To not understand why Katharine Birbalsingh is so controversial

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Just that. Am I being unreasonable in thinking the results she achieves at her school and start in life her students get which they likely otherwise wouldn't - is something to be celebrated and perhaps we should look to what's going wrong in schools which face the the same socioeconomic challenges but get far poorer results. Surely I'm not being unreasonable to wonder this.

She is a professional contrarian; thrives on making headlines. Some of the things at the school I think sound great (for her intake) others really don’t. The entry requirements for Year 12 are higher than the majority of very academic independent schools. If you cherry pick to that extent, the A level results are a given.

I always say I can see the good she does, because I can see the results in the subjects they focus on are good and that provides a stepping stone for children. However like you said parental buy in is key, and that works in very specific contexts. In many deprived area, parents do no see education as a priority, and therefore automatically it is a different playing field. Also in other areas, parents prioritise a broader curriculum. While I understand why parents might send their children to Michaela, I would not want to send mine there. I want them to have a broader curriculum, to enjoy the arts, so know girls can do any subject they want, and as the parent to a ND child, it would not work for him. ( it may work for some all ND children are different!)

I think if anyone really thought it could be replicated elsewhere it would have been by now. But its success is due to its context, and I think really people know that. Also there are parts of the country where parent's don’t get a choice in school, would it be fair to limit children who did not chose it?

The fact that only 2.6% of Michaela pupils are doing separate sciences st GCSE according to @0ohLarLar suggests that very few will be prepared to do a STEM subject at university. To the extent that Wembley is a deprived area - there seems to be some controversy over that - STEM careers are reliable pathways to economic security.

KB is funnelling her pupils into the Humanities. We need people in these disciplines and good ones can definitely succeed economically, but it is more ad hoc. A number do struggle.

Furthermore, whilst her self proclaimed A level results are very good, I could not find Michaela in the A level league tables I came across in a quick search. However I did come across enough data to see that ‘nearly 2/3 grade A and A star’ whilst excellent, is exceptional for a school in a deprived area but merely excellent overall.

Of course ‘merely excellent’ is still excellent. I put it that way because not everyone with those grades will be a star at university. Based on my experience with personal tutees, I would expect a percentage to struggle when discipline is relaxed and when they are expected to engage in debate with their tutors. I would also expect more than 2.6% to have their greatest aptitudes on the scientific side, and these are going unfulfilled.

Thus I don’t believe KB is interested in getting the best out of each student. She is very dogmatic.

It has been replicated, successfully, at Mercia in Sheffield, in a very different catchment. Ofsted graded it Outstanding on its first inspection. Telling.

She’s also not really preparing students to study the humanities at degree level. The Michaela pedagogy is extremely didactic and knowledge based. Students really need to be being more exploratory and questioning what their teachers are telling them. There seems little room for intellectual curiosity and going of script in their lessons.
It’s a very specific type of humanities study they seem to be following.
But yes, the surrounding area is hardly deprived (we park on someone’s drive for events at Wembley and walk past Michaela). I’d be more impressed with similar results in schools serving Clacton and Jaywick to be honest.

Not really. KB got an Outstanding despite issues being pointed out with curriculum that would have caused any other school to have been failed.

We agree. My post wasn't clear. By 'telling', I mean that the take no prisoners approach of KB is what Ofsted wants and what the inspection framework is designed to find outstanding.

Also a very controversial school which has received similar criticism I’m not saying some people don’t think it’s good, but it’s certainly not the education everyone wants for their children.

I can’t say I’m familiar with the catchment area, what is so different about it? Would the model work in a rural location where there is not alternative? Or a leafy suburb where the arts are considered important?

An as for an outstanding ofsted, as someone who has worked in education for 20 years, outstanding ofsted means little to me other than people who can tick the right boxes, and know how to play the system. I have known phenomenal schools, who meet the needs of all pupils brilliantly but will never be better than good precisely because they do meet the needs of all pupils .

Because she doesn’t fit into the liberal left that dominates education in this country. She came to prominence after speaking as a Tory party conference which gave those liberal lefties a fit of the vapours.

She doesn’t like the culture of low expectations especially for ethnic minorities.

Most people don’t have X so what she posts there is irrelevant to most. Not everything she says is controversial, and what counts as controversial is subjective.

Apologies, posted before reading this! Think we are actually saying the same thing.

I can promise you that having gone through uni as a mature student, be able to think for oneself is a considerable handicapp.

Its catchment is a sizeable chunk of the west of the city, taking in the most affluent suburbs in the west/south west as well as some considerably less affluent in the north west. The most deprived areas, broadly, are in the east and so not in catchment. There are four Ofsted Good schools in the south west, all very established, but a good number of parents are ranking the Michaela-type first, attracted by the discipline, approach and site/building, all of this before the school had any GCSE results. Last year, it was 70% over subscribed. The other four schools have much better arts provision. I quite agree with you about box-ticking and Ofsted. I asked my DD, now 22, if she would have wanted to have gone and she said no, because she didn't believe she needed the stringent approach it offers as she was/is self-motivated. It's not what I would have wanted for her either. Just as well as her strengths are music and languages.

Somebody mentioned upthread that STEM subjects at A-Level / degree result in higher income potential. Is there a link to this because we've been told that STEM is now a massively overcrowded degree field and the long term earnings potential isn't all that - especially if you're looking for jobs in the UK.

Not in my field

Is that untrue?

Im not sure shes saying its right or wrong, she's just citing why it seems to be

I think thats probably true, hard maths isnt for some reasons that attractive to girls.

I know lots of girls taking Further Maths who were utterly disgusted by that comment. She was also social mobility tsar when she said it. It was nonsense.

Quite. All of the students I send off to excellent universities in a range of subjects are more than capable of thinking for themselves. I don’t let them just parrot what I say. And they go on to be hugely successful in a range of roles and fields.

Hi, @FKAT

That was me. I can’t link on this phone but here is some info.

The site luminate.ac.uk has an article from Nov 2024 saying that the top 5 starting ir graduate salaries are, in order, for graduates in

Medicine and Dentistry
Mathematics
Mechanical Engineering
Chemistry
Modern Languages

Another site I will look for now listed Computer Science right behind Maths. To be cont’d

I don't think anything she posts on X is controversial. I like her.

Well, of course they would be.

What do all the girls who didn’t take further maths think? Because their take is what matters here, surely.

Disliking FM or anything else intrinsically is fine. When a charismatic, Oxbridge educated woman suggests that real women favour the Humanities, of course some impressionable 15-16 year olds will be put off. That’s the problem.

How can such girls judge what they missed?

To continue, the site standoutcv says that only the fields Medicine and Dentistry, Vet Sci, Eng and Tech and Maths have higher salary ranges for graduates than Computer Science. (CS was not mentioned near the top of the luminate site).

When people say it is hard to get jobs in tech, I think they are usually referring to the computing field. I do wonder whether it is the more specialised degrees in IT, Gaming, etc producing an abundance of graduates, but I don’t know

Yes I think thats the point, of course there are girls who are interested, thrive at and excel at further maths, thats not in dispute, but its not the choice forefront for most girls, the stats bear that out.

Im on the fence about her I suppose, she sounds a complete horror, but I have long thought the number of GCSEs children take these days is far far too high, its a shame she doesnt encourage a breadth of subjects but to focus down on the most key areas so that there is a deeper knowledge and more streamlined learning experience, seems to be key for children

I also disagree with lots of posters about SEN children not thriving in such an environment, many would breathe a sigh of relief coming from noisy, unpredictable, chaotic, violent, ever changing atmospheres.

I watched an interview with her today and was surprised to agree with her on so many things. She's speaking out against the Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill and has challenged Bridget Phillipson on it so I'm pleased.

Loads of schools limit the GCSEs or equivalent that pupils can take, when the coop academy chain started all pupils had to do an Nvq in business (not sure if this is still the case). Many state schools only offer one language - one school near me you can only do Spanish, another only French.

Yeah you can earn money doing stem but we also have tons of people with phds doing minimum wage lab work. Software engineering pays well but it is competitive to get the high paid roles in the big companies. I think making sure all your pupils get the subjects and grades they need to access further and higher education or to get a job is a win tbh, if only all schools could do that for those that have the capability.