New book lifts lid on children’s “strict school” experiences

Interviews set out alleged impact of behaviour management policies at Athena Learning Trust and the Ted Wragg trust.

Harrowing stories of children’s experiences of strict behaviour policies at two multi-academy trusts in England’s South-West have been told in a book which is published today.

Childhood Ltd, by the journalist Cherry Casey, includes a chapter which charts the struggles of a succession of pupils at schools within the Athena Learning Trust – which also faced scrutiny this summer in two BBC documentaries – and at The Ted Wragg Multi Academy Trust.

Ms Casey tells the story of one Athena parent who said one of his daughters self-harmed and then took a “serious overdose,” both on school grounds. His daughter, he said, had been well-behaved but “one thing that schools don’t understand is that it’s not just the kids getting regularly sanctioned [punished] that are impacted.”

A former teacher now running a home education business had worked with a child who had been removed by his parents from an Athena school having reacted to “being sent to reflection on a daily basis” by getting “to the point of self-harming, channelling all his negativity into cleaning himself, scrubbing his hands to the point where they would bleed”.

Athena, whose nine schools in Cornwall and Devon are being transferred to other academy trusts following public pressure over its behaviour policies, told Radio 4’s File on 4 programme this summer that it was “committed to understanding what we do well [and] what we could do better.”