Schools being too strict?
This piece was prompted by the BBC’s report on a pupil who spent more than half a school year in an isolation booth (BBC News).
Strictness without dignity is not discipline
I was asked this week to look at the BBC’s report on a pupil who spent more than half a school year in an isolation booth.
It is a hard read for anyone responsible for behaviour, safeguarding or inclusion in schools. The report describes pupils removed from classrooms for long periods, seated in booths, monitored, sometimes given limited or unsuitable work, and expected to remain silent for the day. The school says its reflection rooms improve behaviour and protect learning. That point should not be dismissed too quickly. Schools have to protect the learning of the many, not only respond to the behaviour of the few. BBC News: pupil put in isolation booth for more than half a school year
But there is a line.
When a behaviour system starts to rely on removal, silence and waiting-time, it may be producing compliance without teaching behaviour.
That is the problem.
If you carry responsibility for behaviour culture, safeguarding, SEND, inclusion, staff training or trust-wide consistency, this is the uncomfortable question:
What is the pupil learning while they are away from the classroom?
Not what sanction have they received.
Not how long have they been out.
Not whether the spreadsheet says the policy has been followed.
What are they learning?
Gary Klugiewicz, founder of Vistelar and one of the people who has influenced our work at Dynamis for many years, often talks about treating people with dignity by showing respect. In conflict management, that is not a mood or a slogan. It is an operational standard. It means we set boundaries in a way that keeps the person inside the social contract wherever possible.
A school is held together by that social contract.
The child has duties. The adult has duties. The rest of the class has rights. The teacher has a right to teach. The school has to protect safety, learning and order.
So no — this is not an argument for weak boundaries.
A pupil should not be allowed to derail a lesson again and again. A teacher should not have to absorb abuse as if it is part of the job. A behaviour lead should not be left trying to “relationship” their way through risk with no policy, no senior backing and no trained staff around them.
But a firm school is not the same as a harsh school.
A fair school does not confuse a quiet child with a reflecting child. It does not assume that because a pupil is facing forward, they are learning self-control. It does not make removal from ordinary school life the routine answer to unmet need, dysregulation, defiance or distress.
The Department for Education’s new guidance on inclusion bases gives schools a useful test. It says that the curriculum in a base should be “underpinned by a belief that all children and young people can engage with the mainstream curriculum” when they have access to high-quality and expert provision, including specialist input, advice and training. It also says bases should not be areas that “lack clear curriculum intent and purposeful teaching and learning.” DfE: Inclusion bases in schools
That is a very important distinction.
An inclusion base is not a punishment room with a nicer sign on the door.
A well-run base is part of the school’s education offer. It has curriculum intent. It has skilled adults. It has purposeful teaching. It has specialist advice where needed. It has a plan for how the pupil remains connected to mainstream learning and the wider school community.
A booth does not become an inclusion base because the school calls it “reflection”.
That may sound blunt, but it needs saying.
For school leaders, repeated removal creates a strategic problem: at some point governors, parents or inspectors will ask whether the school is managing behaviour or running a parallel system of exclusion.
For behaviour and pastoral leads, it creates an operational problem: staff need a consistent framework that protects classrooms without turning removal into a dead-end.
For safeguarding, SEND and inclusion leads, it creates an ethical problem: vulnerable pupils may experience repeated isolation as rejection, humiliation or failure, especially when additional needs are not properly understood.
For the adults closest to escalation — teaching assistants, pastoral staff, duty staff, inclusion teams — it creates a training problem: they are often expected to hold the boundary at the hardest moment, with the least preparation.
For trusts and workforce leads, it creates a system problem: a policy can look consistent on paper while pupils experience very different thresholds, language, supervision and reintegration practices from one site to the next.
This is why “strict” is too small a word for the debate.
The better word is fidelity.
Does the system do what it claims to do?
If the claim is that removal is a reset, then the reset must teach something. If the claim is that reflection improves behaviour, then reflection must be structured enough to produce insight, repair and readiness to return. If the claim is that a base supports inclusion, then the base must connect the pupil back to curriculum, relationships and belonging.
Otherwise, the process becomes a holding pattern.
And holding patterns are expensive. They cost staff time, pupil trust, parent confidence and, eventually, school culture.
One useful way to look at it is as a ladder.
A pupil repeatedly removed from class can experience the system like this:
- I make a mistake, refuse an instruction or lose control.
- I am removed from the room.
- I sit somewhere away from my peers.
- I do not experience the work as meaningful.
- I return behind, resentful, embarrassed or still dysregulated.
- I meet the next demand with less trust than before.
- Staff see the same behaviour again.
- The system concludes that I “do not respond to consequences”.
That last step is the trap.
The pupil may be responding exactly as we trained them to respond.
Not deliberately. Not always consciously. But through repeated experience.
Procedural justice research gives us a useful lens here. People are more likely to accept decisions, even decisions they do not like, when they believe the process was fair, they had some voice, the authority was respectful, and the decision-maker was acting from legitimate motives. Schools are not courts, obviously, but pupils read fairness very quickly. So do parents. So do staff.
That is why dignity is not the opposite of discipline.
Dignity is one of the ways discipline becomes legitimate.
A fair and firm response says two things at once:
“This behaviour cannot continue.”
And:
“You are still part of this community, and we are going to help you get back to it.”
Schools need both messages.
If the adult only gives the belonging message, the boundary disappears. The class notices. Staff confidence drains away.
If the adult only gives the boundary message, the pupil can experience the system as rejection. That is especially risky for children with trauma histories, SEND, emotional regulation difficulties, attachment insecurity, mental ill health, or a long record of feeling like school is something that happens to them rather than with them.
The behaviour may still be unacceptable.
The child may still be vulnerable.
Both can be true.
This is where professional flexibility matters. Flexibility does not mean improvising based on who complains loudest, which parent is most persistent, or which member of staff happens to be on duty. That is not flexibility. That is drift.
Professional flexibility means adjusting the route while keeping the destination fixed.
The destination is safety, learning, dignity and community membership.
One pupil may need a short, calm removal because the class needs immediate protection. Another may need a planned inclusion-base placement with specialist teaching and a reintegration timetable. Another may need a restorative conversation after the emotional temperature drops. Another may need a risk assessment, parent meeting and multi-agency support because the pattern has become too serious for ordinary behaviour systems to carry.
Same standards.
Different pathways.
That is not a compromise between Paul Dix and Tom Bennett, or between relationships and routines. It is the hard professional work of holding both. Adults should be calm, predictable and relational. Policies should be clear, visible and consistently applied. Consequences should protect learning. Repair should protect belonging.
At Dynamis, this is why we train the moments where behaviour culture actually lives: the corridor challenge, the refusal, the pupil who wants an audience, the child who bolts, the parent who arrives angry, the class watching to see whether the adult can stay steady.
Not because every moment is dramatic.
Because small adult responses become the culture.
If a school has a reflection room, reset process or inclusion base, it should be able to answer a few direct questions:
- What is the purpose of this space?
- What curriculum is being delivered there?
- Who is teaching or supervising, and what training have they had?
- How does the work connect back to mainstream learning?
- What specialist input is available when SEND, trauma, mental health or communication needs are involved?
- What is the reintegration plan?
- How are repeated removals reviewed so the school learns from the pattern?
- How does the process preserve dignity while maintaining boundaries?
If those questions are difficult to answer, the room may be doing too much hidden work for the school.
This is where dignity and discipline meet.
A school community is not held together by silence. It is held together by adults who can model fair authority under pressure: calm tone, clear limits, respectful challenge, purposeful teaching, proper recording, and a route back.
If a sanction strengthens that social contract, use it.
If it weakens it, rethink it.
Not abandon consequences.
Rethink the design.
Because the goal is not to win a battle of wills with a child.
The goal is a school where pupils learn the standard, staff can rely on each other, and the most vulnerable children are not quietly taught that they belong somewhere else.
I hope the above helps, especially for leaders trying to protect staff, preserve learning time and still build provision that is genuinely inclusive. That is not easy work. But it is the work.
Note: none of this removes the need for immediate removal where there is serious disruption, risk or unsafe behaviour. The point is narrower and more practical: if removal becomes frequent, long, poorly taught or disconnected from reintegration, it is no longer just a behaviour issue. It is a provision-design issue.
This guide on Schools being too strict? is part of our ongoing work with schools and academies.