What happened
The footage was recorded in October 2023 at the North site of Springwell Leeds Academy, a school for pupils with social, emotional and mental health needs. It shows a 12-year-old autistic pupil being repeatedly restrained by staff. One recording runs for 50 minutes.
The boy is shown trying to kick staff. Near the end he swings his arm at them and is manoeuvred to the floor, where he is held in a prone restraint for three minutes by five members of staff.
His mother obtained the footage through a subject access request and gave it to the BBC. “This is a child and these are five grown adults in a school where he’s supposed to be safe,” she said.
The outcome
Nothing has been decided about the restraint. The trust that runs the school said it had conducted three investigations into the footage and found no case to answer against staff, and that a Leeds City Council local authority designated officer investigation found malpractice unsubstantiated.
Its chief executive described the incident as typical of those that happen in schools “from time to time”, and the expert criticism as a “difference of opinion” about footage he called “selective”. The school was rated “good” by Ofsted. Ofsted took no enforcement action.
What went wrong
Three experts viewed the recording. Eric Baskind, an expert on the use of force in institutional settings, said the restraint was “too brutal, unnecessary and, in my view, unlawful”, and a second expert endorsed that view.
His reasoning is the training point. Staff already had control of the boy and could have moved him into a sitting position on the bench instead. “They just dragged him [into the prone position],” he said. Elizabeth Swan called the force “unreasonable, excessive and unnecessarily prolonged” and the room a “holding cell”.
What it teaches
Control is not the same as a takedown. When staff already have hold of a child, the choice is between sitting him down and putting him on the floor, and only one of those reduces risk. In this footage the prone position added nothing except danger, and it was held for three minutes with five adults in the room.
The case also shows what an investigation can miss. Three internal reviews and a council safeguarding enquiry looked at the same footage and found nothing. What none of them settled was whether a child who had already been held needed to be taken to the floor at all.
Questions for the room
- Staff had control before the takedown. What did going to the floor achieve?
- You are one of five adults holding a 12-year-old face down. What is your job in those three minutes, and can you say it out loud?
- Three investigations found no case to answer. What would an investigation need to see to find otherwise?
- A calming room with a bench in it. When does a room stop being calming and start being a cell?
Evidence and limits
Confidence: probable. Everything here comes from a single BBC report of 9 April 2025, which quotes the family, the trust and three named experts. The pupil is not named, and no detail that could identify him is used.
There was no death, so no inquest exists, and no proceedings cannot be assumed either. The only official markers are the trust’s internal investigations, the council’s designated officer outcome and an Ofsted grade, and none of them is a published decision on the restraint itself.
Our restraint reduction training for schools covers takedowns, calming rooms and what has to be recorded afterwards.
Sources
Reviewed 20 October 2026.