Star comment: Revelation that regime is too rigid

It is the sort of manifesto that you would think would go down well with parents of children who attend Telford Priory School. But it is running into complaints from parents of a nature that you might not expect.

Telford Priory School is too tough, is the theme. The disciplinary regime is so rigid that pupils are receiving unfair and over-the-top punishments.

To understand what is going on, it is worthwhile peeling back what has happened to see the context. Telford Priory School, which is an academy, was created by bringing together Sutherland Business and Enterprise College of Trench, and Wrockwardine Wood Arts Academy, in totally new buildings in Oakengates.

Just a year ago damning Ofsted reports decreed that both Sutherland and Wrockwardine Wood were failing schools which needed special measures. Students' behaviour and attitudes to learning at Sutherland were "not consistently good." At Wrockwardine Wood "behaviour in lessons is not consistently good enough. Low-level disruption hinders students' learning in some lessons."

A lot of the same students will now be at TPS. However, some of the complaints are about detentions being given to pupils if they are even a little late for class, even if it was caused by being kept back in the previous lesson.

You are always going to get complaints, and the first instinct of many will be to side with the school leadership as it seeks to lay down the ground rules early on and ensure that TPS makes clear to all concerned what is expected, and what will not be tolerated.

An environment of discipline and order is a basic building block for learning, and without it all suffer, and those who suffer most unfairly are those whose education is disrupted.

The apparent scale of the parents' disaffection is unusual, and therefore rather worrying, because it goes without saying that it is desirable for schools to carry the parents, and pupils, with them.

This is a young school, feeling its way. It needs to be careful that its natural wish to ensure that it starts on the right foot does not distract it from paying due attention to the wider dimension that will be important in the longer term – that the parents are made to feel part of the team.