Community rejecting Astrea academies’ behaviour policies as “too strict” seems significant to national debate

The "Astrea Ascent" behaviour poster

It was a striking finding, contained within what was, as a whole, a remarkable set of survey results.

Asked by a Conservative MP what they thought of an academy trust’s behaviour policies, 79 per cent of respondents said they were “too strict”, with only three per cent viewing them as “too lenient,” and nine per cent “about right”.

The findings were within a survey of local parental opinion by the South Cambridgeshire MP Anthony Browne, who is standing in the forthcoming general election in a seat covering the town of St Neots, where for the past year the Astrea Academy Trust has been generating huge controversy over its running of the only two local secondary schools.

Mr Browne had been contacted by members of the community concerned about goings-on in the schools under the leadership of the Sheffield-based trust, and sought to gauge local opinion in detail.

As reported by the local paper the Hunts Post this week, and featuring in this website’s piece on Wednesday, the survey of 566 parents included findings that 92 per cent were not confident in the trust’s leadership, and that 84 per cent disagreed that the trust had improved the quality of education on offer since taking over Ernulf and Longsands schools in 2018.

On his website Mr Browne described the concerns voiced by residents about the two schools as “overwhelming,” and said he would discuss with ministers the possibility of one or both of the secondaries leaving Astrea.

But arguably the stand-out finding from the survey, in terms of a national debate about what is going on in schools, was that figure of nearly four out of five parents believing that Astrea’s behaviour policies were “too strict”. Further to this, when those surveyed were asked directly as to whether they agreed with the statement “I have concerns about the behaviour policy at the school,” 79 per cent said they either “strongly agreed” or “agreed”, with 55 per cent of those strongly agreeing and only nine per cent disagreeing (five per cent strongly disagreeing).

For, while debate is raging over schools’ policies on school behaviour in many places across England – and particularly in the secondary sector – this is the first time I can recall seeing a question posed offering a quantifiable set of responses which had directly sought parental views on the strictness of behaviour policies, certainly with a sample size this large.

Astrea’s approach

Astrea’s behaviour policies are certainly distinctive. As experienced in its Cambridgeshire secondaries, at least*, it operates a regime which tends to be characterised by its detractors as draconian, or even militaristic. The latter adjective can attach itself to Astrea’s use of a “morning address,” where children line up in the playground for equipment and uniform checks, and to listen to senior leaders listening to scripted thoughts for the day.

The 26-school chain has also put up prominently in its classrooms its “Astrea Ascent” poster, versions of which are used in some other traditionalist-oriented academy trusts, in which pupils are encouraged to climb metaphorical stairs to better behaviour, leading to a top step where they are encouraged to behave well because “it is who I am”.

Uniform compliance is strongly emphasised – a directive at Longsands whereby girls were reminded they could not wear socks over their tights even during freezing weather last December drew such controversy that it had to be withdrawn after a day– with pupils having to change into stock clothes even for minor infringements such as, one teacher source said, having a Nike tick on a pair of socks.

Isolation is also widely used, with 619 uses of “reset sanctions” in just a single half-term at Longsands last autumn. And pupils have to carry “character cards,” on which bad behaviour as well as good is supposed to be recorded by staff.

The trust’s behaviour policies have been described by Astrea as having been “influenced by” Tom Bennett, who has served as the Department for Education’s lead behaviour adviser since the Conservative-only government arrived in 2015.

Implication of the survey findings

On reading the findings on behaviour of this survey, I can almost hear the incredulity of traditionalists within teaching. These are enthusiasts for strict approaches.

How can discipline – at least so that which pulls back from approaches of the past such as the use of corporal punishment – ever be too strict, I can almost hear them ask.

After all, are we not in a widely-reported crisis over pupil behaviour, with schools facing particular challenges dealing with the consequences of the lack of socialisation young people experienced during the pandemic, and with years of austerity putting pressures on families which are then experienced in the classroom?

And is not the stress of dealing with badly-behaved young people a major contributor to the serious recruitment and retention situation now facing schools?

Given the above, is it not right that schools instigate strong disciplinary systems, to give professionals the control they need and to keep classrooms safe?

For those who focus on the position of the inspectorate, when have Ofsted reports, at least in recent years, ever criticised a school for being too strict?

It is possible to hear and acknowledge all these arguments, and still wonder if the level of disciplinary control in some cases can be too high, and that the consequences of that for pupils can be negative. For that is the suggestion not only of this survey, but of critical teachers working within these schools with whom I have spoken to over the past year in reporting on Astrea, as well as parent sources.

Again, some more contextual thoughts are needed. Few people, I suspect, who are critical of today’s more disciplinarian approaches to tackling challenging behaviour would advocate a completely rules-free environment.

Horror stories do occasionally emerge of discipline breaking down completely in some schools, such as the case last autumn of an academy on the Isle of Sheppey, when teachers had been poised to go on strike having reportedly spoken of being “barricaded into classrooms” and threatened by pupils on a daily basis. Staff there were reportedly calling for a “zero tolerance” approach to discipline, to get back control.

Teachers can also clearly feel undermined when they feel they are not backed by senior management putting in place a consistently-applied behaviour policy which will support them, when a pupil needs to face consequences of their actions in the classroom.

I came across arguments for this vividly recently, in researching an as-yet-unpublished piece where teachers had raised concerns about management goings-on at a secondary school. Teachers needed the back-up of a consistently-applied behaviour policy from management, and did not feel they were getting it.

I also remember a similar argument being put to me strongly a few years back, by staff at a chaotic-seeming institution within a high-profile academy trust which, it was said, seemed to vary between strongly disciplinarian and overly lax approaches to tackling behaviour, depending on the school.

However, again those findings within this survey are striking. Even despite the above, parents who had experience in detail of the operation of Astrea’s top-down disciplinary regime, as operating in these two secondaries, were overwhelmingly unimpressed.

Detailed developments within Cambridgeshire

Concerns about the detail of how Astrea’s behaviour set-up has been operating, alongside its top-down teaching approaches, have been a theme of reporting on Education Uncovered since March last year.

That month, I reported how a large group of parents at Astrea’s St Ivo Academy – down the road from its St Neots schools, and also in Cambridgeshire – had raised concerns about its policies, including its approaches to managing behaviour.

Of 315 parents surveyed, 63 per cent said they thought Astrea’s policies were having a negative impact on their children’s mental health/wellbeing.

While 11 per cent thought the management of behaviour impacted positively on their child, 24 per cent said it impacted very negatively.

The survey report, which ran to 168 pages, was full of anonymous quotes about the impact of the policies on their child.

One said: “We are having to put my year nine daughter through external counselling for her anxiety and depression brought on, I feel, by the draconian punishment system introduced by the school. She has such an unhealthy fear of getting things wrong or making a mistake that it makes her burst into tears in her lessons.”

Another said: “Significant concerns over mental health. My daughter is petrified of inadvertently breaking the rules and being punished.”

Another parent had told me: “My dad died last week. And my son went to bed crying because he thought he would get a detention for forgetting his spare pen.”

This document saw a pupil sating: “The military style morning address creates a tense atmosphere, completely opposing the calm and relaxed start to the day as experienced beforehand when students were permitted to go straight to form rooms and socialise.” Another said: “[Astrea] completely prioritise military style behaviour instead of the mental health of their students who want to enjoy being at school.”

A feeling that the “sweat the small stuff” philosophy of trusts such as Astrea could be counterproductive came through in this survey document, and also in subsequent conversations I have had with disillusioned staff and parent sources at Longsands and Ernulf academies, as well as at St Ivo. Consistently, I was told that the unyielding approach to, for example, uniform and equipment policies was creating an atmosphere where generally well-behaved pupils were left feeling needlessly anxious, while others were repeatedly sanctioned but with behaviour not changing.

In January, a parent told a BBC Radio Cambridgeshire discussion on goings-on at Longsands Academy that her son had got a detention for picking a pen up off the floor – prompting the presenter to laugh with incredulity.

The parent said: “We all accept that there are rules that we all have to follow in life, and ultimately we do at school, but it’s just the draconian way that Astrea have come into our schools in St Neots and [are] just putting immense pressure on the children and great staff.” The parent said she was considering private education for her son as a result.

Staff turnover at Longsands has rocketed – eight per cent of teachers left at Christmas - with one departing teacher telling me in December that behaviour policies which focused on compliance were a serious concern.

“When you’ve got young people…learning that silence is my default, the implication that can have for them as they grow into young adults is really concerning,” this teacher said.

They added: “I have a huge problem with creating young people who are just blindly compliant. A system like this discourages any kind of independent thought. It discourages any kind of criticism, it doesn’t listen to feedback, it forces a lot of students to internalise the punishment.”

On a more mundane level, this teacher argued, emphasis on the detail of, for example, uniform had a pointless feel to it. This staff member said: “They are getting told to remove their black socks if there’s a white Nike tick on them. And you feel: ‘what impact is this having?’ It’s such a waste of time.”

In March, a teacher leaving Ernulf offered a blistering critique of Astrea’s policies, including on behaviour, in a resignation letter. Among a host of detailed points, she wrote: “I don’t want the students to follow my instructions because they fear the consequences but because they respect me enough to do so...challenging students remain just as challenging…quiet students live in constant fear.”

Speaking about her daughter’s experiences at the school, she wrote: “It is not fair that she wakes up with a stomach ache every morning and doubts herself continuously, being unsure if there is a reason someone can pick on her – even though there isn’t. She feels her voice has been removed and I agree.”

In February, I covered concerns about the isolation room policy at Longsands, with a teenager describing how he was not allowed to leave its confines for six hours apart from accompanied visits to the toilets when other pupils were not around, and not being allowed to turn around at his desk. He said he spent the day copying from a textbook, and “I just don’t think it’s that beneficial”. He added: “I used to like school, until around 18 months ago, but not now. We’re just treated like robots.”

Another parent told me, for the same piece, how his son had “broken down” on facing another session in isolation.

It has also not been uncommon, over the 14 months I have been reporting on this trust, to find experienced teachers telling me that behaviour in this schools, while not perfect before the arrival of Astrea’s current regime, was being managed with a degree of common sense, with experienced staff having the ability to use their judgement. The Ofsted record of Longsands, in particular, seems to bear out the widely-offered view that this was basically a successful school previously, having never been rated less than good as a local authority secondary and then a single academy trust, but now said by the inspectorate to be “requires improvement”. It was, then, not an institution that was falling apart and in need of some kind of shock treatment, but a generally well-regarded school in the town. It is no longer, say critical sources including departing teachers – a view that seems strongly backed by Mr Browne’s findings.

The significance of the survey findings

All in all, then, that finding that 79 per cent of survey respondents thought the behaviour policies of Astrea’s two St Neots schools – Ernulf and Longsands - has hardly come of the blue.

These behaviour policies have proven controversial, with many parents and at least some teachers, throughout their use within Astrea’s Cambridgeshire secondaries in recent months. The fact that these uncompromising approaches had followed the pandemic lockdowns, when children had not been able to socialise with peers, has underlined feelings as to their harshness among some critics of Astrea.

How significant, then, overall, could this finding be to the national debate?

Well, to be scrupulously fair, it is possible to express a caveat in relation to the figures. Although the number of people surveyed was relatively high, at 566 respondents – Longsands and Ernulf together educate around 2,400 pupils – it is impossible to be sure that all are parents with children at the schools, with Mr Browne’s website saying that respondents had been “local residents,” presumably of the town of St Neots.

There is also a slight danger of reading national implications into developments around a particular trust, when each case is different and when on-the-ground specifics, such as the manner in which policies are communicated by school leaders, can impact local opinion.

That said, as argued above, it is highly unusual to see this number of respondents asked directly if they feel a school’s behaviour policies are too strict. In an aspect of school policymaking which can often seem to lack a sense of providing a voice to those experiencing its effects – see, for example, the claims of young people regarding absent “pupil voice” on behaviour policies here – that alone seems significant.

This is a debate in which advocates of uncompromising approaches to discipline often seem to want to argue that there only two alternatives: these ones, or the chaos of “no rules”. In reality, it seems that many parents want neither of these extremes, and that a middle way is possible – an approach that parents frequently do seem to be seeking. To find the weight of opinion seemingly pointing in this direction demonstrated here, at least in this particular case, seems very powerful.

Tom Bennett

One final point to make, in terms of the interest of this case at a national level, is that Astrea’s general behaviour approach has been linked to Tom Bennett. The government’s behaviour adviser has been mentioned in Astrea’s adverts for posts within the Cambridgeshire secondaries.

Recently, the advert for a new “executive director” states: “The Trust is committed to a knowledge-rich curriculum and a traditional approach to teaching, behaviour and culture, influenced by [Doug] Lemov’s Teach Like a Champion [TLAC] and Tom Bennett.”

Mr Lemov’s work has shaped Astrea’s top-down approach to teaching, with staff given training sessions stipulating the detail of how they are to implement the Teach Like a Champion classroom handbook. But Mr Bennett’s was the only work on behaviour referenced in that summing-up paragraph on Astrea’s philosophy for its schools.

As regular readers of this website will need no reminding, Mr Bennett sits very much on the traditionalist side of the behaviour debate, this Guardian headline from 2020 giving a flavour of his views. In the foreword to a 2019 pamphlet put together by the Confederation of School Trusts and the Conservative-linked “grassroots”/astroturfing organisation “Parents and Teachers for Excellence”, he wrote: “If we assume children will behave automatically** without clear adult leadership, we set our children up to fail.”

Mr Bennett sits atop a list of advisers to the Department for Education who do not seem obviously to feature critics of traditionalist/conservative approaches to pupil behaviour, despite such views not being hard to find within, for example, the ranks of educational psychologists.

Mr Bennett is known to be close to members of Astrea’s leadership network. Richard Tutt, for example, was a co-author of a chapter of the above pamphlet. Mr Bennett also visited St Ivo academy last year, amid the controversy over its policies, and gave a training session that I am told went down well with staff.

Again, to be fair, exactly the nature of the specific influence of Mr Bennett’s work on Astrea’s behaviour approach is trickier to track than, for example, is the trust’s adoption of TLAC, whose specific methods are referenced by name in training sessions and materials for teachers.

That said, the linkage of Mr Bennett’s name to a behavioural policy which has clearly not been proving popular at all with many local residents will intensify the debate over whether the particular form of strictness being advocated within this trust, and seemingly by this government, is beneficial for students in the round.

An incoming Labour government would do well to investigate in detail the impact of school behaviour policies, including talking to parents and, perhaps above all, to pupils. As the experiences of recent years have indicated, although school or trust leaders set out the detail of behaviour regimes, governments clearly have influential power. And findings such as this survey, and goings-on in Astrea’s schools in recent months, provoke plenty of questions.

*Interestingly, a source who had visited an Astrea school in Sheffield was of the opinion that the behaviour regime, though seeming strict in theory, might not actually be being observed in practice, based on those visits, when, this person said, corridors seemed fairly lively, in what this person indicated was what you might expect from a typical secondary without silent corridors.

**It is not clear that many people on the other side of this argument do assume this.