To not understand why Katharine Birbalsingh is so controversial

The OP wasn't asking a question about outstanding schools. OP asked why Birbalsingh is controversial.

All your repeated / quoted comments answer that question.

Mumsnet is lots of different people.
Some of them want a school like this, some of them want schools that provide for SEN or GCSE Music.
Maybe the school suits your kids, it would not be great for mine.

I don’t get this, mn is usually falling over itself to go on about ofsted outstanding schools and top gcse results. But when it’s someone who doesn’t follow the status quo either the school is lying, the headteacher is a charlatan, they’re selecting by stealth, they’re doing the pupils a disservice not doing gcse music, they’re not providing for sen. I thought we wanted dc in outstanding schools?

Well, in which case she has publicly said that girls don’t like hard maths

Both KB and BP have behaved badly, letting personal feelings get in the way of what could be interesting conversations.

And I was responding to the bit claiming that she said girls can’t do physics and maths. You decided to reply to me about the bit I hadn’t commented on.

As I've already said, "Yes, many of the kids were on free school meals, but poverty vs affluence doesn't always equate in a straightforward way to values and culture, as most right-thinking people understand."

If you know Ofsted, you'll know that 'Disadvantaged' for Ofsted only means '(materially) poor'

It does not mean a kid is 'disadvantaged' by:

• low parental expectations / absence of parent ambition
• chaotic home life
• lack of successful role models in the family or community
• SEN or neurodivergency

Everything. That poster said she couldn’t send her daughter there because she wanted to do music and maths. The question of belief related to physics and maths. Screenshot of the actual post you replied to.

Thank you for the screenshot, @KTheGrey. TBF though it doesn’t give any sense of scale concerning how many pupils in each category exist.

Im not sure what that’s got to do with the discussion I was having with the other poster? But obviously if music GCSE is important for your child this would be the wrong school for them. Or you arrange their music GCSE separately.

Thank you, @cooljerk . That needed to be said, and here was me afraid to be so blunt about someone of KB’s ethnic background.

Looks like it takes a pretty mixed cohort to me. (This is the Ofsted).

It can exclude who it likes so if sone get in…

Does Michaela not have to take a share of ND students and students from chaotic homes?

its not about wha5 she believes it’s about what she does. Music isn’t taught at Michaela (certainly at exam level) ergo nobody can do maths and music.

If she believes these things then how does the school consistently achieve highest GCSE grades for a non-selevtive state school in UK? Because presumably approx 50% of those kids achieving do many 7s+ are girls.....

I don’t think it does. I think it’s that Michaela has, or has had, the highest Progress 8 scores in England.

The Cardinal Vaughan Memorial School is the highest achieving comprehensive state secondary in London and there are several other state comprehensives here that outperform Michaela.

The Sunday Times rates Impington Village College, Impington as UK Comprehensive School of the Year 2025.

Also, as a PP said, her secondary school was tiny, with only 750 on roll (which includes a sixth form).

She's not inspirational, as she proclaims to be. She created an environment which gave her every advantage to succeed.

From the Freedom of Information site (Whatdotheyknow.com)

"We have got KS2 results for 118/130 pupils in this year’s year 7 cohort.
Of those results, 14% (17) are under 100 in English (Reading) and 7% (8)
are under 100 in maths."

But really, if you are awake, it's obvious that they are selecting.

She is good at getting GCSE results and the league tables game. That does not equate to a good education for many children. It's just that it's better than a crap education.
If you look at private school offers, there's a massive focus on arts, sports, etc so she is definitely not providing an exceptional or elite education.

A Freedom of Information request to The Guardian confirms a ludicrous proportion of the intake achieving outstanding results in Year 6 - results which have no equivalence at mainstream schools.

Have you got a link because looking at their recent Y11 cohort there seems to be a decent chunk of kids who only achieved average results in their SATs.

I thought her ethos was that children of colour were being failed elsewhere and her school allows them and indeed all children to fulfil their true potential

Because she was the head at a secondary inner-city free school, where a large proportion of the intake achieved good SATs results in Year 6 before arriving at said secondary school.

The reason these kids were achieving and continued to achieve is because they were often from aspirational first- or second-generation immigrant families who prioritised and valued education. Typically, the parents were supportive of the school, wanted their kids to achieve and do well in the UK, and had a culture of discipline at home. It was a kind of selection through the back door. If the children were not on course or predicted to achieve at KS2, Birbalsingh would not admit them to the Free School.

A Freedom of Information request to The Guardian confirms a ludicrous proportion of the intake achieving outstanding results in Year 6 - results which have no equivalence at mainstream schools.

Yes, many of the kids were on free school meals, but poverty vs affluence doesn't always equate in a straightforward way to values and culture, as most right-thinking people understand.

She then proceeded to make a song and dance about her transcendental methods, how she had turned kids' lives around, how her culture of discipline and high-expectations provided children with a quality education - the like of which they would not have had in the local mainstream, non-selective comprehensive (or which they'd have had to pay a fortune for, privately). Remember, these children already have discipline at home and high-expectations at home, which truly makes the difference.

It is easier to achieve results if you have a half-decent intake. Birbalsingh never tried to replicate her success in a predominantly white, coastal school. I'm thinking of Hastings, Norfolk, the Isle of Wight, Blackpool... all of which are reliably at the bottom of league tables. I taught in such a school briefly, and when I phoned home, to inform parents of a detention, a typical response would be 'Good luck with that, if you can get him to go'. If you spoke to a pupil about passing an exam, you'd get 'Well my mum has no qualifications and she is comfortable on the dole'.

Birbalsingh attributed all her pupils' and the school's success to herself, and not to the school's location (ethnically diverse; London) and certainly not to her policy of covert selection.

She is an absolute charlatan. She is also self-aggrandising and dishonest.

Apologies for the long post.

So if she let, say, Jeremy Corbyn visit and speak to the pupils then put out a load of positive social media posts in it you would think that was ok?

Did she have to let him speak to the student body too? Did she have to put it all over social media?

It’s also crap as Chmistry has a lot of quite hard maths too.