The education sector continues to reverberate with allegations that two high-profile multi-academy trusts used a controversial behaviour approach known as “flattening the grass”.
Last week, Tes reported claims that staff from Outwood Grange Academies Trust and Delta Academies Trust engaged in the “ritual humiliation” and “public shaming” of pupils to instil discipline.
Insiders told Tes that the trusts implement the approach when they take over a new school, beginning with a series of “rolling assemblies” for each year group that are packed out with MAT executives.
A former senior leader from one Outwood academy - who asked not to be named - said the trust had a deliberate policy to “pick on” children, with “intense shouting” in their faces for minor transgressions, which started when pupils were lined up in silence waiting to go into the assemblies.
“They talk about it quite openly when they take on a school, that they deliberately set out to make the kids, as they would put it, see that there’s a line not to be crossed - so they’re going to play on kids’ fear.”
The source said “flattening the grass” continued for the next six weeks, with MAT staff patrolling the school in pairs, pulling pupils out of lessons and aggressively shouting at them “to terrify them into not misbehaving”.
At Delta, two sources - who also asked not to be named - with knowledge of the trust’s takeover of South Leeds Academy in 2016, said a similar approach was rolled out there. One source said the process made them feel like a “prison warden”.
And since Tes published its initial accounts, more sources have come forward with claims about a “culture of fear” and staff “ripping into children” at the two trusts.
When first approached by Tes, Outwood Grange said: “In response to your questions, we ask: why are disgruntled individuals so keen to claim our pupils are unhappy when in inspection after inspection, Ofsted is lavishing praise on our schools for their happy atmosphere and outstanding academic progress?
“And why would record numbers of parents be sending their children to our schools if there was this negative culture our critics pretend exists?”
A spokesperson for Delta said the trust “does not have a ‘flattening the grass policy’”, and that during assemblies staff “were not told to shout at students but were asked to ensure students were well-behaved”.
So far, the Department for Education and Ofsted both appear to be backing the trusts, with the DfE saying that it values “high-quality sponsors in raising education standards”.
