Katharine Birbalsingh strives to cultivate a culture of kindness and hard work (Image: Geoff Pugh/Shutterstock)
Katharine Birbalsingh became perhaps the most famous teacher in England in 2022 with the broadcast of the documentary Britain’s Strictest Headmistress. Michaela Community School, located a short distance away from Wembley Stadium, is renowned for its outstanding academic results and the high standards of discipline expected from pupils.
This is a school where children are taught how to use a knife and fork at “family lunches”. Pupils lay the tables and serve one another before discussing the assigned topic of the day and clearing up. Visitors remark on the silence in the corridors as children walk between classes, and pupils know better than to break the uniform code or not do their homework.
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This unashamedly strict approach to education has won Ms Birbalsingh fans and critics of equal passion in the years since the school opened in a converted office block. But its record of sending students to top universities with a brace of superb exam results under their belts means local parents apply for their children to be educated in “the Michaela way”.
When you speak to Ms Birbalsingh, the real excitement comes into her voice when she talks about the role of love in leading children towards excellence.
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“You love them and you look after them and you hold your standards high for them,” she says. “Children always know that if you have low standards for them they are not loved.”
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The order and structure for which the school is famed is, she argues, essential in helping children from chaotic backgrounds achieve. She warns social mobility will come to a “halt” if schools lack good behaviour and great teachers.
And while her free school it is relentless in pursuit of success, this is about much more than one day earning a large paycheque.
“If you visit Michaela you will never see assemblies where we’re encouraging them to do well at their GCSEs in order to find a very high paying job,” she says. “We’re encouraging them to find meaning in life through living a life of dignity – and that comes in all shapes and sizes, with a variety of different career paths.
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“It’s about the values you instil in children – a sense of personal responsibility, a sense of duty towards others, a willingness to sacrifice what is important to yourself for the sake of the whole; the idea that you belong to your country and that you belong to your community, and that you will serve your community and live a life that is worthy of respect and admiration by contributing to society in such a way to improve it.”
A passion for education was kindled in this daughter of a Jamaican nurse and an Indo-Guyanese academic after she won a place at Oxford. She took part in a programme to encourage young people who were unlikely to apply to Oxbridge to consider doing so.
Now she runs a school which sends more than eight out of 10 of its sixth form to a Russell Group university. But she fears Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson is about to take a “wrecking ball” to schools in England with her Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill.
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Katherine Birbalsingh co-founded the school which is located in a former office block (Image: Harrow Observer)
'All that is going to happen is more and more schools are going to fail'
One of her top concerns is the legislation limits a school to requiring three branded items of uniform plus a tie.
“She’s not a school leader,” she says of Ms Phillipson. “She doesn’t realise how important uniform is to behaviour being excellent.”
The right clothes are critical, she argues, in fostering a sense of belonging and a culture of discipline.
“There’s a massive absenteeism problem since Covid,” she says. “Kids don’t go to school.
“Why? They don’t feel like they belong to their school.”
And this is where uniform comes in: “In order for kids to feel like they belong to their school they need very much to have a uniform. Just like the England football team need to have a uniform to know who to pass to, schools need a uniform.”
Ms Birbalsingh predicts what will happen if schools cannot specify the types of trousers which are acceptable: “The girls will wear tight trousers to sexualise themselves. The boys will buy trousers that are large so that they can pull them down and look like gangsters, essentially.”
If the Government wants to make it easier for families to afford uniforms, she says, it should cap the overall cost – not the number of branded items.
She believes a smart dress code is essential in tackling bullying, comparing it to the anti-crime strategy of turning neighbourhoods around by first fixing broken windows.
“You start with uniform. If you want to fix behaviour in a school you don’t go in and start throwing the kids in detention for poor behaviour.
“You start by throwing them in detention for their uniform not being correct. You start with the tiny things.”
This extends to mealtimes and the lessons in how to use cutlery instead of “eating burgers and pizza with our hands all the time”.
She says: “I just think it’s part of being an adult, knowing how to use a knife and fork – like knowing how to tie your shoelaces.”
As well as teaching children social skills which will last a lifetime, she argues it is critical young people are exposed to masterpieces of literature – and she fears for the nation’s culture if the likes of Charles Dickens are allowed to slip off curricula.
“People do not pick up Dickens just for fun,” she says. “So if you don’t access it at school then you won’t access it ever – and it means these things just disappear from our country’s wealth of historical inheritance.”
A further worry is the push for staff to have “qualified teacher status”. She speaks with pride of staff hired from the Army or straight out of the London School of Economics.
She claims the Education Secretary thinks “certification means you’re a good teacher” – and warns schools will end up making more use of supply teachers.
“A supply teacher by their very nature only spends a week in a school,” she says. “So you have got different teachers coming in week after week, your behaviour goes kaput.”
She points to the numbers of “unqualified teachers” in top fee-paying schools.
“Are the private schools suffering? Are their kids not going to Oxbridge?”
Ms Birbalsingh is a champion of groups of academies taking over failing schools. She is unimpressed by the Government’s plans to have “Rise” teams going into troubled schools to offer advice.
“I can assure you,” she says, “all that is going to happen is more and more schools are going to fail. That is obvious to anyone who is a school leader.”
The legislation, she warns, is “a wrecking ball and what’s worrying is nobody notices”.
She believes Labour’s changes are motivated by “Leftist ideology” and are a “grab for power by the state”.
Resistance to her model of teaching runs deep within the civil service, she claims, saying that Michaela has been stopped from expanding.
“We tried with a Conservative Government and even with them it was impossible.”
She does not think Sir Keir Starmer is aware of the impact of the policies his Government is pushing through.
“I don’t think he has a clue,” she says. “It’s not his fault – he’s Prime Minister, he’s busy doing other things.
“I don’t think he has any idea what’s in the Schools Bill.”
She warns it will “torpedo” efforts to improve behaviour – and will make it “far worse – but she thinks there is a “real chance” the legislation can be halted before it completes its journey through Parliament.
“Everybody just needs to keep shouting about it,” she says.
The Department for Education says the concerns are 'unfounded'
A Department for Education spokesperson said: “These claims are unfounded and disregard the voices of parents and school leaders who have been shown in recent polls to back the measures in our landmark Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill.
“The Bill will be a seminal moment for the safety and success of our children, with common-sense measures that will ensure excellence everywhere for every child. It shouldn’t be controversial to expect teachers to be qualified and for all children to have access to a cutting-edge curriculum.
“Whether it’s driving up standards through our new school improvement teams or saving families money on uniform and free breakfast clubs, we are on the side of parents and giving them the confidence that their child will get a great education, no matter their background or postcode.”
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Ms Birbalsingh would much rather the Government banned under-16s from having smartphones.
“They are addicted to their phones,” she says. “Their brains essentially get broken.
“But then there is also just the danger of meeting paedophiles, gang members – children’s lives are literally in danger with them being on smartphones all the time.
“And the stuff that they view, the beheadings and the rapes and the porn and so on which become just normal in their lives – we’re only now as a society seeing the effect of children growing up on these devices.”
She describes her parents as “old school Caribbean people” who treasured learning and she has made unlocking opportunities through education her life’s mission.
“You don’t go into teaching because you want to drive a Lambourghini,” she says. “You go into teaching because you want to make a difference.
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“You want to get to 85, be on your death bed and look back and think, I contributed to the world; I contributed to making it a better place.
“I think teaching is a wonderful way of being able to do that.”
Schools, she says, “do make an enormous difference to the world if we get it right”. But, she adds, “we have to get it right.”