Mossbourne Academies: investigations into alleged emotional harm and abuse. Part 2

[ParentOfOne]

The previous thread has reached capacity https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/secondary/5225872-mossbourne-academies-investigations-into-alleged-emotional-harm-and-abuse-why-are-needlessly-strict-academies-unaccountable?page=40&reply=149144990

I am continuing here

@tigger29 Thank you for sharing the safeguarding commissioner's response to Tom Bennet https://chscp.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/JG-121225-.pdf

@ByLemonOP , @Ubertomusic

Will you now appreciate why Tom Bennet's response makes no sense?

I ask again:
You are not satisfied with multiple staff members testifying that shouting and "desking" occurred, because you want a police investigation of whether John Doe's complaint that his child was shouted at on 13-Oct-2023 at 11.15 am was true or not??

Tom Bennet has such an obvious bias and has clearly misrepresented the report. If the harm caused by the methods of academies such as Mossbourne were to be truly appreciated and accepted, he would be out of a job.

Tom Bennet has an obvious agenda and bias, but his writing is being lapped-up by some of the parents I know who don’t seem to understand what a safeguarding review is. This isn’t about whether it’s a good school or not - as far as I can see everyone involved in raising the alarm and conducting the review have stressed what it good about it. It’s about whether some children have been harmed. Even if a single thing the school does had been found to harm one student… wouldn’t it be right to look into that? Wouldn’t you expect the school, and the parents whose children seem to be OK, to say ‘let’s take this seriously and see what can be changed - without losing the good stuff?’ Instead the school, and some parents I know (who I had previously thought intelligent), seem to utterly unwilling to believe the huge amount of evidence the review has presented. To me, many of the experiences I read about sound like abuse. Much as I want to see the school carry on doing the good stuff well, surely leaping to defence of an alleged (and I would say evidenced) abuser isn’t a great look? Maybe most kids are OK - but that’s not the point.

https://www.hackneycitizen.co.uk/2026/01/14/mossbourne-senior-leadership-chair-governors-resign-jim-gamble/

https://educatinghackney.co.uk/mca-ex-student-testimonies/?fbclid=IwY2xjawPoPApleHRuA2FlbQIxMQBzcnRjBmFwcF9pZA80MDk5NjI2MjMwODU2MDkAAR45XkqW4uaZiMi13FanBT-KEP1hyTGfUb4N-o4u-cUlRcWGOvZ0EK3D5V8MFQ_aem_e2HeNmLGFS6PVJAZXx7cug This is quite a damning and upsetting read

It is upsetting - many of the details are harrowing, especially the number of girls forced to bleed through their dresses.

The students make the same distinctions as the safeguarding review. They’re not saying there shouldn’t be rules, strictness, sanctions etc.

To those who say the alternative would be chaos and a return to Hackney Downs days… can you read what these people experienced and say that it’s unavoidable and acceptable?

I was just wondering if any current Mossbourne parents could comment on whether anything has changed since the safeguarding report came out. DFE say they are working with the school to reflect the findings.

It’s a little less shouty but no obvious changes. You would think that after such a shocker of a report that someone (school, council, DfE) would be giving parents some reassuring updates. But 3 months on, nothing.

In other news, I saw that Mossbourne spent £400k of taxpayers money in legal fees trying to conceal evidence that they had been causing harm to children. Lovely.

https://www.hackneycitizen.co.uk/2026/03/09/mossbourne-federation-spent-public-money-legal-fees/

OK, so the chair of trustees has now quit. But I learned this from the press rather than from the school.

https://www.hackneycitizen.co.uk/2026/03/09/mossbournes-chair-trustees-quits-first-shake-up-beleaguered-academy-chain/

Ok @tigger29 are you going to share the incredibly positive results from the latest patent survey carried out

Until I hear of any fundamental change to the leadership or culture, and in view of everything that has come to light, I won’t personally be giving much credence to the school’s comms. So no.

So views of parents who’s children go there mean nothing

I didn’t say that. But for years surveys and Ofsted reports have been used to suggest that everything is fine for all students and have clearly not identified the harm being done to some.

I think there is still a misunderstanding of what this is about, which is safeguarding. It was a safeguarding review. When a safeguarding review was conducted after child Q was strip searched at another Hackney school, I don’t remember there being a clamour of voices saying that since literally every other student wasn’t strip searched that it was all very unfair and everything was fine. This isn’t a vote on whether it’s a good school or not, it’s an investigation into whether some things need to change to prevent harm to some students.

What are these parents saying? Are they saying that it's all a lie, that no child was ever shouted at, that there were no seminars on how to instil "healthy fear", that no child is in therapy following the emotional abuse suffered at Mossbourne?

No, they are not.
They are saying some variation of "my child wasn't abused so I don't give a flying fig about other children" and "I agree with these methods and f* the detractors".

Let's make a simple comparison, shall we?

I didn't like my old boss and my ex partner, but neither was toxic. My replacement and my ex's new partner seem to be thriving. My 2 cents is something like: "I didn't like them but other people may well do".

Now suppose your current boss abuses other colleagues.
Would you say: "oh, you know what, he abused other people but he didn't abuse me, so all is fine"?

This is the appropriate comparison.

Anyone who fails to appreciate it is unfit to be a parent and should be stripped of parental responsibility.

@ParentOfOne It’s shocking. I’ve been a teacher for 30 years and am hugely concerned by the whole zero tolerance policy approach to education. It is more akin to the prison system than anything else. I also fundamentally disagree with the narrative that anyone who disagrees with this and with the very regimented approach to what learning is, is dismissed as not living in the real world. In my subject, English, the joy of exploration has been replaced with PowerPoint presentations about texts that are so narrow and dull, The testimony from the students is heartbreaking. I suspect in the future we will look back and be appalled that this was allowed to happen in our schools.

More horror stories here https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cz67pv0djezo

How are academies accountable and why are they not being shut down when they are being found to cause harm to children? There is a MAT in the next county to me that is repeatedly in the press and there have been a number of public meetings which have been attended by councillors where there have been hundreds if not thousands of complains by children and parents. Unfortunately this is a rural county so there is only one secondary school in each town. Therefore, sending your child to another school is not always possible.

The thing is with Mossbourne (and I’m sure other academies), the teaching is very good, they do get good results, and many children seem unscathed. It’s not always possible to know which way it will go for a particular child - it’s a gamble and it shouldn’t be. For the sake of a bit of empathy when a child is obviously struggling, most of the risks & damage could be avoided. But that might involve a few more of the children who might not excel academically not dropping out, which would pull the results down by a fraction of a grade. So with things as they are at the moment, nothing will change.

I've met the CEO of the MAT in a professional capacity. He was enjoying his lunch sat with Sir Martin Oliver who clearly knew him well. He’ll be going nowhere.

whilst the schools continue to churn out great results in the difficult areas they serve they will continue to be untouchable. I suspect they’ll become like the Michaela school - parents will choose to send their child their irrespective of the culture as they prioritise academic success.

That’s interesting @BlackBean2023. I’m sure you’re right. The only thing to watch out for though is that the area is changing with a huge influx of middle class parents, including a fair few who would’ve aimed for private school before the introduction of VAT. And those parents want amazing academic results for their kids but not at the expense of their mental health or the mental health of their peers. I’m local and I see this dynamic playing out at primary, where there used to be an acceptance of fairly robust disciplinary processes there’s a stronger push back from the posher parents. They want order, but not screaming / isolations etc.

So impressed by the bravery of those young people speaking out about what happened to them, and the aftermath. They've been badly mistreated. Good for them - I hope they find it healing to know that the Mossbourne academy trust is now well and truly under scrutiny, and hopefully things will change

That link shouldn’t be public. It’s normal to share surveys with staff and pupils during an inspection. Sharing the link publicly corrupts the integrity of the data

Good point - I've asked MN to remove.