Walking past the school building on Monteagle Way, one could be forgiven for assuming that the schooling within these walls would match that of the typical experience in education: the rote-learning, evening homework piling up, worrying what the ‘scary’ teacher might say if you made a mistake.
But behind these walls is a school dissimilar to most. Mistakes are encouraged, confrontation is seen as an opportunity for growth and the sanctions given are not detentions nor suspensions – it’s twenty-five push-ups.
This is the Boxing Academy, an alternative provision state school in Hackney that educates students through the discipline and ethos of boxing. The forty-eight students enrolled in the academy, aged between 12 and 16, have often struggled to fit in with mainstream education as a result of traumatic or difficult upbringings, causing them to misbehave to the point of permanent exclusion. The academy offers students the chance to sit their GSCEs in order to progress into college.
The academy will be moving to its new premises in September 2026. Anna Cain, principal of the academy since 2009, says that the new building on Brooke Road in Clapton has been a long time coming, after three false starts caused works to be delayed.
Cain says the reason boxing is used as the school’s guiding framework for education is because the nature of the sport requires both discipline and emotion-management. Students take boxing classes every day with a boxing coach – called a ‘pod leader’ – as a way of channelling their emotions and reframing their views on education.
“IT’S NOT ABOUT BEING STRONG AND HAVING A VIOLENT FIGHT. it’s about being organised, having a plan, having a team around you, and then you step into the ring on your own”
She also says that the structure of a boxing club can offer a sense of stability and community which the students may otherwise not have experienced, either at home or in mainstream education.
“A lot of the kids who come here have been constantly in trouble in other places, for things like not having a pen – things that whilst not okay, do not necessarily need to derail a child’s education. So, we kind of start from scratch. They bring nothing, we provide everything.”
For any staff looking to work in the academy, Cain says they are required to partake in at least one competitive fight. Whether they win or lose in the ring does not matter – it is the evidence of participation, commitment and training that counts.
“It’s not about being strong and having a violent fight. It’s about being organised, having a plan, having a team around you, and then you step into the ring on your own,” she says.
Emotional safety and trust are key for students at the academy. Many of these children have had difficult and adverse childhoods, which can cause both emotional and physiological developmental issues. Boxing coaches in the academy are trained in a trauma-informed practice called “attachment awareness”, meaning students can develop a secure, safe attachment with their leaders and view them as a consistent source of both support and discipline.
“We’re not saying it’s okay to behave badly, but we are understanding of what the children are trying to communicate, and if you can get past the initial presentation of behaviour and go to the underlying issues, then you can build those blocks, because the thing about attachment issues or trauma is you can fix it. But what you have to do in order to fix it is be really consistent [and] very clear with the kids. They need to learn to trust you,” she says.
Jermaine Williams, vice-principal of the academy, joined the team in 2010 as an entry-level pod leader. Cain says that his work with the students has helped shaped what the role of the pod leader is to students in the academy.
Williams says: “The fact that I was able to tell them some stories about my upbringing and my life [means] I see the cogs turning in their individual heads…they went ‘Okay, this guy knows what we’re talking about because he had a similar experience.’”
Cain says that the new building opening on Brooke Road will offer students a wider curriculum, including two new subjects: construction and food tech.
“I think that children who go to AP [alternative provision] or who have less traditional routes through education deserve to have as good, if not better, quality of education,” she says. “The [new] building should now reflect our approach for high aspirations and wanting the absolute ‘sky’s the limit’ approach for our kids.”
Maeve Godwin is a student journalist, studying MA Newspaper Journalism at City St George's, University of London.