23/10/2025
No one ever behaves better by being made to feel worse!
A study by the university of Manchester has found that one in twelve secondary pupils report being put in isolation at least once a week at school. Here’s the problem with that.
Isolation is a punishment. It removes children from their peer group and from lessons, confines them to a room by themselves. The idea is that this will work as a deterrent, so their behaviour will be better when they return to the classroom. Schools say they need it because otherwise these children disrupts the class for everyone else. It’s a short term solution. Remove the child from the class.
There is no evidence that it works in the long term. Isolation is not an evidence based intervention. Indeed there are many reasons to think it might not work - isolation rooms are often full of repeat offenders, with some children spending significant periods of time there. If a child doesn’t comply with the rules for isolation, the punishment is usually another day of isolation. Some end up there for weeks on end. Their behaviour does not improve as a result.
Imagine what this would feel like as an adult. You do something wrong at work, and they stop you from interacting with your colleagues and walking freely round the building. They confine you to a single room where no one talks to you and give you mundane tasks to do to keep you occupied. How would it make you feel about work? Would it make you more motivated to do well?
Isolation damages the child’s relationship with school, and ignores the reasons why they have not met behavioural expectations. It assumes that children can simply choose to behave differently, and that isolation will provide the motivation. It is often part of the pathway towards stopping attending school or exclusion. It can make things worse and there’s no evidence that it makes things better. And that’s the problem with isolation.
