\n<\/p>\n
M<\/span>ax was 11 and had just started his new secondary school when he was first put into isolation. He had asked to use the toilet between lessons, which was not ordinarily allowed, and was told to go quickly.<\/p>\n \u201cHe knew he wasn\u2019t allowed to run, so he walked quickly,\u201d his mother, Beth, told the Guardian. But teachers claimed he was running and Max\u2019s secondary school career began with a week\u2019s isolation.<\/p>\n His parents were devastated. \u201cHe had only just got his autism diagnosis,\u201d said Beth. \u201cThis was the start of a very poor secondary experience. He had to sit on his own for all breaks and lunches for a week. He was 11 and had to sit on a table in the hall, so not hidden away but publicly humiliated.<\/p>\n \u201cIt can\u2019t have helped him make friends as those first few weeks are key for this. He was devastated at the time and still talks about it now. It was the first of many punishments that contributed to his reducing school attendance and eventual burnout.\u201d<\/p>\n Finally, Max stopped going to school altogether.<\/p>\n Isolation differs from school to school. It is usually a dedicated room on the school premises known by a variety of different names: the isolation room, the behaviour support room, the reflection room, the blue room, the matrix, the quay or base camp.<\/p>\n Some are furnished with isolation booths, where children are sealed off from other pupils, required to sit facing forward without talking to others. In many cases children are not allowed to leave for break or lunchtime, with sandwiches provided instead.<\/p>\n Dan Rosenberg, a lawyer at Gold Jennings, who has represented dozens of children affected by the use of isolation rooms in schools, is particularly concerned about pupils who are repeatedly isolated. In one recent case, a child was found to have spent 83 days in isolation in a school year, equating to more than 500 hours.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s the cumulative effect of repeatedly being stuck in isolation \u2013 it damages their mental health. It also massively impacts their learning because they miss so many lessons. When they go back to the classroom, children often cannot follow what\u2019s going on.\u201d<\/p>\n They disengage, find it hard to concentrate, and find themselves back in isolation, he said.<\/p>\n Many have special educational needs. \u201cThey just can\u2019t really cope. Then often they get told they\u2019ve \u2018failed\u2019 isolation and they have to do another day,\u201d said Rosenberg. \u201cSome end up self-harming, often using whatever is at hand \u2013 a pencil to dig into their skin or their nails are two of the methods I have heard of.\u201d<\/p>\n There are often fights at home as parents struggle to get their children to go to school and attendance suffers. \u201cWhy would a child want to go to school if that\u2019s what\u2019s going to happen?\u201d said Rosenberg. \u201cBut repeated isolation does not solve the problem. It often makes things worse.\u201d<\/p>\n Sue has three children. All have education, health and care plans detailing their special needs, and all have been sent to isolation for various misdemeanours including. Her oldest daughter fell foul of the rules because of her eyelashes. \u201cNot huge, just small eyelashes which gave her confidence.\u201d<\/p>\n Other reasons for isolation included not entering a lesson as a result of anxiety, talking during a lesson and \u201cnot sitting still enough\u201d.<\/p>\n Her daughter\u2019s anxiety deteriorated. \u201cShe became an emotional wreck,\u201d said Sue. By the time it came to her sitting her GCSEs, she was so anxious she missed most of her exams. She lost all trust in her teachers and left school with no qualifications.<\/p>\n Sue\u2019s second daughter has been diagnosed with autism and selective mutism. \u201cShe said she would rather kill herself than be in that room alone all day as it is so long and isolated.\u201d<\/p>\n Within weeks of starting secondary school, Sue\u2019s son \u2013 who has learning difficulties and is awaiting an autism assessment \u2013 was sent to isolation for speaking when not asked to, failing to produce sufficient work and swearing because he was trying to ask for help and got angry. He is going through emotionally based school avoidance and has not attended school since February.<\/p>\n \u201cIsolation can be a good safe place for children who are disrupting a lesson but only if it is used in the correct way,\u201d said Sue. \u201cChildren\u2019s neurodiversities need to be taken into account as well as their mental health.\u201d<\/p>\n All names of children and parents have been changed<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Max was 11 and had just started his new secondary school when he was first put into isolation. He had asked to use the toilet between lessons, which was not ordinarily allowed, and was told to go quickly. \u201cHe knew he wasn\u2019t allowed to run, so he walked quickly,\u201d his mother, Beth, told the Guardian.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":29995,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[343,12656,17668,15728,4131,630,17667,334,588],"class_list":{"0":"post-29994","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-education","8":"tag-childrens","9":"tag-describe","10":"tag-difficulty","11":"tag-humiliated","12":"tag-isolation","13":"tag-parents","14":"tag-publicly","15":"tag-school","16":"tag-schools"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29994","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=29994"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29994\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/29995"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29994"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29994"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29994"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}