Do your strict British schools get good academic results?

[Briwi]

I'm a Brit who left UK for New Zealand 20 years ago (still hanging around Mumsnet like a restless spirit!)

I'm often quite shocked by some of the threads about schools and how strict they are. Detentions for doodling?! Detentions for 13 yr olds in the first week of high school because they have the wrong shoes?!! That would never happen here.

I realise this is a massive, big picture question, but just to focus in on the strictness and detentions - do they help? Are they a good thing? Do they make students more successful academically?

Like any education system, NZ has it's pros and cons. I like the positive, respectful nature of education here - but it's also not terribly academically rigorous, imo.

Then quite frankly, let those kids sit in detention and waste their lives and focus on those kids who do want to learn.

I'm pretty sure that while some kids will not care about getting a detention for forgetting their pen, some kids will, and the number forgetting pens will be reduced.

It was extremely noticeable during covid that when we weren't allowed to lend pen out to kids, the vast majority of them managed to show up with a pen.

I've had kids ask me to lend them a calculator simply because they can't be arsed to get their own calculator out of their bag. Do you think they'd do that if a detention was in the offing?

You also won't have the fear of a detention though, so will they carry on after the threat is gone?

All I learnt was that I couldn't take those two subjects, because of that particular teacher. I later did a topic covered in one of the classes at University and found I could do it very easily, so would have got a good mark in lessons had I taken it at GCSE. From what I can see the teacher decided against me, lost a good student and possibly altered my choices for A Levels and Uni as a result. How is that in anyone's interests?

If teachers want to be so strict people are terrified of them, it's great places like Michaela exist but not being honest that this is the desired outcome doesn't help anyone; certainly not pupils or parents if their kids will be suffering with mental health or SEN issues.

The other thing that stands out about Michaela is that it was a new build. Every child who has gone their, went knowing the expectations. Being in a very populous area of London also means

Totally agree, and growing a school from Y7 upwards must be a lot easier. A whole group of parents, pupils and teachers who are invested in the system. No older children to be a bad influence, and no need to take the siblings of your existing wronguns! It must also give a very favourable pupil, in the early years of it's existence.

you wouldnt get very far in the real world without the correct equipment.

Yet when you work in a office, you don't take your stuff home with you every night and bring it back the next morning. If you can't find your pen, you just get another one from the stationery cupboard.

No.

You know, full well, that's not how Michaela gets the results it does.

Sorry wrong quote attached.

Interesting thread and reflects my belief that school are too tight on the discipline these days. In my view it's lazy leadership because the stick can be used fairly consistently across the student body whilst the carrot needs to be tailored towards individual students. Its sad to see school destroy my Dd's confidence because of the overly rigorous discipline. She has Adhd and tries really hard but does better in classes where the teachers are kind and understand that she responds far better to encouragement. I think the discipline heavy approach is employed by teachers who don't like or understand children.

Actually, I disagree pretty strongly with those who claim that Michaela simply gets its results by manipulating its catchment (it doesn't appear to) kicking out kids with SEN (its proportions of kids with SEN aren't wildly different to the rest of the country), or simply by having more engaged parents than the rest of the country.

They do seem to do fewer GCSEs than average, which will definitely help, but it is mad to claim that the fact that they spend more time learning and less time fannying around than other schools doesn't make a difference.

And early on, I also listened to an in depth podcast with their then head of maths. She was incredible, the thought that went into the curriculum and the consistency was amazing.

Yeah it is.

There’s ine in my city based on that. 2nd best school in U.K. Talked about in horror by other kids. I could have sent my dd there. I’m really glad l didn’t.

Katharine Birbalsingh claims that ND children do well at Michaela. I don't particularly rate her as a source of information, since we have no actual data. She says ND children do well with rules, but she's being misleading. It is true that ND children (ADHD and autism) often do well with clear rules and expectations. It doesn't therefore follow, though, that all rules are good ones. She conflates that with her punishments and enforcement. I have ADHD as well as two of my DC. It's absolutely real. There's no point punishing us for forgetting a bloody pen. I can go through my morning routine and still forget the pen.

Also, dyslexia by definition involves having had good instruction and not learning. I'm appalled at trying to blame parents for dyslexia. That isn't behavioural at all. It's a brain-based learning disorder.

They appear to English, lit, maths, RS, French double Science, plus one of History, Geography and Art. 8 is the standard number of GcSEs in most schools.

The number on the bottom row of GCSE entries is lower than a lot of other schools, particularly for previous high attainers where I'd expect to see 9.

So basically, they achieve good results because they just weed out the students who would get poor results, who then presumably must be educated elsewhere.

This actually contradicts the notion that the extreme strictness itself is responsible for children achieving good exam scores.

You weren’t attacking her personally. You were just dismissing the experiences of all children with disabilities. Thank you for clarifying.

Isn’t that 9?

Science counts for 2

Its odd... their exam entries seem to suggest 8, but the results 7.

Unless they are doing RS in Yr10?

My kids go to strict schools and they are very open with their behaviour policy. I do not believe that children in their schools would be given a detention for doodling. They would be given a reminder of expectation, told to refocus and then they’d move on. If the doodling continues the teacher would give a W1, which is recorded on the system for a verbal warning. If after that it didn’t stop a detention would be issued.

I’ve worked in schools as a TA in secondary, children can be very flexible with the truth at home surrounding incidents and the warnings and process followed. Staff spend far too long documenting it so that they can inevitably defend their actions.

There is no evidence of that school getting rid of any pupils. Their intake policy is random, and they have a huge number of EAL pupils. As stated elsewhere, their SEN percentage is on par with the local average.

I think a lot of people really, really hate Michaela methods for ideological reasons, and can’t abide the fact that all the evidence suggests that they are extremely effective.

I think the one thing her school had in favour was the ability to start with y7 and start from a clean slate.

I must say having watched the documentary on Michaela's school and expecting to hate it (as I think overly draconian methods for minor infringements are ridiculous) I actually thought she spoke a lot of sense!

I showed the documentary to my teenage daughter and she said that the independent school she used to be in was just as strict. 🤷‍♀️

The documentary was called "Britain's Strictest Headmistress" and was on ITVX

The highest performing non-selective state school. My DC goes to one of the highest performing state grammar schools and it is no way as strict as the school you are referring to.

For progress 8?

That’s your definition of best performing which you didn’t refer to in your post.

@DeafLeppard EAL parents have different educational values and behaviour expectations if they choose Michaela. Bright dc often don’t have a huge progress 8. They are top 5% in the first place and remain there. Michaela and other schools get good progress scores from shaky starts where dc have not done as well as they could at primary due to various factors. In the grammars, this isn’t usually the case but the grammar results are better.