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

the thing is, my dc are well behaved. So it’s very unlikely that any of them would be screamed at, isolated for three hours and told they’re disgusting. Unless this is a routine procedure for all new starters in Y7, in which case I think it’d be more widely reported. I’ve had a look at the discipline policies for those schools and they look fine to me.

I'd much rather that my children attend stricter schools with stricter teachers than schools with poor discipline and at the mercy of bullying children who thrive within them.

Having schools like Michaela or Mossbourne works in London where parents tend to get a choice. Because you can look around the schools and decide that is not right for your DC and family.
This is probably quite political and the issue is whether the Mossbourne model should be replicated elsewhere in the country, where there is less choice.

My kids would have never coped with such rigid discipline. They are well behaved and hard working and it would have made them anxious.
However, it can be a good choice for parents who want that, whose only chance for their kids to not end up in gangs is via hard core strict education. We should not take that chance away. Some kids only route out of poverty is top grades and iron discipline. It seems to me that some of the teachers at Mossbourne may have overstepped the mark through. I do not think the head at Michaela does that.

Yet Birbalsingh got called fascist and whatnot by political activists and funnily enough I can see upthread the cliché rhetoric she quoted word by word. I couldn't believe those people existed when I listened to her interviews, but now I can see they are probably real.
It's crazy.

@ByMerryKoala I'd much rather that my children attend stricter schools with stricter teachers than schools with poor discipline and at the mercy of bullying children who thrive within them

Please, please, pretty please, can you kindly explain to me the thought process whereby you seem to imply that

• the only alternatives are such Victorian schools with needlessly cruel policies, crushing the kids' spirit into compliance, and unruly schools where anarchy and chaos reign, as if there could be nothing in between?
• these petty, capricious rules are actually necessary to maintain discipline?
• these petty capricious rules either do not have an effect on the students' mental health, or, if they do, you couldn't give a flying fig?

And I say this as a parent who is often considered the strictest in my child's circle of friends, who strongly supports schools banning phones, who has absolutely stood by the school when the school told off my child for misbehaving.

Is it necessary to shout at children for misplacing a bag (Mossbourne)?
Is it necessary to give them detention for cycling to school (Ashcroft)?
Is it necessary to give detentions to a girl for wearing the 99% identical but cheaper Asda skirt (somewhere near Manchester)?
Is it necessary to punish children for taking one second too long to get a pen out (Micaela) or to teach them to talk while standing up with their arms crossed (also Micaela), a stupid habit they will have to unlearn as it signals distance?
Is it necessary to force children to wear blazers in a heatwave (many schools all over the country)?

Please, please, pretty please, can you explain what these policies achieve?
Are they conducive to the development of critical thinking and analytical skills? Or do they crush kids' spirits into submission? Or do they risk teaching kids that rules are petty and capricious? Please, can you answer?

@NINP the thing is, my dc are well behaved. So it’s very unlikely that any of them would be screamed at, isolated for three hours and told they’re disgusting. Unless this is a routine procedure for all new starters in Y7, in which case I think it’d be more widely reported. I’ve had a look at the discipline policies for those schools and they look fine to me.

@NINP I ask you the same questions: even if your kids are well-behaved and can stick to the rules, what do these kind of rules teach them? How will your kids grow and develop as individuals?
Do you think they will have learnt to think with their own minds and ask: "wait a second, this doesn't sound right, why are we doing it this way?"
If they are ever in toxic work environments as adults, do you think they will be able to recognise that and act against it? Or will they have internalised that you must keep your head down and passively accept whatever is thrown at you?

My ddil has just left her job as a teacher at our local academy with a huge sigh of relief. She felt it was a toxic place to work.

@Araminta1003 Having schools like Michaela or Mossbourne works in London where parents tend to get a choice.

Precisely! Not all parents have a choice. We should never forget that.

My kids would have never coped with such rigid discipline. They are well behaved and hard working and it would have made them anxious.

Exactly! It is silly to think that only unruly kids would not like a strict school.Even if you are well-behaved, this kind of environment can still totally mess with your mental health. Anyone who fails to see that should be automatically stripped of parental responsibility.

@Ubertomusic Yet Birbalsingh got called fascist and whatnot by political activists

In this polarised environment there are idiots on both sides of the discourse.
Similarly, many supporters of Birbalsingh, including many on mumsnet, love to peddle the nonsense that only unruly children would not like it there, and that only hippy parents with no regard for rules and disciplines would dislike her methods.

I watched the TV documentary on her school and was appalled. It gave me very bad vibes of cultish behaviour. Being expected to say, at lunch, what you are thankful for and why seemed very cultish - and all in that silly pose standing up with your arms crossed!!!

Can you elaborate?

@NINP I’ve had a look at the discipline policies for those schools and they look fine to me.
This is either naïve or in bad faith. Which is it?
What happens in practice is much more important than what's written on a piece of paper.

Cuba and Russia have written Constitutions which in theory recognise many right. The UK does not have a written Constitution. Yet which is more democratic?

Your reasoning is like saying that, actually, Putin ain't such a bad chap, because you have read the Russian Constitution and it seems all right to you!!!

Do the policies you "had a look at" say anything about seminaries called "healthy fear"?

Do they say anything about making children cry at every opportunity to beat them into submission?

Shame on you.

@ParentOfOne your slightly dramatic OP notwithstanding I am largely in agreement with you and I would like to join you in asking the people who support these kinds of behaviour policies why they feel that UK children are so feral that there isn't a sensible middle way to be had?

You said:

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
Teachers aren't paid less at academies in general, though there may be exceptions. In general the follow the usual teacher pay scales. CEOs pay is high though.

I hate that academies are de facto unaccountable to anyone
They aren't

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 www.lse.ac.uk/social-policy/Assets/Documents/PDF/Research-reports/Academies-Vision-Report.pdf
I don't believe there is a lack of transparency or accountability, but I do agree that they are no better or worse than maintained schools. Generally individual school get more support by being part of a Trust, increasingly so as LAs become more and more stretched.

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 don't think this is any more true of academies than maintained schools. Ofsted is very limited in what they look at, but maybe the new report cards will be better, who knows?

@MrsSchrute Teachers aren't paid less at academies in general, though there may be exceptions.

Academies have discretion. E.g. the latest pay award will not be automatically extended to teachers in Academies - they will get it only if their Academy wants. Eg read https://www.tes.com/magazine/news/general/teacher-pay-rise-2024-25

It really cracks me up that they have 'autonomy' and 'discretion'. They are entirely funded by us taxpayers!!!!

On accountability: yes, academies are de facto unaccountable.

Please tell me, realistically, other than a judge (but how many parents can afford to sue their school?), who or what can tell an academy that they have done something wrong and must change?

For example, Mossbourne Complaints policy is here: https://www.mca.mossbourne.org/governance/

There are 5 stages to a complaint. The first 4 involve only entities and body internal to the academy itself. Only the last stage, stage 5, involves a complaint to the secretary of State.

If you look at what the Department for Education says about complaints against academies: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/complain-about-an-academy/complain-about-an-academy

they are very clear that
We are not able to overturn the governing body’s decision

Let that sink in: the Department of Education cannot overturn the decision of an academy's governing body!!!! Is this democratic accountability to you? For a public service financed by everyone's tax money??

Discussions on Reddit's TeachingUK (where only teachers, not parents can post) are full of examples of lack of accountability https://www.reddit.com/r/TeachingUK/comments/gcasr9/whats_so_bad_about_academies/

An individual academy will be accountable to its school governing board, the Trust board, the Regional Director, the ESFA, Ofsted, the local Diocese if it contains Church schools.
It is a different structure than maintained schools, but there is plenty of accountability.

The Mossbourne and Harris academies unfortunately were trendsetter in this sort of culture in schools. My DC's local school unfortunately followed the trend and it was the undoing of DD1 who we've since discovered is autistic. She hasn't been able to attend full-time school for over a year. DC2 is now there and they seem to have relaxed things a bit.

The root of the problem, IMO, is finding and staff shortages. There aren't enough adults in schools to "manage" behaviour without the apparent need for such draconian measures.

*For example, Mossbourne Complaints policy is here: www.mca.mossbourne.org/governance/

There are 5 stages to a complaint. The first 4 involve only entities and body internal to the academy itself. Only the last stage, stage 5, involves a complaint to the secretary of State.*

The vast majority of maintained schools will have complaints policies that are structured like this.

As for the ludicrous uniform policies which bear no resemblance to the working world, don't even get me started. My DC's school went through a stage of saying girls' skirts had to be mid-calf to ankle length - a criteria that is applicable to no professional environment that I can think of. Detentions if you don't take your coat off before you walk through the door. Totally unnecessary.

lav DD's school only allows black or navy coats. She has never been one for a trendy coat, just something nice from trespass / mountain warehouse, but a lot of them have colour on them. There were also petty rules about logos and motifs being visible.
When she was in school she stopped wearing a coat as she was so scared she'd get it wrong, they also have to take them off the second they're inside.

I usually back up teachers but the red flaggy deputy head did get a snippy email from me wondering how other schools and countries managed to educate children with coloured coats and why couldn't their amazing school manage it too.

"UK children are feral" is a huge generalisation @pointythings Children are not feral if parents do parent. By 10-11 there is only so much you could do to change behaviour.
In a very MC London neighbourhood not far from Hackney the police is out on the high street at around 3-4pm. Why do they think children are that feral? 🤷‍♀️

"Apparently" is a key word here.
Do you always believe what people say?
I'd wait for the official verdict of the investigation.
The lead campaigner still has his child in this supposedly horrible school - and it's not like they have no other option, they can afford to take the other DC out.

I actually don't believe that UK children are feral. I don't support the kind of extreme discipline imposed by the likes of Michaela. That's my whole point - why is there no sensible middle ground where genuine bad behaviour is dealt with but simple mistakes are left alone, where uniform policy is sensible and more like real life and where neurodiverse children who want to achieve aren't terrified out of their minds because they know any slight error will result in ridiculous OTT consequences?

MrsSchrute, as a parent of an ex-pupil of Mossbourne Community Academy I am well aware of the complaints procedure. I have first hand experience of the Mossbourne SLT's persistent failure to adhere to their complaints policy, in relation to serious concerns about failure of members of the Leadership team to act in a proportionate and reasonable manner. Our legitimate, and non-trivial concerns are hopefully finally going to be heard. We are not condemning Mossbourne Federation. There are many teachers doing an excellent job at Mossbourne Schools, but we have valid ethical concerns about punishment.

I wish you luck and am behind you all the way!

This school and other ‘strict’ schools mentioned have done of the highest Progress 8 scores in the country, meaning they are enhancing the life chances of DC.

It is no coincidence that the schools with the best outcomes are those which have clear, enforced rules and a calm environment. Learning is very difficult if this isn’t the case.

There are plenty of inadequate schools where DC are in charge, lessons disrupted and fights common for parents who don’t want their DC to follow rules. Here are two- not coincidentally both also have some of the worst outcomes in the country.

https://www.echo-news.co.uk/news/24062361.cornelius-vermuyden-rated-inadequate-ofsted-inspection/

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-kent-62493946.amp