Do your strict British schools get good academic results?

The blogpost says the genesis of NCEA was in Scotland so it may not be that new a thing there.

But yes, I've noticed that England now outperforms Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland whereas a decade or so ago it was behind them.

True- I can't disagree with this, and every ND child has their own set of things they find extra hard, meaning there has to be some latitude. But I think it's easier for any child to focus on those tricky things when there's a generally disciplined atmosphere. Not just schools but anywhere I think.

I think Scotland is heading down a similar path to NZ, by the sounds of things.

I would consider the best results to be the most impressive, which Michaela's are.

A point worth noting (going back to the OP) is that according to the PISA rankings NZ is - comparatively speaking - has declined over the last 15 years while England has improved and is now above NZ. This is although NZ schools functioned much more normally during covid and although NZ's education system keeps a sharper eye on the PISA rankings than England does. If you just looked at PISA you would conclude that both countries' education systems were doing fine, but it would ignore that in NZ there isn't a lot else going on.

NZ's school curriculum NCEA is in the process of being scrapped. It's never been very well liked and there's always been ways for schools and teachers to game it so that kids get their qualifications. It's been an enormous 25 year policy blunder. NZ's schools used to be very good indeed. But because it's a small country it's easy for the wrong people to get in charge, form a consensus and make a mess.

The point is this: it's a hell of a lot easier to dispense with rules and expectations and to take things very easy when you don't have to push the children.

Here are some reflections from a teacher for those interested in reading more. He mentions the Reformation. I'm surprised it's still taught in schools here.

https://www.kiwiblog.co.nz/2025/09/guest_post_goodbye_ncea_farewell_get_lost_good_riddance.html

The school in my city modelled on Michaela gets brilliant results and is second in England for value-added ie progress 8. However, another school not far-away has been placed 4th in a more rounded analysis carried out by The Telegraph based on eight publicly available measures. This school has no uniform, is very creative, and its most recent Ofsted report noted there is very little low level disruption. Thank goodness there is, at the moment, room for different approaches in our state system.

I grew up in Uk and we had detentions but not like it seems to be now based on here, they also seem to be way more strict about school uniform. My kids are in a different education system, way more relaxed, no uniform, no detention, very little discipline at all really, no emphasis on grades or tests. I have no idea which is best though! I think they just expect the learning process to take longer here, reaching each stage and progressing to the next stage without too much pressure. Education is free here until Master’s so if you stay at it you will end up well educated!

No, she definitely doesn't manipulate the catchment which is a 6 mile radius from the school; a huge area but presumably so that everyone in Brent is eligible. Then the allocation is by lottery. Effectively, children actually come from within 3 miles of the school. However the overall ability of the intake is well above average.

There a definitely good things about the school. And lack of fannying around and work on the curriculum are two of them. One negative is that so few children take the triple science award. I still think it's slightly cultlike!

@DeafLeppard EAL parents have different educational values and behaviour expectations if they choose Michaela. Bright dc often don’t have a huge progress 8. They are top 5% in the first place and remain there. Michaela and other schools get good progress scores from shaky starts where dc have not done as well as they could at primary due to various factors. In the grammars, this isn’t usually the case but the grammar results are better.

That’s your definition of best performing which you didn’t refer to in your post.

For progress 8?

The highest performing non-selective state school. My DC goes to one of the highest performing state grammar schools and it is no way as strict as the school you are referring to.

The documentary was called "Britain's Strictest Headmistress" and was on ITVX

I must say having watched the documentary on Michaela's school and expecting to hate it (as I think overly draconian methods for minor infringements are ridiculous) I actually thought she spoke a lot of sense!

I showed the documentary to my teenage daughter and she said that the independent school she used to be in was just as strict. 🤷‍♀️

There is no evidence of that school getting rid of any pupils. Their intake policy is random, and they have a huge number of EAL pupils. As stated elsewhere, their SEN percentage is on par with the local average.

I think a lot of people really, really hate Michaela methods for ideological reasons, and can’t abide the fact that all the evidence suggests that they are extremely effective.

I think the one thing her school had in favour was the ability to start with y7 and start from a clean slate.

My kids go to strict schools and they are very open with their behaviour policy. I do not believe that children in their schools would be given a detention for doodling. They would be given a reminder of expectation, told to refocus and then they’d move on. If the doodling continues the teacher would give a W1, which is recorded on the system for a verbal warning. If after that it didn’t stop a detention would be issued.

I’ve worked in schools as a TA in secondary, children can be very flexible with the truth at home surrounding incidents and the warnings and process followed. Staff spend far too long documenting it so that they can inevitably defend their actions.

Its odd... their exam entries seem to suggest 8, but the results 7.

Unless they are doing RS in Yr10?

Isn’t that 9?

Science counts for 2

You weren’t attacking her personally. You were just dismissing the experiences of all children with disabilities. Thank you for clarifying.

So basically, they achieve good results because they just weed out the students who would get poor results, who then presumably must be educated elsewhere.

This actually contradicts the notion that the extreme strictness itself is responsible for children achieving good exam scores.

The number on the bottom row of GCSE entries is lower than a lot of other schools, particularly for previous high attainers where I'd expect to see 9.

They appear to English, lit, maths, RS, French double Science, plus one of History, Geography and Art. 8 is the standard number of GcSEs in most schools.

Katharine Birbalsingh claims that ND children do well at Michaela. I don't particularly rate her as a source of information, since we have no actual data. She says ND children do well with rules, but she's being misleading. It is true that ND children (ADHD and autism) often do well with clear rules and expectations. It doesn't therefore follow, though, that all rules are good ones. She conflates that with her punishments and enforcement. I have ADHD as well as two of my DC. It's absolutely real. There's no point punishing us for forgetting a bloody pen. I can go through my morning routine and still forget the pen.

Also, dyslexia by definition involves having had good instruction and not learning. I'm appalled at trying to blame parents for dyslexia. That isn't behavioural at all. It's a brain-based learning disorder.

Yeah it is.

There’s ine in my city based on that. 2nd best school in U.K. Talked about in horror by other kids. I could have sent my dd there. I’m really glad l didn’t.

Actually, I disagree pretty strongly with those who claim that Michaela simply gets its results by manipulating its catchment (it doesn't appear to) kicking out kids with SEN (its proportions of kids with SEN aren't wildly different to the rest of the country), or simply by having more engaged parents than the rest of the country.

They do seem to do fewer GCSEs than average, which will definitely help, but it is mad to claim that the fact that they spend more time learning and less time fannying around than other schools doesn't make a difference.

And early on, I also listened to an in depth podcast with their then head of maths. She was incredible, the thought that went into the curriculum and the consistency was amazing.