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 think she seems awful. I've been a teacher for a very long time and am well aware that the behaviour in schools needs sorting out, but although there is no doubt she gets results, I don't think her methods can or should realistically be applied to schools in general.

No, she can't select her intake as such, but it is effectively self-selecting, because of the type of people who will choose a school that extreme in its policies. Any school which requires a level of hoop-jumping or serious parental buy-in is going to be more able to carry out its aims. Parents of SEN kids are likely to avoid the school like the plague, as are parents who would be unlikely to comply with school policies (or have children they know would be unable to cope with them).

@GreatJehosephat
I can have a go at answering your question about "feral schools", which I assume posters are using to describe schools in which the discipline and behaviour systems are not applied or don't function.
To turn them around schools introduce rules, just normal sensible rules and enforce them. This tends to lead to criticism from people who aren't in the school, journalists, parents, random Internet users, that the school has draconian rules and is destroying the mental health of the students.
However my present school went from the former to the latter, when we had ofsted the inspectors noted the many students who told them that the school used to be dangerous and they couldn't learn and was now safe and they were doing well in their learning. Our exam results are continously improving which we are ruthlessly judged on. So yeah enforce rules including around uniform and manners it all works.
Ms Birbalsingh isn't doing anything particularly different but she is doing it very well judging by her exam results.

@Notgoodatpoetrybutgreatatlit good points. Also, it's true to say that many parents support firm boundaries and good discipline until it applies to their own child, then they complain and make excuses. We've seen many such threads on here.

The intake probably is self selecting but that is okay. Parents choose the sort of school that they think will best suit their child. If the Michaela school doesn’t appeal, they won’t put it on their preferences.

Parents of SEN kids are likely to avoid the school like the plague

Not all - the discipline and clear rules would suit some children with ASD very well, far better than being in a noisy, disruptive environment.

For everyone who wouldn't send their child to her school, I guarantee you would choose it any day over the school I have just left.

The basis of our behaviour policy is 'all behaviour is communication' and that 'the classroom is a safe place'.

Sounds wonderful, right?! The reality is that it was horrible for 99% of students. We had students shouting rubbish out during entire lessons or standing at the door banging it open and closed, knowing that there would be no consequences or that they would get to go and calm down with a member of staff for a game or stickers. SEN students suffered the worse - they became disregulated and had to be taken out by TAs to calm down. The same happened next day, repeated over several classes in the school. Students looked depressed, most told me they hated school and in the end I did too.

I'm always amazed that the behaviour is communication people don't get that it works both ways. If you don't punish them they learn it's OK to disrupt the lesson and bully their peers.

Which children won't cope? How many?

Her school is not dissimilar to those of the 50s-to the start of the comprehensive system

We survived, we learned, we were not traumatised

And I personally am horrified by the state of some schools today

I wouldn't have wanted her type of school for my DC, but I can see why some parents do want it.
Possibly because they feel its a choice between that and chaos in the school down the road.

I did agree with the statement she put out after the court case, and thought well done on her for saying those things.

There's a whole movement of ultra strict schools in the US , I listened to a radio programme about it. It sounded very scary and worrying to me!
almost brain washing.

I’m sorry I disagree here. Planning is one of the most fun parts of teaching. I LOVE preparing and researching new texts. I rotate which I choose at GCSE regularly.
I would hate to work somewhere as rigid as Michaela. I think their meeting times for SLT are discriminatory against those with caring responsibilities.
I’ve been teaching over 20 years and wouldn’t touch that school with a barge pole. The lack of space concerns me as does their limited curriculum (which other schools got into trouble with OFSTED for).

As someone who works in education myself (albeit primary not secondary), I've always found her fairly irritating. Mostly because of what she expects from her staff. I read something bonkers about requiring all her senior leaders in every day at 7am for briefings. And then the very uniform teaching methods she gets her average teachers using... There's no room for being a professional and using a teaching style that works for you. She seems to have very little trust in the staff around her to be the highly trained professionals that they are. She's also very good at stepping out of her lane, and offering opinions on areas of education she has no experience of, such as Early Years.

That being said, I've also seen the tiktoks of her on a podcast I think it is, and found myself thinking that a lot of stuff she said made sense. Especially relating to some behaviour management and being strict on the small stuff. There's a certain good logic to it. But that's also how she's got where she is. She gets people nodding along with her soundbites.

I also think that when she retires/steps back, her school will very quickly start fitting in more with the norm and dialing back on the more controversial aspects of their practice.

With Direct Instruction, they're literally following a script. It tells them what to say, who to say it to, where to point. It's designed to be teacher-proof. So while there is a teaching skill component it is massively deemphasised in favour of delivering standardised lessons.

Yes, the purpose of education isn't teacher career progression— but the purpose also isn't (or shouldn't be) treating kids like robots, cramming for tests. Education is about preparing children to enter into the adult world, one where they won't (hopefully) be micromanaged cogs.

A lot of people are criticising the rote learning approach but do you really think it's different to all the other schools that get similar results like the grammars and private schools? Highly doubtful. All these kids are taught to get the best possible exam score. KB is just more vocal about what all these schools do.

My understanding is that most private schools pride themselves on "going beyond the syllabus". Direct Instruction is used by a few other schools but all the fee paying schools I know of tend towards giving a lot of latitude to teachers.

I was at sixth form with her.

At a school that was opposite Michaela in ethos and environment in every way.

She was very outspoken even then.

The school that we went to had had a maverick and unique head until a few years before sixth form. The sort of person that commands respect such that pupils were keen to earn his respect in turn. This teacher changed many people’s lives - but his mantra was that there were no ‘rules’ - except that pupils should strive to know what was a responsible and caring way to treat others. If you caused a problem you went to his office and you had to talk to him and solve the problem. I can’t tell you how unusual this was at the time - ‘restorative justice’ before it was invented.

it does not cease to surprise me me how different what she has created is. But I do think that somewhere in there she understands that you can’t ask a child to obey you without respect for you. That’s all I can see that comes from our experience.

It blinking well is different to the approach in grammar schools. We also teach Music beyond year 8, Technology and Computing. We also have teacher freedom.
Michaela is nothing like a grammar or independent school!

Everything I have read about it sounds great.

Really, parroting a prescribed response isn't demonstrating understanding.

Visitors and parents seem to comment on how happy the students are there

I find it weird how she is always in the media. There are a lot of good schools all over the country but we never hear from the headteachers. Why is this?

Why is she always on GB News and TalkRadio?

A lot of headtachers have done the same. Do they deserve medals as well?

Does this happen in schools? Most schools these days are strict.
You can flip it and say what about schools that have racist, right wing teachers that are against ethnic minority pupils?

As a teacher I’ve read and heard a lot about her over the years. I’m not keen on her as a person. However there are many things I don’t dislike about her school, and I can see that teaching there might be brilliant in many ways.
The problem is that it can’t be scaled up to everywhere. She’s in London, with lots of other varied schools. She got her message out loud and clear in the early days which led to a self selecting cohort with massive parental buy in. People who didn’t like what she was offering could put down other alternatives. That doesn’t work if you are a small town with one or two schools. Many parents will simply ignore the rules and code of conduct and if there are no alternative places, they won’t leave.

Yes, I do think it's different, and I teach in a grammar school.

Oh yes, the 'all behaviour is communication' attitude is woolly nonsense. There has to be such thing as a happy medium though.

After decades of teaching, I still fundamentally disagree with the principle that being really petty and very draconian over the very minor things, and trying to make behaviour super-regimented at all times, is the only or best way to prevent serious bad behaviour.

The vast majority of kids in these bonkers schools who get detentions for not walking in silence down the corridor, not tracking the teacher with their eyes for every second of the lesson, underlining their title in blue not black, or wearing socks with a small logo, were never going to commit serious misdemeanours in the first place.

Replacing the atmosphere of fear caused by bad behaviour with an oppressive atmosphere of fear created by teachers is cruel and unnecessary. Just deal really swiftly and harshly with genuinely bad behaviour - disruption, rudeness, bullying etc. Kids don't respect schools and teachers when they perceive the rules as petty and trivial, even if they obey them.