Taking Our Power Back! February Newsletter

“The children are always ours, every single one of them, all over the globe; and I am beginning to suspect that whoever is incapable of recognizing this may be incapable of morality.” James Baldwin

Feb 27, 2026

No More Exclusions is a Black-led and Black feminist, abolitionist group organising to bring about the end of school exclusions and exclusionary practices. We are fighting for free quality inclusive education for all and education as the practice of freedom. We started as a group of young Black people with lived experience of exclusions and Black educators and parents sitting around a kitchen table; we were tired of the state of the education system in 2018 and still are. Early members watched as one of our founding members became caught in fulfilling the school-to-prison pipeline that began with multiple school exclusions, lack of care, empathy and safeguarding in schools. Since then, NME has grown to include many more community members, parents, carers, young people, psychologists, educators, advocates and many more who are working towards the same goal: the abolition of school exclusions and the building of a new system, one in which no child is disposable. With this goal in mind, we are working to build tangible alternatives to the current model of carceral education we find in schools today. At the heart of our mission is Bernard Coard’s book “How the West Indian Child Is Made Educationally Sub-normal in the British School System: The Scandal of the Black Child in Schools in Britain”, and the philosophies given to us in Black feminist thought that enable us to engage with this struggle with a clear intersectional vision and praxis.

In this month’s newsletter, we are focusing on our recent community-led action meeting “Whose Schools? Taking Our Power Back!”, an all day event held on Wednesday 18 February in Hackney at the Gascoyne One Community Centre. On the day we called upon the community to stand together with us against the violence of school exclusions and exclusionary practices such as isolation and toxic cultures of fear such as those recently exposed in the Mossbourne Victoria Academy Safeguarding Review.

The Year so Far
In the News
Whose Schools? Taking Our Power Back! NME and friends call to action
Recommended Reading
Coming Up Next Month

The Year so far in NME

Fight For Education - Held in Manchester on the 25th of January, Fight For Education was a day of community, learning and dialogue.
Statement on New Suspension Guidance - NME responds to the Department for Education’s new Suspension Guidance for Schools.
Community Power Potluck - In collaboration with MSJI UK, Nijjor Manush and MSRU, our Leeds chapter held a potluck to build community power and solidarity.
NME Monthly Stall - On the 31st of January, NME members went out into the community in Kilburn to spread the words about abolishing school exclusions.
On Saturday 28 February we will be in Hackney at the pedestrianised part of Mare Street North of Hackney Central (opposite M&S/ McDonalds). Come see us!
NME supports Amendment 221 - Alongside 160 organisations NME shows support for Amendment 221 of the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill.
Power Back! - On the 18th of February, NME joined with Hackney, Islington and Haringey community members to fight back against detrimental exclusionary practices by academies.
NME 2025 Recap - Over the last year NME has launched resources and campaigns, written statements held workshops and so much more. Please take a look at our 2025 recap to see what we’ve been up to.

To stay up to date with what we are doing in NME please refer to our Instagram and our website.

In the News

Whose Schools? Taking Our Power Back! NME stands against Multi Academy Trusts Systems of Harm

When the Child Safeguarding Review of Mossbourne Victoria Park Academy (MVPA) came out in December 2025, it was a matter of immediate concern for No More Exclusions and anyone who cares about the wellbeing of children. The review was the first of its kind, evaluating the safeguarding practices of the entire school following hundreds of complaints from parents, students and former staff. Safeguarding reviews usually focus on individual children’s cases such as the Child Q safeguarding review published in 2022, also bringing to the fore maltreatment of children in another Hackney academy. It revealed damning details of a toxic culture of fear and punishment that permeated the school to its core and damaged children and young people mental health in profound and devastating ways. There were reports of children being trapped in classrooms unable to go to the toilet and soiling themselves unless they were able to “repay” the time they had taken by way of a detention. Testimonies from past staff members, students and parents reached the hundreds. Many reported the neglect of students with SEND needs, the discrimination towards students of colour – particularly black and brown boys – and a growing culture of anxiety.

MVPA is one school in a wider network of multi academy trusts with histories of harm across the country. While this review has brought to light this abusive culture, the question remains about what should be done to stop it. Our community-led meeting, “Whose Schools? Taking Our Power Back!”, brought together the community members from Hackney, Islington and Haringey on the 18th of February to discuss and plan how to dismantle the systems of harm perpetrated by schools like MVPA. Held right across the road from MVPA, “Power Back!” was an event that centred the voices of young people, educators, parents, carers and community members eager to join in solidarity with NME to demand the abolition of school exclusions and exclusionary practices and of harmful and discriminatory behaviour policies such as “zero tolerance” and “no excuses”.

The Many Levels of Exclusions

For many people present at the meeting, the issues highlighted in the MVPA review and school exclusions as a whole are a deeply personal and traumatic experience. Young people experiencing a variety of school sanctioned exclusions, parents carrying the weight of social exclusions, educators being excluded and sanctioned for trying to correct a broken system and adults who are still living through the irreversible damage caused by exclusions, decades after the original experience were all present and ready to participate. While the MVPA review was a revelation of the insidious nature of exclusions embedded in the schools functioning, it was important for NME and members of the community to identify the broader multifaceted forms of exclusions present in the school system.

By focusing on key areas – Behaviour Management and Policies, Safeguarding, SEND and Mental Health and Wellbeing – people were given the opportunity to express personal experiences of exclusions in roundtable discussions. These conversations exposed how even policies that are supposed to mitigate harm, like Behaviour and Safeguarding policies, actually contribute to creating harmful learning environments. Given the opportunity to contribute to each different area, it became clear how issues in each area impacted one another and built a detailed picture of how exclusions are a multi-level crisis of harm in schools.

What may initially come to mind when discussing school exclusions is the typical image of a child being dismissed from mainstream education. However, the language and practice of exclusion goes much deeper than this. Forms of exclusions are being watered down through terms such as “temporary exclusions”, “in-school exclusions”, “off-rolling” or “inclusion”. Creative subjects are being treated as “non-essential” in favour of traditional academic subjects or as methods of blackmail to ensure “good” behaviour. The mental health of students, teachers and parents is often neglected or not taken seriously. Parents of students going through exclusions have reported experiencing feelings of isolation and dismissal from other parents and schools. Students with SEND needs often fly under the radar in this regard, with needs dismissed and ignored due to lack of funds for teacher training or the wider culture of dehumanising young people in favour of “classroom control” prioritised in schools. Teachers are also under inordinate amounts of pressure to conform to this culture instead of cultivating meaningful relationships with students.

Educators, psychologists and advocates for young people present at the meeting revealed how safeguarding and behaviour policies replicate systems of policing rather than care. Safeguarding in schools has become a process led practice with an expectation for teachers to simply regurgitate the steps rather than lead with tailored person centred action for the safety of each child. Behaviour is treated as a blanket approach, completely neglecting to recognise the individual needs of children, particularly those with SEND needs. Ultimately, this creates a culture of fear and anxiety for students, teachers and parents alike as the policies dehumanise personal experiences in favour of bureaucratic rule following. Even within this, excluded students are left uncared for, going under the radar without any meaningful follow ups and eventually becoming forgotten or ignored.

Each conversation and contribution built a picture of exclusions that was comprehensive and meaningful. This practice of identifying key issues in the system brought forth the term “irreversible damage” to describe the long term effects of these problems long after students have left school. While the meeting was a space to air grievances and share personal experiences related to exclusions, this was channelled into a productive search for alternatives systems that can stop these cycles.

Building Alternative Systems

Speaking up about cultures of harm is a traumatic but necessary exercise to recognise the exact issues that need to be abolished. By identifying the systems of harm that are causing irreversible damage to students and the surrounding community at the meeting, we were then able to use our abolitionist imaginations to think of systems of care to eradicate school exclusions. This resulted in ideas like “relationship” policies that encourage collaborative communication between schools and students rather than carceral Behaviour policies. SEND students shouldn’t be excluded or isolated from their peers, instead provision should be in place for positive spaces that prioritise play. Suggestions to look towards reintegrating creativity as an essential part of education were prominent throughout this exercise, encouraging the re-evaluation of the function of schools while abolishing harmful points systems that are leveraged against students to ensure control.

Visualising and planning how to abolish the current system is a liberatory task, pushing us to think outside of the box to make tangible changes to our existing reality. This is the first step to reclaiming a collective hold on a system that may seem outside of our control. Through this roundtable, we were able to bring together a manifesto of how to bring our ideas to fruition. This prioritised accountability from MATs, healing anxieties and putting the students and community first. Participants from each area in Hackney, Islington and Haringey were then encouraged to plan and think of tangible steps to take to execute these changes in each community. As a result, each community was able to cater to the direct needs in their areas as they planned for protests, social media campaigns, community education and outreach within schools. For NME, this planning contributed to our campaign for a moratorium on school exclusions that would give space for these abolitionist alternatives to come into practice.

Conclusion

“Whose Schools? Taking Our Power Back!” is far from being a one off event. The ideas, conversations and plans that were born from this initial meeting will not remain stagnant. Plans to organise further meetings, held in each area, are already taking place. Taking back power to enact the abolition of school exclusions is an ongoing movement.

When a review as harrowing as this comes out about a school, it’s easy to feel scared or defeated. After all, academies have made themselves unaccountable to local councils – centring profits over the community it should be serving. However, this is exactly the feeling that these entities feed off of. Instead of leaning into defeat, we must choose to rally. We have to choose to take our power pack, for the sake of ourselves, our children and our communities. Schools like MVPA need to be held accountable. We need to demand more from the institutions that we trust our children with. By building community led systems of care that centre the personhood of young people and prioritise their wellbeing rather than academic excellence, we can take back power from systems that ignore and dehumanise us. This is why we call for the abolition of school exclusions in every form.

Coming Up In NME

The next monthly stall will be on the 28th of February in Hackney - Pedestrianised part of Mare Street North of Hackney Central (opposite M&S/ McDonalds)
March’s monthly stall will be held in Islington - Location TBD
Thanks for reading!

No More Exclusions

Discussion about this post

Ready for more?