The academy trust operates a zero tolerance discipline policy with children internally isolated and sent home for any breach of the uniform code as well as serious offences. In September 2018
The Guardian published an article criticising the use of isolation booths as a form of punishment within schools, describing them as a form of internal
exclusion (in this context, exclusion is a policy where pupils are forbidden from attending school for a period of time as punishment). A report from the
Department for Education, highlighted in an August 2018 article in
The Guardian, revealed that 45 schools in England had excluded over 20% of their pupils in 2016-2017. Outwood Grange was stated to run nine of them, with
Outwood Academy Ormesby in Middlesbrough excluding 41% of pupils in the last academic year. Notes were drawn in the earlier article to the risk of disabled pupils with challenging behaviour being overly at risk of exclusion. The trusts' policy for “consequence rooms”, as isolation booths were called, stated pupils must not "tap, chew, swing on their chairs, shout out, sigh, or [engage in] any other unacceptable or disruptive behaviour" and a spokesperson stated "The trust employs all reasonable adjustments for students with special needs within their behaviour policy". However, the banned activities include many
self-stimulatory behaviours used by people on the
autism spectrum to cope when under stress, and would be considered reasonable adjustments under the
Equality Act 2010. A parent of a child who was placed in a "consequence room" for 35 school days has taken a Yorkshire school to court to challenge the legitimacy of this policy; lawyers have applied for a judicial review. The issues to be judged are to be loss of education, the lack of a review procedure, and the lack of monitoring by the
Department of Education which is now responsible as academies are free of
Local Authority oversight. The trust has been accused of failure to promote the pupil's welfare and doing so in an “irrational” manner, as well as failure to have regard to the Equality Act 2010, as pupils with
special educational needs or poor mental health are being placed in isolation against their best interests. To add, failure to comply with article 8 of the
European Convention of Human Rights. The school trust responded saying "other of their schools were outstanding". In September 2019, the trust launched a new behaviour policy.
Schools Week reported that the new policy included "more praise, a further safeguard to pick up – and provide support for – those pupils stuck on the "merry go round" of sanctions, and more teaching for pupils about how to behave." In 2019 former teachers at
Outwood Academy Bishopsgarth reported a practice of intimidating and humiliating assemblies, which the trust denied; other teachers reported that these assemblies were trust policy and took place at other schools in the trust. On 1 May 2019, the trust announced its intention that pupils will have to repeat a year, and be separated from their peer group, if their behaviour is deemed inadequate. The trust said that this is legal, and that no extra support is being provided for the students in spite of a warning that this type of zero tolerance creates
child mental health problems and violence against teachers. ==Schools==