Anyone got any opinions on the Michaela School?

[noblegiraffe]

My Twitter is currently full of talk about Michaela as the teachers there have released a book today and are holding a conference explaining what they do. It's a no-excuses school where kids walk the corridors either in silence or chanting Shakespeare, behaviour is expected to be perfect including no slouching. Everything possible is done to reduce workload of teachers - no marking in books, lessons are all joint planned and taught uniformly, no differentiation, they write their own textbooks.

Does anyone's kids go there? Anyone decide against sending their kids there? Does anyone know how it is viewed in the local community?

The minute you say university isn't your goal for everyone, you have kids thinking it isn't for them

This reminded me of a comment I read on one of the grammar school debate threads.

Someone was complaining that the best school in their city only had a GCSE pass rate of 50%, only to be told that those results could be excellent, depending on the cohort.

They weren't even talking about university or A levels, just GCSEs. That kind of complacency about how well schools are serving disadvantaged children, and the limits of what they can achieve makes me very uncomfortable.

University entrance is still, to a much bigger extent than lots of people like to believe, dependent on income. I teach in a school with 40% PP. Many simply cannot afford university, however much their school wants them to go.

I think the approach to knowledge at the school sounds great. They don't assume the kids know anything, so they teach everything important. So none of their kids are going to not know where the UK is on a map, or not know who the primeinister is. The kids are stuffed full of knowledge by having longer days, homework, being made to chant facts about every subject, and tested on everything to check its sunk in. It sounds like most of the day is about this. They even teach the kids formulas to use good vocabulary in essays.

Someone said the Yr 9 essays were almost undergrad standard, and then it turned out they were just taught to use big words using a formula. Hmm. It made me wonder if GCSE examiners have an unconscious bias towards middle class kids? So maybe they need to teach them to say stuff like, 'Dickens endeavours to reveal to his readers how toxic a paradigm it is...' Hmm.

I think the majority of Kent high schools (secondary moderns) survive by having 'No Excuses' discipline. I don't think they're so unique by having a super-strict approach to teaching kids from deprived backgrounds.

I think the school is unique in the relentless knowledge focus though, and I expect it will have amazing results. But like noblegiraffe I find it odd to think that we need this kind of school to suit the 'don't want to learn' or disadvantaged kids. Would I send my son there? I don't think I would, so I'm even more confused. He wants to learn, picks up facts due to our middle-class privileges, and likes school. I'd rather he write essays using his own words and do they ever do poetry, and creative writing, and anything creative?

Perhaps it will be a school to turn out future mathemeticians and scientists, I'm not sure it would suit any child who likes to think for themselves. But I'm open minded. I do get the point that you need a load of knowledge to then start being a mad inventor or an entrepeneur... But it sounds like they leave it until 16 (maybe 18?) to let them think for themselves.

But to a certain extent it's no good complaining on the one hand about complacency and saying that all students should be encouraged to be aiming for the highest GCSE results and top university places, but then complaining when schools like Michaela 'drill' and 'model' too much and the kids' essays sound 'forced'. This is true of loads of kids in loads of schools. Our exam system is designed to let children do well when they have been drilled, modelled, spoonfed. For children with little cultural capital, no academic background in their family and a history of possibly bad behaviour and problems, you're not going to get anywhere close to closing the gap in exam-passing potential between them and private school pupils or grammar school pupils unless you do a lot of drilling etc. I think that we just feel a bit uncomfortable when we are faced so honestly with what a 'forced' process is required to get an average or below average student to excel in our exams. In which case maybe it's time to change the exams again.

It gets worse than that. There was a thread the other week where a poster asked if it was true that being below expectations at the end of KS1 meant that a child would still be below at KS2. She'd been told by a teacher friend that this was the case. There was at least one teacher who pointed out that a low attaining child who was on track to make 2 levels progress at KS2 wouldn't be given intervention because it would be given to higher attaining children who might miss their progress target.

I'm hoping the new progress measure gets rid of this kind of nonsense because otherwise we might as well start awarding GCSEs at 7 and be done with it.

You have to wonder how much the national stats might be caused by the low expectation s that come with having a set progress measure and accepting that children who've met it are fine.

The reliance on and obsession with tracking progress through data is absurd. Dh is a deputy head and rants about it a lpt. He says that this kind of data was designed to predict the progress of whole cohorts of kids, not individuals. It is a blunt instrument and was never supposed to be used as a stick to beat individual pupils or teachers with.

Someone said the Yr 9 essays were almost undergrad standard, and then it turned out they were just taught to use big words using a formula. Hmm. It made me wonder if GCSE examiners have an unconscious bias towards middle class kids? So maybe they need to teach them to say stuff like, 'Dickens endeavours to reveal to his readers how toxic a paradigm it is...'

I had the opposite feeling when I read it. My gut feeling was that there was a lot of unnecessary vocabulary that wouldn't help if you were writing a timed essay in an exam. Getting your point across succinctly is much better. IMO that year 8 essay has lot of nice vocab that detracts from the fact that there is almost no depth to it. There are 2-3 relevant sentences and none of them are explained or expanded on.

Eolian You have explained precisely why I feel so conflicted about this school. I almost feel we're having the "Educating Rita" debate here! I do believe that Michaela will give a lot of kids A*s (or 8s) who wouldn't otherwise have got them. And that is undoubtedly going to give them a lot more opportunities in life.

BUT the school also seems to be suggesting that they think this is what "good education" should look like. And they have presented an admittedly brief extract of an essay as an example of what they think "good work" is. Yet it reads like someone who is parroting York notes rather than actually engaging with Oliver Twist and trying to work out what it has to say to us. The teachers I think are quite genuinely trying to bring what they see as the advantages of private education to these children yet I doubt whether teachers at Eton or Westminster would encourage Year 9 students to produce essays like this - although I can't say my knowledge of these schools is extensive!!

It's a bit reminiscent of that point in year 2 where you teach children to use adjectives to make their writing better and start using all the adjectives known to man in front of every noun. Then you have to go back and teach them the power of well chosen words.

I want to like Michaela. It should be right up my street, but that Oliver Twist essay has put me off slightly. Maybe by the time they get to year 11 their work will look a bit less like an explosion in a dictionary factory.

yet I doubt whether teachers at Eton or Westminster would encourage Year 9 students to produce essays like this

True, but they wouldn't need to. Their pupils would almost certainly already have an advanced vocabulary and be highly articulate, but they will have been trained in that from birth, having probably gone to prep school and having articulate and possibly very academic parents. What Michaela is clearly trying to do is achieve a kind of shortcut to that. The fancy vocab and trained essay-writing is not going to match up to what the Etonians will be producing at the same age, but they are doing the best they can to replicate it within the parameters available to them. I think that if you (like me) come from an aspirational mc family and have a high level of education yourself it's easy to be a bit judgmental about a heavily scaffolded and modelled essay which sounds a bit 'parroted', but the kids' writing style will develop and settle down in time.

I think you may have missed the point. Eton children will have a vocab advantage but they won't use it to write like that or be encouraging their childrrn to write like that. Michaela seem to be encouraging children to think that's how they should be writing.

I don't know that I'd want to read 120 exam scripts that read like that.

I tend to agree with Eolian. But I also wonder where these children would be if they had had a more formal, knowledge-intensive education from say Year 4, in primary schools with good behaviour, high expectations and use made of textbook reading in class, plenty of spaced practice and low stakes testing. I had that as a child, and I learned and retained an enormous amount of knowledge from those 3 years. I believe there is evidence that memory is more retentive at that age: I certainly remember a great deal more from those years than from what I learned at university. There was nothing draconian about it, either. We were expected to pay attention and work hard at school, but we had fun too. And we didn't have much homework, apart from maths practice, because we got so much accomplished during school hours.

I don't know that I'd want to read 120 exam scripts that read like that.

but Rafals, it will be at least 3 years before that pupil sits an exam. I agree with Eolian: it's likely that the children's writing styles will develop and settle down with time. At the moment I suspect they are very proud of what they are learning, and of their newly acquired vocabulary, and want to show it off. As they read more (and the school ensures they read lots) and their brains mature, they are likely to get a better sense of how to use it.

"I think that we just feel a bit uncomfortable when we are faced so honestly with what a 'forced' process is required to get an average or below average student to excel in our exams. In which case maybe it's time to change the exams again."

Ay, there's the rub.

One thing we can wholeheartedly praise Michaela for is their openness! I think this is the most thoughtful and interesting Mumsnet debate I've ever been involved in - certainly the one that's made me reflect the most on my own views/prejudices. Given that none of us (presumably?)have personal knowledge of the school it's perhaps significant that it's inspired this level of engagement.

An interesting insight here - including a pretty compelling video clip of the head teacher.

I don't think I've missed the point, Rafals. What I was trying to say was that the effects of years of privileged upbringing and schooling cannot be artificially reproduced in a few years in a child from a disadvantaged background. So Michaela (and indeed teachers all across the country) do what seems to be the next best thing (as far as the exam board mark schemes are concerned) - train kids rigorously to produce work which will tick all the 'wow factor' boxes, but will inevitably still read like the work of a less naturally articulate and accomplished child. Because that's what it is. Yes it would be lovely to take a more thoughtful, relaxed, holistic approach to learning. But that won't necessarily get them the top results which would enable those kids to access top university places where they actually will have the chance of a more mind-broadening academic experience.

So Michaela seem to be doing what all other state schools are doing - trying to get the best exam results for their kids in order to give them better chances in life. It's just that Michaela are going about it with rather different methods. Maybe they'd work in a wide range of schools, maybe they wouldn't, but I admire their aims.

I think it's a very interesting approach to school. Akin to KIPP schools in the US (which I've visited many times).

Looking at the English Lit essay extract, I must say I can't get too worked up and I certainly wouldn't identify it as proof of unimaginative thinking or lack of 'real' engagement (and I teach the subject at a very selective university).

This is year 9. Many an undergraduate essay on Dickens is formulaic and too find of the old purple prose .

With regards to behaviour, I would say this is pivotal in many schools. When I visit as part of the widening access scheme the number one complaint by students, bar none, is disruption.

It is a constant.

And not just caused by the disenfranchised, disadvantaged students.

really good debate. I just wnat to throw a few tings into the ring.

1. The head started this process when teaching at an inner city school. She suggested taking a bright group of A level students to visit Oxford uni. She was appalled by the response from THE TEACHERS. She was really blasted for thinking that the elitist Oxford was worth aiming at, and then blasted for thinking that any of the kids from this school would get in or fit in, and therefore we shoudln't encourage them to try.

She did try very hard with a small group, and they got interviews and didn't get in. Her statistics for the number of kids who went to Oxbridge form her borough were shocking. I think it was zero kids in the last 10 years or something similar. Against that background I can really understand her passion to say these kids are worth it, and that academic aspiration is not a bad thing, elitism isn't necessarily bad, when it is acdemic elite based on merit.

1. One of the big things that the head was keen to point out in the Sunday Times article I read is that the school aims to be kind. That did change my image of her a bit.

1. A lot of the reason behind the behaviour stuff is her passion to see kids accept responsibility for their actions. Forgotten your pe kit? Don't blame Mum, accept responsibility and look to see what you can do to remember next time. She says that a lot of what goes wrong in society is based on people not taking responsibility for themselves and believing they have the power to change it. I find that quite a powerful statement actually.

1. A lot of the teachers at the school have no teaching qualification. Something like a third. Maybe even two thirds, I can't remember. The head encourages this as she says otherwise they have to unlearn stuff taught them at teacher training college. Hmmmm, you mean stuff like child development and concept developement etc .....

Someone I follow on Twitter has just made a valid point that much of the criticism levelled at Michaela is met with "visit us". But one day visiting a school doesn't really prove anything.

My school has a poor reputation and is in special measure but every single person who visits - parent, teachers from elsewhere, consultants (we have many...) DFE people, ALL say how lovely it is, how happy the kids are, what a lovely atmosphere. There's only so much you can get from one day visiting somewhere.

A look at the staff profiles on the website suggests that a large number of teachers are Teach First Ambassadors.

I'm very familiar with Teach First, a programme which attracts and pays for 1st class graduates to train in disadvantaged schools over a 2 year cycle. I'm not too sure what is meant by Ambassadors.

One thing I do know is that these hotshot new entrants to the profession are very mouldable.

I expect the government love it because it will turn out clones who have been taught to accept discipline no matter what. Also, if the school discipline is applied to parents as well, which it is, then what happens when the pupils rebel because they are taught that what their parents think is irrelevant. I'd prefer a school to turn out balanced, independent thinking pupils who know what is right and wrong rather than just automatons who follow the rules because they are rules. It seems like a good way to turn out a bunch of 'yes men' rather than the innovators that our country needs.

Teach First Ambassadors are people who have graduated from the Teach First programme. Perhaps they trained elsewhere through Teach First and are now teaching at Michaela? They could have done Teach First at Michaela and now be qualified I suppose, but I'm not sure Teach First would place you in a school with only Y7.

much of the criticism levelled at Michaela is met with "visit us"

I've heard through the grapevine that if you visit them and are then critical, you aren't allowed back!

Carl it is very much meant to be like a KIPP school. KIPP is the Knowledge is Power Program, Michaela's school motto is Knowledge is Power.

Someone I follow on Twitter has just made a valid point that much of the criticism levelled at Michaela is met with "visit us". But one day visiting a school doesn't really prove anything.

But a lot of those "visit us" suggestions are made to people who claim the children must be unhappy, robots, crushed, the atmosphere horrible and totalitarian etc. How else are they supposed to demonstrate to a twitter critic whether that is the case or not? Ultimately, those people are only going to be satisfied by seeing for themselves, and talking to pupils themselves.

As far as criticising the pedagogy goes, that's a different matter. People like Joe Kirby have blogged extensively about the evidence underlying it, and there's more about it in the new book; but again, it's not something that can really be explained on twitter. And of course, the actual way they're applying the research may quite possibly have serious flaws in it, but there's no way of telling that until a few years from now, I suspect.