Children as young as four are being left alone in school “seclusion rooms” for hours at a time, with some developing suicidal thoughts and self-harm behaviours, an investigation by this newspaper has found.
The i Paper has seen 100 detailed accounts of children placed in isolation spaces which suggest these rooms are routinely used to punish rather than protect pupils, particularly those with autism and ADHD. Parents describe finding their child crying alone in windowless rooms, or left for hours in spaces described as “smelly”, “cold” and the size of a “small shed”.
Among the cases documented are a 12-year-old so distressed he stabbed his mother with a cheese knife, and an 11-year-old girl who scrawled words about suicide across her hand.
A survey of 6,121 teachers by Teacher Tapp, an app that polls educators in England daily, found these rooms are now used in 90 per cent of secondary schools and 21 per cent of primaries.
University of Manchester analysis of data from nearly 1,195 schools found that in 2024/25, one in every 60 secondary pupils spent at least a tenth of their school year in removal rooms – with almost one in 1,000 spending half the year or more inside them.
