My child attends Michaela community school - ama

[Starship74]

Name Changed for this but very long time mumsnetter.

My child is three years into Michaela Community School. Since it’s so heavily discussed on mumsnet I thought I’d make a post.

I won’t be posting any confidential information but can answer generic questions.

My child was allocated a place through the random allocation. I chose it because of the outstanding academic results and was very impressed at how focussed the kids were on the open day.

There is limited engagement with the headmistress at weekly assemblies, the heads of year are generally in charge from what I’ve seen.

They are allowed smart phones and know the kids have them. Of course phones aren’t allowed out of bags on school premises but I think that’s common in many schools.

Whilst it is a strict school i don’t think it’s as strict as they make out in the press.

Things I like:

• they really push the kids academically which is important to me as I didn’t want my child to coast through
• my child does complain about how strict the school is but I’ve asked several times if they want to change school and the answer is always no as they know they are going to get a better outcome so my child has bought into it too

Things I don’t like:

• communication isn’t the best with parents, no parents evening where I have 1:1 with a teacher
• they have a policy of 4 kids in a group at break time which I think limits friendships, it’s hard to get to know other kids
• dont have an issue with the vegetarian nature of lunch but what they serve seems extremely unhealthy every day - mostly processed food

Feel free to ask any other questions!

Yes I guess it’s a question of what you are choosing between! If you could get good behaviour without such strict rules I’d take it for sure but the school is calm and happy.

This school used to have a dire reputation with falling numbers but it’s been managed this strict way for about 5 years and is now well over-subscribed.

No. It's not about choosing between this and a happy school!
It's about adopting some of the strategies in an attempt to improve behaviour and outcomes. Children only have one chance at education. It shouldn't be ruined for them.

There is PE once per week but limited to what can fit in the small school yard - typically basketball. They don’t offsite to a local park with running tracks like some other schools.

Not sure their thinking ref smart phones. The headmistress does wax lyrical that the kids shouldn’t have them during the post offer meeting but they are not confiscated as long as they remain in the bag and not seen or heard on school property. Same policy for brick phones. The school clearly know kids use them because on the last school trip we were advised that if kids have two phones eg a smartphone and brick phone and they are caught with two phones then they will both be confiscated. So I am assuming - like my child does - most kids have their Michaela brick phone and a smartphone phone at home.

My child uses WhatsApp to communicate with other friends, non school clubs, me when I’m out etc so I don’t want to take that away from them.

The phone policy in most schools is that as long as staff can't hear or see them, that's ok. We all know they have them in their bags, which isn't a problem
.

Do you feel that your child is missing anything? You've noted that the PE is lacking, anything else?

My child loves PE and I believe needs that as an escape/outlet.

Our-school.js modelled on michaela. It does look incredible. The resultx! You are lucky to have a place.. i would work there in a heartbeat.

That's increasingly not the case.

What's not the case?

Only a handful of schools have banned phones completely. More are using measures like yonder pouches but the vast majority just use the off in your bag approach.

Yes, that's usually the case.

I read somewhere that Year 7s have a one week “bootcamp” to learn the rules etc before they actually start.

Did your child have this? What did it involve?

Yes my child had a two week boot camp where they learnt the behaviour rules, how to track, sit still with arms folded, family lunch, learnt their way around the building etc. Lots and lots of detentions these two weeks. They also sat a math and English test which I believe was then used to put them into sets. There is regular movement between the sets twice per year depending on performance.

How does tracking the teacher work? What are the expected to do?

I’m a teacher and we have SLANT to show engagement
(sit up, look at the teacher, ask questions, nod and track) it’s very weakly enforced at my school.

I do think we can learn from Michaela school but I think 80% of the success is that people know what they are signing up for.

My own experience a huge comp in a very deprived area in the 1990s. Teachers were lovely, but we weren’t pushed at all and the results were dreadful. I did ok and got 9 A-C grades (that was the bench mark). But out of the cohort only 13% got 5 A-C. The year group was 330.

Cardomomle · Yesterday 19:28

I think many schools are adopting some of these measures, because behaviour has become such a significant issue.

The thing is, you really have to either go for it with these kind of measures, and be willing to relentlessly and strictly enforce them, or not bother with them at all, and most schools (unlike Michaela) do not have the enthusiastic parental buy-in and unquestioning support and cooperation which enables a school to implement an inflexible and super-strict behaviour regime like this. If you implement it in a half-arsed way, it just makes you look weak and ineffectual, and neither kids nor parents actually abide by or support the rules.

Michaela manage it because the parents have chosen to sign up for a school that's famous for this kind of methodology. My dc's school tried to implement the track the teacher thing. The kids (and, I suspect, a fair few of the teachers) thought it was ridiculous. It quietly and fairly quickly fizzled out.

I do think we can learn from Michaela school but I think 80% of the success is that people know what they are signing up for.

Exactly. In normal comps where you get parents refusing to cooperate with detentions, not sending their kids in with correct uniform, or complaining about them receiving behaviour points for blatant rule breaking, how on earth would these draconian methods work?

A lot of what determines the behaviour in a school is the demographics, not the actual rules and methodology. Michaela's demographic is self-selecting in some quite specific ways.

Slant is tracking @mydogisanidiot

How is it enforced and is this referred to as eye contact in the OP?

Dunno. Think a extrapolation. You just have to make sure you're looking at the teacher, but it's not like eyeballing

You enforce it by telling them to look at the teacher!
It's called normal life

That’s ridiculous to throw homework in the bin and then have to redo it. They are just going to cause resentment rather than self awareness with that approach.

I know about the problems, I'm in the thick of it.
Tracking the teacher is working well where I work.

But having that as a general idea v a detention for not doing it is very different. Many kids particularly girls aren't diagnosed with SEN by secondary and so are likely getting more consequences not helping or supporting them, plus many cultures don't have the same level of awareness on SEN. So schools tend to be the first place where it'd recognised, with policies like this, it's likely taking longer for diagnosis, and an unsupportive environment for those undiagnosed as well.

No.
It's not applied in an insensitive way. Our first stage is a conversation about following the teacher and tracking. If it is obvious that a student has difficulty with this, we have an amber flag to be alert for certain patterns. Then we can put interventions in place.
It doesn't mean an "unsupported environment". Quite the opposite.
.

OP, how did your child find the boot camp experience? Was it positive overall?