Katharine Birbalsingh made Social Mobility chief, aibu not to have a good feeling about this?

[PasstheBucket89]

Her school does apparently have very good results for GCSEs

but im a bit wary of this, her views are quite regressive, what does she have to offer children who are disabled or who have disadvantaged background.

Aibu to feel worried about some of the views conveyed here, in a role with children?

[quote Zugs]@donkey86

• immigrants throughout the world are really successful in their new countries - highly mobile socially
• The poorest performing group, academically, are white males in poor areas

So her school by it's demographic would have a natural advantage when comparing results.

just saying, that's the facts.[/quote]
And the very mechanism of learning and speaking more than one language builds cognitive capacity and intellectual ability.

For those who have mentioned that her privately educated son is a red herring, I couldn't disagree more. Our system of education in the UK is highly stratified and completely designed to offer some people relative advantages over others. The word relative is crucial there - education and all that comes with it is known as a positional good, and so it only offers advantages if you have more of it than others, it is not as useful in absolute terms. If private schools didn't offer those relative advantages (which as I say relate to factors other than just education) then people would not bother paying for them. That is the precise opposite of the merit principle apparently held dear by advocates for social mobility and therefore it is extremely difficult to understand how you can support both. I mean people do all the time ... but it's bullshit. Clearly, people can and will decide for themselves whether they want to use private education or support it as a principle but to suggest that the system is in any sense consistent with fairness is rubbish and my feeling is that, at the very least, people could own their hypocrisy.

@edgeofthesky - totally agree. What blocks social mobility is that privileged people do a great deal to ensure that they keep those privileges for themselves. One of the problems with creating a stratified education system is that it creates hierarchies of status and affects how people feel about themselves, where they belong, where they can fit, what is their 'rightful' place, and their essential and relative value and worthiness. You do not tackle that as I said by getting a few kids into Oxbridge and teaching them a few middle-class modes of presentation. As you can probably see, I think this appointment is a total joke, but not a funny one. (I am a researcher and this is what I research).

I have heard some bad stories about how Katharine Birbalsingh treats her staff... there is very high turnover. She achieves results at Michaela by relentless, brutal focus, which is not an approach one can replicate across the country as a whole.

@generaljake

For those who have mentioned that her privately educated son is a red herring, I couldn't disagree more. Our system of education in the UK is highly stratified and completely designed to offer some people relative advantages over others. The word relative is crucial there - education and all that comes with it is known as a positional good, and so it only offers advantages if you have more of it than others, it is not as useful in absolute terms. If private schools didn't offer those relative advantages (which as I say relate to factors other than just education) then people would not bother paying for them. That is the precise opposite of the merit principle apparently held dear by advocates for social mobility and therefore it is extremely difficult to understand how you can support both. I mean people do all the time ... but it's bullshit. Clearly, people can and will decide for themselves whether they want to use private education or support it as a principle but to suggest that the system is in any sense consistent with fairness is rubbish and my feeling is that, at the very least, people could own their hypocrisy.

But is this not down to -broadly- the impossibility of any school setting to be all things to all men?

You have got the basic reading, writing, arithmetic for pupils of varying abilities.
Advanced education for those gifted academically.
Sports/drama/music for those who just like it, to varying abilities and those who are talented in these areas.
Pastoral care for troubled kids.
Severe MH difficulties need to be accommodated.
Varying levels of SEN, and any parent will tell you no two kids are the same here.
Discipline and classroom disruption.

It seems to me that not all of these can be the number 1 priority and some aspects will have to fall down the list.

Maybe the correct thing to do is he honest about what you are prioritising and let parents decide which factors their kids need most.

It seems that is exactly what non standard schools do, and they seem to be successful.

I dunno. I didn't go to school in the UK and my kids are only very young yet. So not angrily demanding complete agreement just wondering why not specialisation depending on need?

Hi @1week - not sure I entirely understand the question. I think I agree that in an ideal world parents would be able to choose the right school for their children's particular interests, aptitudes and needs. Clearly we are a long way from that but even if we got closer I am not sure that it would address the problem of social mobility. As I said, the point about private education (or education generally) is to create relative advantages that matter in the workplace, so that privileged kids get more of those advantages, and by definition, less privileged get less. We could adapt schools to suit different kid's needs, but that would not necessarily prevent middle-class parents making sure that education continues to act as a positional good for them - they would simply change the rules of the game, and there is loads of research demonstrating that this is what has happened previously.

But I am not sure exactly how that maps on to the issues I identified above. My view is that the decision of the SMC's head to send her own child to an elite private school is a basic admission that what is 'good enough' for less affluent kids is not good enough for her own child, who must be in some sense special and different. By tolerating our highly stratified education system we entrench this pernicious idea and this has effects throughout our society and our economy.

There is a great deal to this topic but another point is that where kids from different backgrounds mix in the same schools this tends to benefit everybody, for example making sure that people mix across class divides. If we siphon off the most affluent kids and put them in elitist enclaves this has the opposite effect and really helps to entrench damaging class divisions.

Again, these are not unknown ideas in social mobility and I find it enormously depressing that the Conservative party have made this appointment, but not at all surprising. After all, social mobility is just a great big legitimation exercise for the deep structural inequalities which this government is not prepared to address.

@generaljake

Yeah, sorry I see how I conflating everything.
My point is really to address your hypocrisy claim. She is already saying that mainstream provision isn't optimal, that's why she is running hers differently.
So not sending her kids to mainstream is entirely consistent with that view. And I can see how she wouldn't want her own kids to attend the school where she is head, that's quite common too

Big difference though between not sending your kid to your own state school and sending him to one of the most elite private schools in the UK. Very big difference. There are many good state schools in London but even the good ones may not offer the same advantages as St Pauls. She has done that because she believes that state schools are not good enough for him and/or he is too good for state schools. And I am afraid that is true for the vast majority of parents who send their kids to private schools. As I said, it is entirely their right to do so, clearly, but for those who also say they support social mobility which implies fairness then there is simply no getting away from the hypocrisy. When forced to defend these choices, advocates of private schools often tie themselves in knots, saying there is no real advantage (it's just choice) but also that those advantages must not be removed. Or they refuse to debate or say it's the politics of envy, for example, or that private schools are bad but there is a special reason why their child must go. I've heard it all.

@generaljake

Big difference though between not sending your kid to your own state school and sending him to one of the most elite private schools in the UK. Very big difference. There are many good state schools in London but even the good ones may not offer the same advantages as St Pauls. She has done that because she believes that state schools are not good enough for him and/or he is too good for state schools. And I am afraid that is true for the vast majority of parents who send their kids to private schools. As I said, it is entirely their right to do so, clearly, but for those who also say they support social mobility which implies fairness then there is simply no getting away from the hypocrisy. When forced to defend these choices, advocates of private schools often tie themselves in knots, saying there is no real advantage (it's just choice) but also that those advantages must not be removed. Or they refuse to debate or say it's the politics of envy, for example, or that private schools are bad but there is a special reason why their child must go. I've heard it all.

Better to just admit that private provision is better and the things that they do well should be rolled out across state. Otherwise you’ll not get social mobility.

@generaljake

It was me that said her privately educated child was a red herring. However, I agree with you on your key point. Private education works against social mobility.

I think it's a red herring because this woman has never spoken out against private education. It's not our business how she chooses to parent her child. What is our business is whether she is the right person for the job.

You can argue with and attack her philosophy, implementation, suitability for the job (social mobility is not the same as secondary education, which is where she has made her name). However, please, please try to see that bringing her own parenting choices into it diminishes your argument. She is probably a bad appointment and that can be demonstrated. There's no need to portray her as a bad person.

@Iggly

YANBU

This government has a weird hero complex where they invest too much in individuals and their personalities, instead of actually finding evidence of what works.

This lady has only really worked in schools. Not sure how that qualifies her for this role to be honest, even if she has some vaguely sensible things to say about some things.

I agree with all of this.

Better to just admit that private provision is better and the things that they do well should be rolled out across state

St Paul's is nearly £30k a year. State schools get just over £6000 per child, I think.

I actually think KB's school is pretty close to a state equivalent of what you get at a school like St Paul's, albeit on a much smaller budget and aimed at a wider range of abilities.

[quote generaljake]@edgeofthesky - totally agree. What blocks social mobility is that privileged people do a great deal to ensure that they keep those privileges for themselves. One of the problems with creating a stratified education system is that it creates hierarchies of status and affects how people feel about themselves, where they belong, where they can fit, what is their 'rightful' place, and their essential and relative value and worthiness. You do not tackle that as I said by getting a few kids into Oxbridge and teaching them a few middle-class modes of presentation. As you can probably see, I think this appointment is a total joke, but not a funny one. (I am a researcher and this is what I research). [/quote]
I would love to hear more about your research!

She is probably a bad appointment and that can be demonstrated. There's no need to portray her as a bad person

That’s a grey area. She started to make her ‘hero’ reputation while she was teaching in S London.

Parents and children very much resented what they saw as patronising and exploitative anecdotes about their kids in her writing. A journalist exposed one of her anecdotes as sensationalised nonsense.

When she tried to establish Michaela in Lambeth the consultation resulted in a resounding ‘No’ from parents and community.

@EdgeOfTheSky

She is probably a bad appointment and that can be demonstrated. There's no need to portray her as a bad person

That’s a grey area. She started to make her ‘hero’ reputation while she was teaching in S London.

Parents and children very much resented what they saw as patronising and exploitative anecdotes about their kids in her writing. A journalist exposed one of her anecdotes as sensationalised nonsense.

When she tried to establish Michaela in Lambeth the consultation resulted in a resounding ‘No’ from parents and community.

OK, last attempt, I promise.

I don't know her and neither do you by the sound of it. She may be a devious social climber, motivated by a desire to improve her own profile rather than a desire to help.

But we can argue against this appointment in so many other ways that play the ball, not the woman!

Genuine question. How do you create social mobility except by providing a good education which leads to a good job?
Not all kids are the same in ability, in temperament, in having good parents that facilitate learning, in having non disruptive classrooms in which to learn.
So, that must be sorted and while there is a lot schools can do, they can't provide kids with a happy home for example.

What counts as social mobility, even. A child from a non loving, poverty stricken background who gets a non-stellar but steady job as shift supervisor in Tesco?

You can't have a society where everyone climbs a rung each generation so everyone ends up on the top level.
You can have a society where even the "lower rungs" are livable, even if generations stay there.

I dunno. I suppose I'm thinking there's only so much a school can do. If you have a school full of unhappy troubled and disruptive kids you have to start there. But the other kids who have the basics already will not have their needs met. Parents will naturally try to meet their own kids needs, and if that means sending them to private, they will. You can characterise it as hoarding privilege but I think that may be the result rather than the aim

Good education doesn't guarantee social mobility as any working class student at Oxbridge can tell you; your class markers include your accent, what school you went to, and your parents income and social status.

Incremental steps count as social mobility too though.
You may be the child of a van driver, with an Oxford degree and non stellar yet professional middle class job is mobility too.

Hmmm. Thinking about this again over night. The very idea of social mobility presumes that there is a hierarchy through which people can move. Don't hierarchies require an ever decreasing number of people at each level as one ascends? Is there a limited amount of people that can occupy each level? I remember reading about India's "growing" middle class. Does this mean there are less working class in India now, or is it really that the material conditions of the lower classes have improved, and all other classes have moved relative to this?
Social class is so embedded in the makeup of UK society that I think when we try to stamp it out, it just adapts and rears its head somewhere else. Tutors for the 11 plus being one example. People always want to be doing better relative to everyone else, and develop mechanisms to achieve it. I'm not sure we can eradicate that.
I'm not a social scientist so these are more my musings than statements of fact. I'd be interested in hearing the thoughts of others.

But the upshot is that she chose to send her son to St Paul's which provides a rich extra curricular experience for the boys. It is known for it's music especially, I can't comment on sport as that's not my area.

Children at Michaela are not allowed to do anything extra curricular that could impact in the slightest on the rigid homework schedule (3 hours per night). For a child like my son whoc is autistic that would be complete overload for him. He has to decompress at the end of a school day or you get overload/meltdown. He is a talented actor/musician and being able to do those activities quite frankly kept him sane. My daughter is aiming for a career as a professional dancer. That regime would not be viable.

Now if Birbalsingh believes that strict regime and no excuses is the best way to go then that's her beleif, but why is not that the kind of education she chose for her own son? Why is she denying those opportunities to other children?

But she is providing that experience to those who want it.
It wouldn't suit my younger DD, but my eldest would do well there.
Depends on the child

Tbh I think it’s fantastic that we have Katharine Birbalsingh in this position. She is someone who advocates high standards and high expectations, which is what is needed in schools.

It is high time that some of the expectations of work ethic that are applied at independent and grammar schools were enforced across the board.

From looking at the Michaela website, year 11 pupils are expected to do a minimum of 3 hours study each evening (with more at weekends) and have to give up their phones a few months in advance of GCSEs.

There is no reason why every school should not have these high expectations.

I think its a shame she wasn't put in Education. We should value it in its own right, for its own worth.

@GreenLakes

Tbh I think it’s fantastic that we have Katharine Birbalsingh in this position. She is someone who advocates high standards and high expectations, which is what is needed in schools.

It is high time that some of the expectations of work ethic that are applied at independent and grammar schools were enforced across the board.

From looking at the Michaela website, year 11 pupils are expected to do a minimum of 3 hours study each evening (with more at weekends) and have to give up their phones a few months in advance of GCSEs.

There is no reason why every school should not have these high expectations.

How about allowing young people to have a life and develop talents and other interests outside of school.

Research has proved that the optimum amount of homework is an hour. More than that is time filling. It is exhausting for children and will lead to burnout.

I'm not against private schools, both my two children attended private schools though I moved one into the state system as it met his needs better.

I'm just against hypocracy and bullying.