Naughty pupils made to sit in ‘isolation booths’ made from old TOILETS & cardboard boxes

NAUGHTY pupils are being put in “isolation booths” made from converted toilets and classrooms, the children’s commissioner says.

Anne Longfield says she has heard “horror stories” about the spaces, where children are made to sit in silence for hours as punishment for breaking rules and acting up.

She said: “I heard of one bizarre example of how they had a kind of portable booth which was a cardboard booth which they just put over the child wherever they were sitting”.

Some pupils have reported being put in isolation for days or weeks at a time and described the experience as “distressing and degrading”.

Others said they dozed off out of boredom.

Last week, the Centre for Mental Health charity warned that putting pupils in isolation could harm their mental health.

But the government’s “behaviour tsar” for England, Tom Bennett, defended the practice.

He said: “They aren’t isolation rooms – I’ve never seen a school leave a child unattended.

“They’re supervised, and more often than not, accompanied by other students.

";So claims that these are isolation spaces is nonsense. These are safe spaces, run by adults.”

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