If that day had gone even slightly differently then the world may never have known. It was 2021. The new headteacher at Whitefield, a special educational needs school in Walthamstow with a reputation as one of the best in the entire country, found a pile of dusty USB sticks in their office. On them were more than 500 hours of CCTV footage of nearly forty children being locked in closet-sized cells, often for hours on end. The images show disabled, autistic children being assaulted, restrained by the neck and thrown to the ground by school staff. Some were left alone without food or water for hours, sometimes in clothes sodden with their own urine or vomit, as they cried and, in some cases, begged to be let out. Most of the victims were non-verbal, unable to explain what was happening to them in the school day after day. It was described by the government’s children’s commissioner as “horrifying” and compared by safeguarding experts to “torture”.
When news of the footage broke, it was a nationwide scandal, one that destroyed the reputation of a school that until then had enjoyed renowned status. The MP Iain Duncan Smith served on its board and its then executive headteacher Elaine Colquhoun, one of the highest paid academy trust leaders in the country, had received an OBE in 2016 for her work with special needs children.
The isolation cells were closed in 2017, but the anger over their use continues for the families, who feel no-one has taken accountability for what happened, and are now taking legal action against the school and Waltham Forest council for their role in the scandal.
For the last three months we have been digging into what happened at the school, speaking to council whistleblowers and the families of victims, and have accessed 137 pages of internal documents related to the scandal. Our investigation has revealed that the council was made aware of safeguarding concerns in the years before the CCTV footage was discovered in 2021, but did not act. In the years afterwards, it removed references to the school from public meeting minutes and prevented access to official records from those trying to scrutinise its role in the scandal. We can also reveal that the Metropolitan Police has informed the families that at least three people have been arrested for misconduct in a public office in relation to what happened at Whitefield.
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