Michaela school - experiences?

[teathyme]

This is purely out of curiosity as I live nowhere near it. I saw an interview with the HT and whilst I didn't agree with everything she said the results are very impressive. I know sometimes on paper things are very different to on the ground so just wondered if anyone had experience of it and what they thought?

Sorry, middle sentence got completely jumbled, of it should have been "even if they're "disadvantaged", or low income, the students will have come from families where....

Exactly.

My ds is autistic and cannot give eye contact. It makes him really uncomfortable. He also couldn't stand up in front of a group like they expect and make statements.

I wouldn't send him.

Plus i would want him to have a wide choice of GCSEs which they don't offer.

It sounds like the boarding school my mum went to in Ireland in 1944.

I am no Michaela apologist, i have grave concerns about many of her tactics and KBs comments on able girls not doing physics were bloody awful, but I must correct the poster above who said only 4% of Michaela kids were disadvantaged
in fact their % is slightly above the national average

I just couldn't send my child there.

And having looked up the results they are on a par with my dcs state school, where they are allowed their phones, hardly any detentions. Highly engaged students but not all perfect. Pretty good though. Too much discipline doesn't prepare them for the self motivation needed for Uni or for work.

The only similarity is its a hard to get into school with strong parental involvement. Not grammar.

@itsgettingweird - 30 kids is because they give out loads of detentions - for small stuff. So it’s highly likely that many kids will have had a detention before - so it’s not a big deal maybe? If you surveyed the kids, I’m guessing rate of forgetting equipment would be lower than places with no detention (like places with parking wardens). Yes - highly likely that the girl will forget her rubber again at some point, but good chance that she will forget it less often than if they didn’t have the detention rule - and it doesn’t have to be a big trauma getting a detention - I guess it depends on how you view the detention. Their tactic is to pick on the little things, so the kids don’t try the bigger things.

I think the teachers sitting with the kids at lunch and the public appreciation can be helpful structure and practice for giving presentations or talking to new people in work/social situations. I used to be shy, but it was only by having to do that kinda stuff that I got more confident. But this would be inappropriate for people with bad anxiety or issues with eye contact.

Could someone post links to info about SEND at the school? I googled it and saw a headline that says they don't call SEN SEN but can't find anything useful to expand on that. I'm very curious about how they deal with ADHD etc.

Reminds .me of my Catholic primary school in the 50s. We were mainly first generation born in England, mainly Irish but also Polish, Italian, Spanish etc. We even had an English girl in my class, she was the subject of some fascination when she joined as very few of us knew English people. When people talked about "going home" for holidays it was invariably Ireland as we were the biggest group.

We were taught by nuns who could give Birbalsingh some lessons on discipline, ours came in the shape of a cane. Realistically they gave us a route out of the slum we lived in, 50% of my class went to grammar school. Kids I knew went on to be doctors (one a famous surgeon) university lecturers, business owners, teachers etc

Parents chose the school because it was the Catholic school so no magic about parents who were particularly involved in education, mine certainly weren't.

I think sometimes the interesting, fulfilling, kind education we probably all want for our kids is a bit of a luxury to the disadvantaged who actually need a leg up and a way out.

Sadly a lot of children are lacking discipline nowadays. Unsurprising that a more structured school environment leads to greater academic achievement.

It’s a pity to see so many parents fail to understand the need for discipline and are so willing to hold their children back.

They have a greater academic achievement because they are selective and offer a limited curriculum.

Its got absolutely nothing to do with the discipline. The discipline is performative and nothing more.

The head teachers attitude to women and girls doing STEM subjects is a major issue. And if she’s that narrow minded on that (something I know a lot about) what else is she narrow minded about?

I think sometimes the interesting, fulfilling, kind education we probably all want for our kids is a bit of a luxury to the disadvantaged who actually need a leg up and a way out.

I honestly don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone romanticise hitting children with sticks quite like this.

Ah, just realised it’s you @ancientgran which makes sense. Spare the rod and spoil the child and all that. Never did you any harm etc.

It is an interesting school. The headmistress clearly knows how to get the headlines, which can make her a bit of a marmite figure and I get the impression that this means a lot of people misunderstand what the school does. In truth, it takes a more wholistic approach than is often found elsewhere in the state sector. This includes getting the kids to take pride in their school as well as having a rounded education that is not just about their academic subjects, but also about extracurricular interests and what is called dispositions. Personality traits like empathy, resilience and self-motivation. Essentially, this is where you start to see that the binary political positions of the mainstream media that try to pigeon hole the headmistress as right wing and therefore draconian and uncaring, verses a left wing model of nurturing care, is completely wrong. I think if the journalists at the Guardian visited the school blind, thinking it was run by a left-wing headteacher, they would love what they saw. I certainly know left wing educational reformers who love it.

michaela.education/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/SEN-Information-Document-Sept-2022-signed.pdf

Send policy.

You've completely missed the point.

Schools like hers do well because the parents who send their children to those schools are self-selective. Also if the school decides the pupil doesn't fit the school they "encourage" them to leave.

It has been this way for decades in different schools and colleges.

Yes well tell that to the kids from the other local schools who didn't have such good outcomes. It isn't romanticising it, it is the facts. There's nothing romantic about being stuck in a cycle of poverty and low achievement.

It’s absolutely not a fact that beating children with sticks makes them learn better or achieve more.

It's KB herself who makes it a political issue.

Tbh I don't know political views of most HT (and I know a lot!) and many of them run well run disciplined schools too.

Plus it's a small school compared to many secondary schools.

There's some interesting FOI questions online including ones that they won't answer cub as how many autistic children attend.

That's one that's easy to answer! Wonder why they won't 🤔

My kids didn't get hit, they didn't go to schools where they got hit. The difference was they lived in a nice area, went to school with other kids who weren't disadvantaged and had parents who were committed to their education.

I didn't have those advantages but the nuns did make sure I could hold my own academically with the kids from the nice areas, nice schools who had no disadvantages.

I suppose some people don't like the kids from the slums doing well, maybe doing better than them. Know your place in the underclass.

If Michaela gives those kids chances then good for Michaela.

What exactly do you mean by selective here?

presumably not SEN or disadvantaged pupils since their numbers are either in line with or slightly above the national average. Presumably it’s self selective by parents, but given Michaela’s reputation hat do you think parents are selecting it for. It can’t be academic results because I don’t think they had any academic results when this cohort started year 7.

They could have done that without beating you though. If you want to see disadvantaged kids doing well in school then start campaigning for better social care, not making their lives even more miserable at school.

Discipline with a class of 48 makes them achieve more. No TAs just one teacher and 48 kids from tough backgrounds. The proof of the pudding.

The reality is we actually weren't hit much because funnily enough we didn't want to get hit. I got the cane the grand total of twice.

Loads of schools are strict and get good grades
I was just reading Totteridge Academy in Barnet was awful and the worst school in the borough. The headteacher has come and completely transformed the school around. Their progress 8 scores was amongst the best in the country, yet I don't see the headteacher all over the tv and newspapers.

I'm not campaigning about anything I was commenting on the style Michaela reminding me of my school and the results they got. They can't legally cane children now so no point campaigning about that. If Michaela is achieving excellent results for the kids why would people object?