Three children, who spent nearly 1,000 hours in “isolation” in single academic year, at centre of legal challenge against multi-academy trust

Gorse Academy Trust's isolation policy under detailed scrutiny during judicial review hearing in Leeds.

The implementation of an academy trust’s behaviour management policy has been under forensic scrutiny in court this week, Education Uncovered can reveal, after three children who between them faced nearly 1,000 hours in isolation challenged its impact on their education, socialisation and mental health.

One child spent nearly half of the 2023-24 academic year in isolation, while the two others, one of whom is autistic, spent 26 per cent and 17 per cent of their time there respectively. As a judicial review challenge opened yesterday, lawyers for the three pupils alleged that the punishments had not worked for these children, that their school had not considered the cumulative impact of the sanctions on them, and that the amount of time spent in isolation had had multiple damaging effects, including on one child alleged to have self-harmed as a result.

Part of the legal case against the academy trust running the school has been that the punishments the children received became much less frequent once those two who remained there had filed legal action, and that the behaviour of one of them in particular improved, as a result. Isolation, the lawyers argue, had worsened their behaviour, rather than improved it.

The children, aged 12 to 14, all attended the same school. They have brought a judicial review challenge against the organisation which runs it, the Gorse Academies Trust, whose leader has been one of the pioneers of the isolation policy in English schools.

Gorse is arguing that it does take pupils’ circumstances into account before issuing punishment, that its behaviour policies do work and that it is transforming a school which until recently was one of England’s worst-performing secondaries.