Must try harder

Why lazy journalism has a cost, and students are the ones who pay it

There has been some very weak education reporting happening at the Observer newspaper lately. This makes me sad, because it’s so important to get it right. The public, parents, have a right to know what’s happening in schools in order to make informed choices about what kind of schools they want to select, endorse, encourage; and they also have a right to know what politicians in charge of schools are doing, in order to make informed choices about who to support at the ballot box.

Unfortunately, this didn't happen in a recent article by Anna Fazackerley, and even more unfortunately for me, I was dragged into it. I wrote a series of posts on X to unpick everything that was wrong about it, which I reproduce below:

The thread:

I thought I would fact check this bizarre article from this weekend's Observer (not, as people keep saying, the @guardian, which normally is much better for quality  education coverage). It's almost easier to find out what is true, than to deal with all the inaccuracies. 🧵

ERROR 1: 'English schools to phase out ‘cruel’ behaviour rules'.

1. There are no 'cruel' behaviour rules in schools. What the article describes as cruel are exit/ removal room, and suspensions, exclusions, all of which are legal and at times completely necessary. It's like calling double-yellow lines and parking fines cruel.
2. There were no plans to phase them out anyway. The story was complete fiction.

ERROR 2: 'Policy will move to keeping vulnerable pupils in school'.

What vulnerable pupils? Do you mean the students who are attacked or harassed or victimised, bullied, or have to endure their lessons being disrupted or their lives made a misery by daily terrorising? Oh apologies. You mean the ones *doing* all that. Who, yes, often come from vulnerable circumstances themselves. But it's telling how that is framed. The aggressor is now the victim. Which will be news to staff and students everywhere.

ERROR 3: 'Isolation booths, frequent suspensions and strict behaviour regimes look set to be phased out in England'

Completely untrue, as it turned out.

ERROR 4: ' Education leaders close to the new government say ministers are planning to change the inspection regime ....[to prevent children]... being repeatedly suspended because they aren’t meeting strict behaviour rules.'

Well they aren't that close because that doesn't appear to be true either. The guidance is clear. Even a child with SEND can be suspended or excluded as long as their SEND has been taken into account in the process. Because SEND is not the same as 'cannot behave' and vice versa. That's incredibly patronising to the child. It also threatens the ability of the school to maintain a safe environment

ERROR 5: 'Anne Longfield, the former children’s commissioner whose Centre for Young Lives has been working with the Labour education team, said: “Looking at the data and talking to young people it is clear that a large group of kids have been made to feel school isn’t for them and that has to change.'

No, a tiny % (0.11%) of the school cohort is excluded. The only reason this happens is because of extreme behaviour like violence, harassment, abuse, or horrendous levels of continuous disruption. Which is easier to appreciate if you have actually worked in a school, and much harder if you have no experience of doing so.

ERROR 6: 'But she said the largely academic results-focused accountability system, which does not look at things such as whether one school has more pupils with additional needs than another, meant these schools were effectively punished for taking them.'

Schools aren't punished in any way for having children with SEND. Schools aren't judged in that way in the slightest and I can't see what this could mean.

ERROR 7: 'The Tory government’s behaviour tsar, Tom Bennett, is widely expected to exit the Department for Education soon.'

CHEEKY. First I've heard of it, but no doubt the impeccable sources behind the rest of this know better. Also, whatever happens, I'm not sure 'widely expected' is an accurate way to describe, 'Me and my friends really, really hope it.'

ERROR 8: 'Bennett has championed a culture of silent corridors and strict sanctions for infringing any school rules, including not having the correct uniform or equipment.'

OK, serious point here: I don't 'champion' them preferentially- I repeatedly back the right of a school to have solent corridors if they want to, and if they don't that's great too. I back schools running their cultures the best way they can. Every school can be different.

And I never champion 'strict sanctions for infringing any rules.' I have written entire books and spoken for thousand of hours about the complexity of how we respond to school standards not being met: pastoral responses, conversational ones, therapeutic, interpersonal, encouragement, deflection, redirection. It's exhausting to hear that mischaracterised as being some kind of advocate for punishment machines. But it's typical of with no familiarity of schools, or the methods successful ones use, or my advice.

ERROR 9: 'One source close to the Labour government predicted that it would remove funding for the Department for Education behaviour hubs that have rolled out training for schools following Bennett’s strict model.'

Not that close, apparently, as this is also, as it turns out, untrue.

What's also untrue is that the Behaviour Hubs model is 'strict' in the way implied. It's a program of peer-to-peer support that matches schools at different stages in their journeys. So far it's been hugely successful and popular with the schools who take part.

ERROR 10: '...children with ADHD or autism (sometimes not yet formally diagnosed) were more likely be sent to isolation rooms repeatedly, as well as children with “a lot going on at home” because they were living in poverty.'

There is no data to suggest that this is true in the slightest. A lawyer who represents families of children who get in trouble a lot may not be the best viewpoint on what actually happens in schools.

ERROR 11: '....One big impact [from removal rooms] is that they fall behind. They aren’t taught in these rooms, and these are the pupils who really need proper teaching,  education and support.'

1. IME students are routinely set work to do in these rooms, and supervised, and assisted when they ask for help.
2. The 'teaching' is supposed to happen primarily in the classroom, where they were before they were removed for appalling behaviour.

ERROR 12: 'Rosenberg acknowledged many of these children were challenging to teach, and said teachers must have the freedom to send a child out of the classroom when they were misbehaving.'

Here we have the Removal Paradox: students can be removed from the classroom if their behaviour becomes unbearable, but they *must not be sent anywhere*.

ERROR 13: 'But he argued that allowing pupils to clock up multiple days of isolation only made them more likely to “act up” as they fell further behind, with some refusing to go to school.'

It isn't being in a removal room that causes them to fall behind, it's the behaviour that cause them to be removed. This is like claiming double yellow lines make you park illegally.

ERROR 14: “There are schools fixed-term excluding or isolating hundreds of kids a week and expecting their behaviour to get better … it won’t.”

This will be news to the schools who use these systems regularly as a way to prevent future misbehaviour because students know that their actions will have consequences. Deterrents work pretty well at modifying a lot of human behaviour, which (again) is why people tend not to park on yellow lines, and people laurel don't nick things if they think they'll get caught.

ERROR 15: 'He added: “By all means have discipline. But there is no need to have cruelty behind it. This sort of thing has to stop.”'

Yes indeed. And that would make more sense if the cruelty was already there, which is really isn't. Because rules and consequences aren't intrinsically cruel; they're essential *as part* of the way in which we maintain a safe, calm culture.

This isn't 'news' or any form of accurate journalism, but instead is a glorified thought-piece, thinly disguised activism dressed up as reporting. If they had put it in the 'comment' section it would have been less egregious. And even then it would have just been a litany of wishful thinking and slightly personal vilification.

Teachers and schools are really struggling right now. The least we can do is to make sure they get all the support they need to help make schools safe, calm and dignified places where everyone flourishes. What they don't need is armchair advocacy from people who have a weak grasp of how great schools work. They need good advice, clear guidance, and the ability to make the right choices for all their students.

Apart from that, I thought it was a really good piece.

The fallout

I should mention that the day the piece came out I was contacted by sources that actually are close to the Secretary of State for Education to confirm that this article didn't come from them, and that the claims were untrue.

It was later conclusively buried for good in the deepest of holes by the Secretary of State for Education herself, Bridget Phillipson in an interview with Nick Ferrari on LBC radio:

Nick Ferrari: Can you clarify a story that was in The Observer yesterday suggesting that frequent suspensions, isolation booths and strict behaviour regimes could be phased out in England after work done by - I understand - someone who's assisting you in an organisation called Centre for Young Lives? Is that the plan of the Labour government?

Bridget Phillipson: No, I'm afraid there was some inaccuracy around that. What I can say to your listeners is that a Labour government expects high standards where it comes to behaviour within our schools. We know that in order for children to learn they have to be in calm, orderly environments where they get the support that they need from our teachers and school leaders and I back school leaders and the tough choices that they sometimes have to make. It should, of course, be a last resort. I know it is a last resort and it's the last thing that school leaders want to be doing in terms of excluding young people. And parents have got responsibilities as part of that process. I also think government's got responsibilities too and that's why the plans that we're setting out where it comes to, for example, more mental health support in our schools, the need to reform our system for support with children with special education needs.

Nick Ferrari: So, children – unruly children - will still be suspended, Secretary of State? Just to clarify that.

Bridget Phillipson: Of course. School leaders should retain that important step. It's not something they do lightly because they know the consequences. But there are consequences of not acting. I completely understand the disruption that can be caused to the wider school community.

Nick Ferrari: Is it true that the government's behaviour tsar, who, obviously, you inherited from the Conservatives, Tom Bennett will be leaving his post, as also reported yesterday? Is that true?

Bridget Phillipson: I genuinely have no idea where that report has come from because, no, that is not the case.

https://x.com/TTRadioOfficial/status/1815491851341742449

So the article is pretty much completely untrue. Either the sources are entirely unreliable, or the players involved are motivated by something other than seeking the truth. This is no minor error- it’s a serious slur on both my own methods and professional reputation, and more seriously, creates confusion in schools about what the DfE will be aiming for in the next few years. In the current febrile atmosphere of change, that creates serious pressures on head teachers and teachers who are stressed out enough as it is.

Impact? Well it made quite a stir. I had a huge wave of abuse based on this (pleasingly international), happily outmatched by a greater wave of support and outrage from people who understand behaviour and my work- and more broadly, the work of the DfE on behaviour.

But I’ve already had to set out multiple responses to numerous hate-filled messages from people accusing me of despising children, being a terrible person, not caring about special needs and so on. If I didn’t maintain a serious block list, I would fear for my sanity, because facts matter, a lot. When articles get things as wrong as this one, it causes damage. Most of the claims could have been checked easily before publication. Instead, they just went with the easy option and printed whatever made the biggest fuss. I don’t know what to call that, but it isn’t journalism.

IMO it’s caused me reputational damage, and I’ve asked the Observer to retract and apologise. So far, nothing. Which is a terrible indictment of its vertiginous drop in quality, at least as far as education coverage goes. I live in hope that it recovers its integrity.

*For completeness, here are the questions I was sent for the article:

And my answers: