In this chapter I take a closer look at the practices and relationships constituting the behaviour support units (BSUs) and attempt to illuminate the workings of a place that appeared for the most part to remain out of sight and out of mind to those in the mainstream schools. I also explore the experiences of the young people who had been referred to a BSU and examine how they became constructed as ‘unincludable’ within a standard classroom. A key objective of this broader contextualisation is to move beyond the narrow realm of personal pathology to show how therapeutically orientated pedagogy can distort and produce particular classroom behaviours. Detailing the accounts, interpretations and histories of pupils confined to the BSUs foregrounds the relational dynamics shaping and informing the acting out of emotions, and highlights the impoverished conception of the ‘social’ characterising initiatives that claim to build social skill through reshaping personal capabilities.

Separate and different

While BSUs occupy highly visible territory within the schools, their routines, conventions and everyday dramas are played out well away from the mainstream gaze. While everyone in the school knows where they are situated, few are aware of what actually goes on inside them. Teachers rarely found cause to visit the units and readily drew on disparaging nicknames (‘zoo’, ‘sin bin’) to describe them. At Hailingbrooke, Dave Stirling successfully lobbied for timetabled slots on core curriculum subjects, insisting that mainstream teachers came into the units to deliver them. This was much resented and resisted by permanent staff members, who engineered for supply teachers to fulfil this role. This meant there was a high turnover of teachers in the units and little opportunity to build relationships. While some of the supply teachers were creative and engaging, most relied on worksheets and resignedly allowed chaos to reign.

Maths sessions on Thursday mornings were a particularly appalling spectacle characterised by despair and discomfort all round. The white, middle-aged supply teacher would arrive, sweating and puce, hand out the worksheets and then feebly attempt to police the uproar that ensued. The pupils reacted with frustration, anger and contempt, exclaiming loudly that they could not and would not do the sums. On more than one occasion the teacher allowed them to draw pictures instead.