There’s a difference between not knowing and not wanting to know.
Most of the harm in schools isn’t hidden, subtle or complicated. It’s just been normalised.
We know what coercive control looks like in adult relationships—monitoring, isolation, public shaming—and we rightly call it abuse. But when the same tactics appear in schools, we call it ‘behaviour management.’
We know children are excluded for minor infractions. We know families are framed as the problem—and always, always, the most marginalised paying the highest price.
We know stopping someone from using the toilet should be unthinkable outside of school. But inside school, it’s policy—even as recent EHRC guidance has intensified barriers for trans and gender non-conforming people, further restricting access to appropriate facilities.
And we know people thrive when they feel valued, respected, and safe. We don’t need another report to confirm it. Instead of building classrooms around that truth, we flood them with systems designed to control, contain, and correct.
This isn’t bad luck. It’s design.
The problem isn’t a lack of evidence.
We’ve been taught to worship ‘evidence-based practice.’ But let’s be honest—most evidence starts with the goal of control and ends with a convenient answer. It ignores what we already know to be true.
What if we worked from what we already know to be true?
That young people deserve dignity.
That safety and control are not the same thing.
That punishment doesn’t build trust.
That if schools feel abusive to some children, that’s a problem with the system, not the child.
We’re not being provocative for the sake of it. It’s about following (y)our own logic. If we know these things to be true, about power, relationships, and growth—why do we abandon them the moment children walk through the school gates?
Read our report. Not because it has all the answers, but because we can’t keep pretending we don’t know. Our new report doesn’t settle every debate or offer a five-point plan to fix the system. What it does is challenge the stories we’ve been told—and the ones we’ve told ourselves.
It makes an argument for possibility. And if you’ve ever felt the weight of a broken system but couldn’t quite name it, this report might help. Because the truth is, we can do better. But only if we stop waiting for permission to act on what we already know. Maybe Marianne Williamson was right:
“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.”
It’s time to use that power.
To stop deferring.
To stop seeking validation from people who get their power by withholding it.
To start doing what we know is right.
