Katherine Birbalsingh?

[GreatJehosephat]

She’s been popping up on tiktok for the last few days, and seems to be very divisive.

She appears to get amazing results, but then people point out she’s misrepresenting the truth as to who goes to her school, that they have far fewer children with SN, and can turn away children if they wish.

In rl she seems to be really polarised as well, so I thought I’d ask here and hope to learn more about her system and whether it’s cherry picked (as suggested) or if she has indeed created an amazing experience for her pupils.

My own opinion, based on the clips I’ve seen, is that the very strict rules would mostly be intolerable to any adult in a workplace and when you look at other academies who install strict rules it seems to impact heavily on the pupil’s mental health.
I believe there’s a place for such schools, and they work very well for some children, but I can think of plenty of children who need a different approach in order to produce a happy, productive population (in a way where people are mentally well enough to find employment - and we seem to be seeing a downturn in this and an upturn in young people being too stressed to do anything!).

I admire her no bullshit,no fads,common sense approach and her obvious dedication to all the children in her care. I am of an age where schools used to be like this, stand up for staff and address them properly, manners and respect at all times and supervised moving around school quiet. Its old fashioned and it works,Katherine seems to have stripped back lots to foster this idea and I think it works. I would have no hesitation to send my kids there if I had my time again!

This is part of a much wider debate in education that has been going on for quite literally decades.
In a nutshell, the question is should teachers be trying to teach "skills" like analysis, critical thinking, problem solving etc. or should they be teaching "content", mainly facts and context for those facts, plus accepted theory such as scientific theory.

KB is firmly on the side of teaching content. Which of course leaves her wide open to accusations of rote learning facts for passing exams.

I agree with KB. You can't think about stuff without knowing stuff. Trying to think (about anything) without millions of facts in your long-term memory is like trying to build a wall without any bricks.
The more you memorise, the better your memory gets, and the more connections your brain can make, increasing your general intelligence. The more intelligent you get, the more you can think critically and problem solve.

Yes, you can google what date was the "Field of Cloth of Gold". You can even google what is actually was, and get a summary.
But if you no nothing else about Henry VIII, France, monarchy, or that period of history, the summary you just googled won't mean much and you will be little better off.

The more facts you know, the more you understand about everything.

This is also the essence of "cultural capital". If someone at work makes a joke about Fagin and Bill Sykes, you will get the joke if you have read Oliver Twist, or at least watched a film of it. (OK, an unlikely scenario, but the joke or comment could be about a painting, an economic theory, a bit of science, an historical reference, or anything).
And more importantly, cultural capital is not just about understanding other people's jokes and passing comments, it is about having a "big picture" of the world and society we live in, built up of countless millions of facts. It is about living in a world that you understand.
If you don't understand anything beyond the small community and class you grew up in, your world will remain very small.

Obviously, to teach a content-heavy curriculum to children with attention spans degraded by their phones and used to constant entertainment requires a very high level of discipline to be enforced.

Is she the one that makes children track the teacher with their eyes all the time?

I think she said on the documentary about her school that they encourage debate over lunches and have teachers sitting with the children to facilitate the discussions that will promote critical thinking.

Her school is exactly what some children with SEN need. Obviously it wouldn’t work well for all because no school does, even the specialist ones. Autistic children who have an Asperger’s type presentation would benefit from the calm atmosphere and clear rules and structure. Children who have delays or lower ability must benefit otherwise she wouldn’t have such great value added scores. Not all children with SEN need the same thing.

I don’t think you can complain about her approach not working for children with SEN when it’s not entirely true, and not every school needs to be the best for children with SEN anyway. There are other children to consider too.

Sure - but the Michaela school and its copycats (there's one nearby which we have avoided like the plague) would be a psychologically and physically terrifying place for my children. I'm so glad we have a choice where we live; sadly many don't.

Thank you, such a great answer.

I wouldn't send my own children to her school if we lived next door. I think her ethos is unnecessarily strict and she gets these results by excluding anyone not towing the line - or putting people off from applying in the first place.

I've heard her speak about the strict adherence to uniform and say it is a necessity to delivering a good education - but most European countries don't even have school uniform and they all do OK. Focusing on periphery detracts from learning and anxiety and unhappiness have a negative affect on a student's ability to concentrate. Children are children and deserve to be able to enjoy school and come out as well rounded individuals.

I guess it's good we all have a choice.
I love uniform myself. Didnt make my DC anxious. In fact, the opposite as they could focus on learning.

Her school uses fully scripted lessons, in a practise called direct instruction. Reading about it, it seems like it would feel deskilling for the teacher, as they're following someone else's script for the lesson.

She can’t turn pupils away. I really like her. I’d be very happy if my children had been given a place at her school.

The Michaela 6th form sounds excellent too.

She’s a malignant narcissist who comes across extremely badly every time she’s interviewed by someone who doesn’t blow smoke up her ass. Her school is an abusive high-control environment that does nothing to prepare young people for the realities of everyday life (unless they aspire to a career as a Supermax inmate). Her feted “excellent results” come at the price of SEN students and those with mental health difficulties/troubled home lives/neurodiversity who are chewed up and spat out like rubbish. I would rather send my children to Dotheboys Hall than subject them to an “education” in this woman’s sick mind palace.

Citation?

So, you don't like anything about her @sprigatito ; that's clear. But according to all the ordinary measures that most people use to gauge success and results, MIchaela scores very highly across the whole range, I don't pretend to understand what you think is important, but I think you are over-egging your reply.

Very good question.
It would deskill the teacher's ability to create their own schemes of work and lesson plans - but that is the most boring and easiest part of the job. Most schools have departmental schemes of work, and/or teachers pull ready-made schemes and lesson plans off the internet.

But as every military strategist knows, the plan never survives first contact with the enemy (tongue in cheek likening the children to "enemy").
i.e. the lesson plan gets adapted on the fly depending on how the children react and what gaps in knowledge are discovered and have to be plugged as you go.

The real skill in teaching is in the face-to-face teaching, not the planning.

If the teacher is literally following a script, that is not good teaching. However, I can see it would be useful to do this for a while as training for a teacher who is not familiar with content-heavy teaching: most teachers are not because most universities and teacher training courses follow the "skills" ideology.
Teachers nowadays are taught how to organise group work and have the children 'solve problems', how to make lessons more fun with lots of quizzes and games, how to 'compare sources' in history or 'discover' answers for themselves in science. This is all largely a waste of precious classroom time that is better spent actually teaching children content.
Plus you have the problem of teachers who don't actually know a lot of stuff - they need the script because they can't teach what they don't know.

I do agree that the emphasis on uniform is unnecessary.
Schools should have a simple uniform with a wide variety of styles accepted (e.g. any type of collar on a white shirt, any navy cardigan, jumper or sweatshirt, any black shoes or trainers, etc.), cheaply available from lot of suppliers and supermarkets.
Anything else is discriminatory.

The point of education isn’t just teachers career progression tho

My children are adults now but both neurodiverse, they would have got on really well in a school like that. No overwhelming noise in between classes, people arriving on time so the teacher didn't have to deal with late-comers, knowing exactly what is expected of them and the other students rather than being confused (and in some cases distressed) when the rules were bent and expectations were no longer clear.

There is room for more than one type of school, this may not work for everyone but the parents and children there are lucky this is an option for them.

Not really. She's just scaring away all the Send pupils so they go elsewhere and it looks like she's done all the hard work. She's cherry picking pupils by the back door.

Absolutely. Too strict for adults in the workplace? They're teenagers in school and need firm boundaries. Some pupils have their learning constantly disrupted by bad behaviour and I don't know why that's acceptable to anyone.

Indeed. Plus delivering specific content isn't "de skilling" because the teacher still has to communicate, supervise activities, give feedback and is accountable for progression.

The comment about middle class kids was merely because I was paraphrasing the comment that I was replying to. My point was that children who are capable of 12 grade 9s would be limited by a narrower curriculum.

But they could be poor kids too, right?

we all know that, presumably?

Not really. She's just scaring away all the Send pupils so they go elsewhere and it looks like she's done all the hard work. She's cherry picking pupils by the back door.

This, to me, argues for the urgent need for more specialist schools for SEN pupils.
That being said, as someone with ASD, I thrived in a school with similar discipline and structure - in fact even stricter - so it will suit some.

I've seen kids (14-15) from this school on a school trip. They looked happy, excited, well behaved, engage with the educational content, respect the teacher and seemed to have a friendly relationship with them. They chat during lunch until they're told it's time to do something else. There are far, far worse schools/children to have on a school trip. In fact, those children probably aren't even allowed on a school trip.