which none of the middle class parents would send their kids so its catchment was enormous and it had a poor to ordinary reputation academically and in terms of discipline.
When that school decided to combine both its sites in a new building we campaigned for the now apparently redundant school building to be retained as a school for the area as there wasn't one in catchment for most of the teenagers. (The alternative proposal for the gorgeous neo Gothic building was inevitably loft style apartments). The only two types of school allowed were either an academy or a free school. It was the height of Gove-ism at that point. The local community opted for the academy model because it was connected to a school which already existed and was a successful school. Some ideologues tried to stymie the entire process by campaigning for a LA school but most people were practical (including the local councillor who was most involved in obtaining the school and who is now trying to distance herself from that decision) and we voted for Mossbourne.
My child was the second year intake. She had an excellent and caring education. She flourished in an area which is extremely deprived despite appearances to the contrary. Victoria Park in Hackney likes to think of itself as a village. And there are lots of very expensive houses and very entitled people here. But behind that facade of Georgian and Victorian townhouses lies the normality of Hackney which are huge council estates. Council estates do not necessarily denote deprivation as posh houses do not necessarily denote happy family life. But a high proportion of kids here do come from quite chaotic families. I have worked in Hackney schools for many years and have seen what happens when this is not taken into account.
A good local school here has its work cut out for it. It must appeal to the aspirational middle classes but its main job of work in my opinion is to serve those members of the local community for whom a university education, or graduating with decent A Levels, seems totally out of reach. Our more privileged kids will be fine in a stricter environment because they understand it. They come from a background that largely understands how to access education. And frankly if the school doesn't suit then choose another different kind of school. Hackney is full of good schools of different descriptions.
What you don't do is to send your child there because you want access to the good connections and then try to change the school to suit your own ill informed ideas of what will suit your child and the rest of the community be damned.
The whole point of sending your child to the local school when you can afford to choose anything is to teach them how to exist within a society that doesn't centre them in every circumstance. Mossbourne is a school which is strict because they are recognising that the students who most need them are the ones for whom there is little choice about where they go, either because their parents know too little to seek out another alternative school or because their parents care too little to find that information.
If you live in an inner city area and you send your child to the local school then you should expect that it won't be an haute couture experience. It will be an off the peg experience and all the better for it. If your child is unhappy you can choose another local school or actually if you can afford to pay you can send them for the haute couture experience.
Schools in these areas work unbelievably hard to obtain the results they get (which are extraordinary given the circumstances) which will open doors for young people to walk through into experiences they never dreamed of. On a very basic level keeping them safe is incredibly difficult. I remember the very small headmaster at the time standing at the gate of the school and facing down a gang of enormous young men who had come to "meet" some child who had fallen in with the wrong crowd. The head would not release the student until these people had dispersed and he called the police to ensure that happened and that child was reported to social services because he was obviously in danger of being groomed into this gang. These are life and death decisions.
Of course there are problems sometimes. 'Twas ever thus. Name me one person who had an unadulteratedly blissful school experience. Schools are institutions and institutions are not perfect. My local home counties comprehensive was far from perfect. I was bullied. No one knew how to teach students to be outstanding. I still got to Oxford from there and I am still friends with my two best friends from there. It wasn't perfect. It didn't centre me.
My cousins went to liberal progressive private schools where they got a poor academic education. It wasn't perfect despite apparently centring every child whose parents could afford to send them.
I will stop in a second but I want to finish by pointing out that most of my daughter's year chose to stay at Mossbourne in the 6th Form.
And by saying that I am disgusted that people are suing the school for damages. If they win they will destroy the reputation of a fully functioning and highly successful local school, for which we battled for years, because they didn't like it and for some reason didn't decide to send their kids to another school. It's the ultimate dog in a manger attitude; I don't like it so no one else can have it; I think it's terrible and I know better than you about what's good so I am going to destroy it for everyone.
If they win, they will win my money and every other taxpayer's money including their own. Wouldn't that money be far better spent educating children in a variety of different schools with different approaches so there is something for everyone?

On Ofsted days, dd days they knew if they did anything wrong they would never hear the end of it.

Frankly a school that allows a teacher to describe a student in a slightly too short as 'indecently dressed' deserves all it gets. And that's aside from everything else.

@Jodeg why do you fear that ex-pupils, who are now adults, giving accounts of their experiences and those of their peers, at Mossbourne Federation Schools, across 20 years, will "destroy reputations"?

A) Do you think they have the right to speak?
B) Do you think their aim is to "destroy reputations?

I say let them be heard.

Do you think it might be possible that they're trying to push for improvement?