Britain’s strictest headmistress

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LINDSAY MAST: You’re listening to a special weekend edition of The World and Everything in It. I’m Lindsay Mast.

Earlier this week, we brought you the story of London’s Michaela Community School and its headmistress Katharine Birbalsingh. She first became known for a controversial speech she gave to the UK’s Conservative Party Conference in 2010.

BIRBALSINGH AT CONSERVATIVE CONFERENCE: We need to instill competition amongst our kids and help build their [Applause] motivation by ensuring they're not given everything and that they're being held to account for what they do we need to rid the classrooms of chaos by unshackling our heads and setting our schools [Applause] free.

Birbalsingh has become a passionate advocate for instilling what she calls “small c conservative” values in students. Things like personal responsibility…gratitude…self-discipline…respect for authority.

Here’s audio from a documentary:

MICHAELA TEACHER: Stand here for me so I can see you…(student mumbles) No look turn and face me, hands out of pockets, slow down, turn and look at me. Couple of things you have to do, first take your earrings out… Yes sir.

Katharine Birbalsingh’s methods have garnered her a reputation of being Britain’s strictest headmistress. Some criticize that strictness. But most Michaela students achieve high test scores and the school gets outstanding ratings from the Office of Standards in Education. Hundreds of people visit the school each year to get a first hand look at its strict discipline and dress code.

I wanted to talk to Katharine Birbalsingh about what we can and should expect from both children and educational systems. Here’s our conversation.

MAST: Katharine Birbalsingh…also known as “Britain’s Strictest Headmistress”… welcome.

KATHERINE BIRBALSINGH: Thank you for having me. Well, in fact, you know, if you go to Google and type in who is the strictest teacher in the world, my name will come up.

MAST: So it’s a global title at this point.

BIRBALSINGH: It seems so.

MAST: Well, your reputation precedes you. Michaela is a very strict, highly regarded, somewhat controversial school in London. Tell us a little about the school and how it came to be in existence.

BIRBALSINGH: Yeah, well, charter schools, of course, have been going in America since the early 90s, what we call free schools in the UK. Only started in 2010 with the then Conservative government, they decided to bring in free schools, copying the American idea. And so we are a school in the inner city. In 2010 we began the campaign to try and set up Michaela, which actually took about three and a half years. We didn't open until 2014 because there was so much opposition against us trying to stop us from opening. 

MAST: Talk about that. Why was there opposition to the school in getting up and running?

BIRBALSINGH: Well, in the same way as there's been huge opposition to the charter schools in America: the unions are very much against free schools. They feel that they're we're privatizing education. It doesn't really make any sense, because at the end of the day, we're just a normal school with normal funding from government in the way that all the other local schools get normal funding.

So charter schools in America are different in that sense, they tend to have backers who you know, who fund them. That's not the case with free schools in England. We just are funded in the usual way that government schools are funded, and we also go through the same admissions process. It was the unions wanting to keep control, um, being very anti anything the Conservative government would do, because the idea came from the conservatives. 

MAST: You took some heat personally, too.

In 2010 I went to the Conservative Party Conference and gave a speech which is only about five minutes. And I was hated very much by many people on the left, not everybody, but many people who would they would protest outside our parent evenings, they would have signs calling me Tory teacher. We had to hire bouncers because of the possible violence that might ensue because they were trying so hard to stop us.

And after three and a half years, we opened the 2014, and then, much to their dismay, our detractors dismay, we then did very, very well, and we got great results. And loads of people come to visit, because it's not just about the results of the school, it's how happy the children are, how much they get on with each other, how. Now the multicultural environment of Muslim kids, Hindu kids, black kids, Indian kids, white kids, all these kids managing to get on with each other across racial and religious divides. It's a lovely thing to see, and I've been campaigning for years and years and years just to try and get people to change their minds about what is possible in education if they just choose to do the similar, similar sorts of things as what we do at Michaela.

We have a very typical inner city intake, and many of the kids who come to Michaela have just been given to us from the local council. They don't even necessarily want to be there. So one of the things that's sort of astounding about it is that when people come to visit, and we have had over 7000 visitors come and see us since we've been open, and they are visitors from around the world. The thing that's amazing is that the kids are really, really happy. They're learning loads. Their self esteem is through the roof. And these are just normal inner city kids who would probably be beating each other up and doing that standard kind of stuff that inner city kids do if they were not at Michaela, so people through word of mouth, social media and so on. That's why people come and look at us, because they can't believe what we're managing to do with these sorts of kids.

MAST: I want to talk about that. It is a community school, state-funded, lots of similarities to other schools in many ways, at least on paper, but it’s not like a lot of other schools. What makes it different? from other schools both in Britain and throughout the west?

BIRBALSINGH: So first thing is the discipline. I mean, this business of me being strict. I mean, it's funny, people think I march up and down the corridors with whips and chains. Of course, that's not true. In fact, I'm barely in the corridors. I'm often meeting with staff in my office. But the thing is, we're very strict on the tiny little things.

You know, there's an expression, which is, you know, you take care of the pennies and the pounds will take care of themselves, meaning you look after the little things and the big things never become an issue. It's the same thing at Michaela, your ties need to be up to the top, and your uniform, your shirts need to be tucked in. You need to be on time. You need to turn up with your homework. Everybody is treated in exactly the same way. You never hear children saying, that's unfair, because everybody has the same strict discipline. 

It means that you keep your standards high. The children then raise the bar and they meet you at where you want to where you want them to meet you if you're soft on them. On the other hand, children will let things go. And if you come from a more challenging background, it means you're not going to bring in your homework, you're not going to make the effort in class, your hand won't go up, and you're not going to learn as much. And then that means that you're generally unhappy because you're not achieving, and then you don't get the results that you need to be able to get to a good university, etc, etc. So the discipline is key. The next thing, I'd say, So that's first thing, discipline.

MAST: The teaching style is different too, isn’t it?

BIRBALSINGH: Our teaching methods are very traditional. We believe that the adults should be the authority in the room. They're standing at the front. They are in charge, not the children. I would say, these days, parents and teachers very much want to be friends with their kids. They're allowing the children to lead the learning. In fact, it's called child centered learning, where the desks are in groups and the children are looking at each other, teaching each other, as opposed to the desks being in rows, facing the teacher, with the teacher leading what is being taught. And in terms of our curriculum, we very much teach a more traditional curriculum, which, you know, has English and math and history and geography and science and so on. We don't tend to do these more modern subjects. It's very, very 1955 nobody would have thought anything that we were doing was strange, but now it seems very odd.

MAST: What else?

BIRBALSINGH: We teach them, old fashioned, I call them small c, conservative values, traditional values of personal responsibility. You don't turn up with your homework done. That's on you. Doesn't matter what the reasons are. It may have been that your brother took the homework. It may be that you have a difficult life at home. Whatever it is, we don't lower our standards for you. You take personal responsibility. We have a sense of duty towards others. You're not behaving yourself just for yourself. You're behaving yourself for the sense of the team around you. And we believe very much in the idea of self sacrifice on your own individual desires for the sake of the whole for the betterment of the whole community. And so all of these values, kindness, gratitude, decency, there's a way to behave that you know in other schools.

So all my life worked in the inner city, all my teachers will say the same thing about their experiences at other schools. If a child in the canteen drops a plate of food elsewhere. What happens is all the kids start going, that's what they do, right? And they sort of humiliate the child who has done the crime of dropping something on the ground at our school. On the other hand, if a child trips up, other children run to help him to pick up the food so that they are on his side. And that sort of decent behavior, kindness and decency very much, is something that we instill in our children, that we want to create a habit in them of behaving in this kind of way so that when they're adults, it's just second nature to them. So that's one of the things people come to the school and they say, my goodness, the children are so kind and grateful, the kids are so interested and polite and that they're so ambitious and they're so resilient. And these are all soft skills, soft ways of being that no exam will ever be able to show you. So while, on the one hand, yes, I'm very proud of our results and how. The kids do academically, but I'm even more proud of who they are as people.

MAST: You have definite thoughts on classroom arrangement, teachers as the authority. I know there’s a lot of talk about critical thinking skills–but you also have different ideas about content––what children should be learning. Talk about that.

BIRBALSINGH: So it's really interesting, the whole Critical Thinking idea, and this is on all spectrums of politically, right and left. I think people misunderstand it. They think that in order to get kids to think critically, you have to teach them critical thinking skills. That's wrong. There's no such thing. Critical Thinking comes from giving kids lots of knowledge.

So for instance, something that people who lean right worry about. They say, Oh, the kids, they think that the West is really bad because of colonialism and because of slavery and all these western white people are evil. But why do they Why do kids think that's because they're being told that, right? If you give them all of the knowledge around history, around historical slavery. So, yes, there was slavery, but let's say the British also abolished slavery. The Navy was out there fighting to, you know, into to stop slavery. There was a civil war in America. You know, if you give them all of this information, then they have the knowledge to think critically with. It's through knowledge that kids become critical thinkers and become independent thinkers, and if all you do is teach them one particular side, then that's when they can't think critically. So the idea is not to not teach them at all and just somehow teach them critical thinking in isolation. That's not possible.

MAST: So what do you do instead?

BIRBALSINGH: You have to give them loads of knowledge. So when people say we have to teach them how to think, not what to think, they're quite wrong. We need to teach them what to think. We need to teach them loads and loads of knowledge. Same thing with values. You don't say to a kid, there's this thing called murder, and some people think it's a good thing and some people think it's bad. And it's up to you to figure it out. We don't say that. We tell the murder is wrong.

When the toddler hits his friend, we don't say some people think it's good to hit, some people think it's bad. We say, No, don't hit right now. That is what we need to be doing all the way up to 16. And then when they have lots of knowledge, you give them the opportunity to do something with it. And I mean, I'd even say, earlier than that, you know, our little 11 year olds, of course, we give them knowledge, then they write an essay and they say, oh, there's this bit on this side. There's this bit on that side. Let me compare them. I can come up with my own conclusion, but I've got knowledge of all sorts.

Now, of course, one of the problems you have is, if you don't have discipline in the classroom, then not much knowledge is able to be given to the children because there's so much noise, so the teacher is spending half their time trying to get them to be quiet. But if you've got that entire hour where the children are 100% focused, just imagine how much knowledge you can give them. And then just imagine, imagine how much critical thinking they can achieve in that time, because they've got so much knowledge so that for all your the parents who are listening, give your kids as much knowledge as possible, and then give them a chance to do something with it. 

And what's also interesting is that you can give them lots of knowledge about history, but that doesn't mean that they can think critically about geography, right? You have to get knowledge. You can only think critically in the domain of a particular knowledge, and then you move that around so and the thing is, there's so much knowledge to learn. We're all learning all the time, early, right? So that time is crucial in the classroom. People say to us, why do you have silent corridors? And they think it's because we're mean, no, it's because we want them to get to their classroom as quickly as possible so that we can give them as much knowledge as possible, so that they can be the best Critical thinkers out there.

MAST: One thing that strikes me when I see pictures and videos of Michaela, is it's quite diverse. You just see a lot of different, I guess marker markers, right? So how does your school stay unified despite those different identity markers, such as race, religion and all of the other things that someone might identify as?

BIRBALSINGH: Multiculturalism needs managing. Now, people then say, “Oh, she's saying it's failed.” I'm not saying it's failed. I'm saying it needs managing actively. And we very much do that at Michaela. We so we've got children, Muslim children, Hindu children, Sikh children, we've got Christian children, we've got black kids, brown kids, white kids. So, and the thing is, people think it's just white kids getting on with non white kids. No, no, you've got Hindus Muslims who won't get on. You've got black Caribbean and black African kids who won't get on. You've got Sunni and Shia Muslims who won't get on. And this happens in schools across the UK.

At our school, you would have no idea the kids are from all these different backgrounds, because they are all friends with each other across racial and religious divides. Why? Because of the values that we're teaching them about kindness and decency and gratitude and self sacrifice on your individual desires for the betterment of the whole we also have them very much buy into an overall community, which is the British community. We have the British flag flying outside. We sing, God save the king at assembly, for instance, before I walk in, they sing, God save the king. They all understand that they are British, and they may have their own own individual cultures. They eat their own different foods at home, and they have their own different way of dress. Our Muslim girls will wear hijabs. Our Sikh kids will wear the bangles, you know, they look different, but we are all British together, and that identity that unifies us makes sure and the Michaela identities not just the country's identity, it's we're all Michaela together.

And so it's like the English football team. They go out to play football, they're all wearing the same shirt. They might have different backgrounds at home, but they're all wearing the same shirt. We all wear the same uniform. So that is us actively managing multiculturalism. And I think that too often people think multiculturalism can work when you just throw everybody into the same pot and you say, yippee. We can all just be friends together. Well, no, we have to manage it. And if it's managed, it can work very well, and our school is an example of that. But if it's not managed, well, you see the result. And that is because of a mismanagement of multiculturalism, not necessarily mismanagement, but a lack of management. It's just been allowed to run free, as opposed to our schools seeing carefully, how do we manage this?

MAST: That’s not always a popular take, is it?

BIRBALSINGH: You know, people make the criticism of me saying that, which I take. They say, look, schools struggle to get the kids just to learn English and to read and to write and to and to do math. How on earth are you going to expect them to manage multiculturalism as well? It's a good point. Having said that schools are the only institutions that can manage multiculturalism for the country, if schools aren't doing it, then who is doing it right? And if schools are actually actively undermining multiculturalism because they're allowing children to congregate in their groups according to their racial and religious identities, then we are solidifying that division in schools, as opposed to breaking it up and bringing everybody under the umbrella of Britishness.

MAST: You had a Muslim student who took Michaela to court over a schoolwide ban on prayer rituals. Tell me about why you banned prayer and what happened in that case.

BIRBALSINGH: Yeah. There is an example of where people who aren't thinking about how to manage multiculturalism, they think, what's the big deal? Just let them have a prayer room. Who cares? But given our strict ways of doing things and our the way our building is structured, it would mean dividing the Muslim children from the non-Muslim children, and the Muslim children would all go off to where the prayer room is at lunchtime, and the non Muslim children would go out to the yard. And I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to divide children according to race and religion.

So I refused to do it, and I went to the high court to defend our belief in multiculturalism being able to succeed, I think too often, our liberal ways and our belief in just freedom for kids just let them do whatever actually exacerbates the problems of division within our religious and racial multicultural communities. And so that was why we said, No, it was entirely practical.

Similarly, we have a vegetarian lunch. For instance, this is because we do family lunch where all the children eat together one one meal like they don't have a choice about what they're eating. And if we were to divide people according to what they ate, some children eat meat, but no beef. Some children eat meat, but no pork. If we did that, and we did that right at the beginning, and I looked around and I thought, oh my goodness, we're dividing children according to race and religion. We can't do that. Let's go vegetarian.

So all of our decision making is entirely around the practical to ensure multiculturalism succeeds. Had we had a prayer room, it would have failed, because we would have divided the children according to race and religion. So you can see how that goal of successful multiculturalism permeates everything we do and every decision we make.

MAST: The courts found that the school couldn’t be forced to have a prayer room for students and dismissed the case. Here’s the BBC the day of the verdict:

BBC BREAKING NEWS: We are just hearing that the Muslim student at Michaela Community School in London that took the action has lost their high court challenge against a ban on its prayer rituals. Now the student took the action, claiming the policy was discriminatory and uniquely affected their faith due to its ritualized nature, but the High Court ruling has gone against the student.

I know people who bristle at the idea of ejecting religion from schools… yet you saw it differently– you called the verdict a “victory for all schools.” What did you mean by that?

BIRBALSINGH: Well, because I want multiculturalism to work everywhere, and in order to do that, we need to share common ground. And if you're dividing everyone up according to religion, it's not that I have a problem with religion. So as I say, there are some bits of religion in our school that are fine. Muslim girls wearing the hijab. I don't have a problem with Christian kids wearing little cross under their shirts. I have a problem with anything that's going to undermine the happiness and the success of the whole so we need to think about that our religious lessons. Because we do religion all the way through school. Kids have religion lessons with us. If you ask our kids about Judaism, Islam, Christianity and various other religions, I'm telling you, they will be more informed about them than kids in any other school, anywhere like it's they get excellent, excellent religious education, right? But if the practice of religion in the school divides them according to race and religion, We won't allow that.

MAST: It seems you’ve silenced many of your critics–Michaela’s students have done very well by a number of different metrics. But is your school destined to be a one-off or is the tide turning? And if so, who else is championing these causes?

BIRBALSINGH: Well, I do feel a bit like an island. Having said that, we do get over 800 visitors a year coming to see the school, and people change their minds when they see the school. Most of those people are teachers. A lot of them go away and take ideas from the school that have now become more commonplace across the UK. So it's exciting to have had that impact on people's classrooms elsewhere.

People are far more likely, I find, to take the ideas around how to manage your classroom, how to manage the corridors and the yard and the lineups and that kind of thing, they're more likely to take those ideas than they are to take the more cultural ideas, because they see the cultural ideas as very much part of a cultural war, and they don't want to be on the side of the culture war which is more right leaning, because my point of view is much more right leaning. But I have been talking about the culture stuff for a lot less long than I have done, the more practical knowledge, teaching, discipline stuff.

So I'm hoping with time, that more and more people will come on board with that it's hard to dispute our results. And when I say results, I don't just mean academically. I mean the happy children. I mean. The successful multiculturalism and so on. So if people are willing to be open minded, then they change their minds. And sometimes it's just ordinary teachers in their classroom, and you've never heard of them, but their classrooms have changed as a result. And we have changed the national conversation on a number of things. But it is hard.

MAST: Let’s return for a moment to a few of the values you think are important for students. Gratitude and personal responsibility are core values at Michaela. Why do those make a difference in the classroom?

BIRBALSINGH: Yeah, I think they'll be a lot happier. I think it's fascinating, because when you read self help books, they say all the same stuff that we are doing with our children, all the values like they tell you in self help books, write down five things that you're grateful for at the end of the day. Well, our kids are being they every day. They have to be vocal. 

MAST: I know you do mean that literally: At lunchtime, students stand up and tell the room what they’re grateful for. Here’s what that sounds like:

MICHAELA GRATITUDE MONTAGE: I would like to give an appreciation to Priumphy/ I would like to give an appreciation to to certain people that are outside/ I would like to give an appreciation to for Denmark because they are really really polite to me and they really made me welcome and they always try to include me in the conversation so two snaps for Denmark.

BIRBALSINGH: It practices public speaking. It also allows them to be grateful. So I think there'll be far fewer than that. I'll have midlife crises. I think they will be happier people. I also just think, you know, these are inner city kids, ethnic minority kids in the inner city who are going to go off and and have great standings in the community. They'll do a whole variety of different things, but we are enabling social mobility for these children, which is fantastic, but also making, I think, the world a better place, by making, by enabling us all to get on with each other. And I hope that they take that with them, you know, it'll be interesting. 

And you know, if I run into them in 20 years. But, you know, many of them do come back, yeah, but they're still in their early 20s. You know, but they do come back and they tell us about their time at university, and they say things like, all my friends are really struggling with their first year exams, but actually I'm having a pretty easy time, because in comparison to Michaela, I feel we have a lot less work at university. So we put we build them up. And so I always say, you know, it's our job at schools, in schools, to help mold them, to give them certain habits, so that by the time you get to the end of their time with those you're then able to say, fly, birdie, fly. And off they go. And they're able to fly. And I find very much that they they fly with with real enthusiasm and Real happiness.

MAST: Michaela has been around long enough to start turning out well-educated graduates. Looking ahead, what do you think the legacy of a Michaela-style education will be for these students when you look down the road for them 10, 20, 30 years?

BIRBALSINGH: Yeah, well, I always say school is a microcosm of society, so what works in school will work in the country. Look, my belief is, if only schools could manage multiculturalism in a similar way to the way that we do, if they did not just culturally but also giving kids lots of knowledge, teaching them a traditional curriculum, instilling discipline in them, making sure they're grateful and and are part of this umbrella of Britishness and so on. Of course, there will always be bad actors. You know, there will always be in any situation, there will be bad actors. But what you always need to judge yourself on is, but how robust is, is, is the is the institution? How robust is the country to be able to handle those bad actors and look families and teachers are what make a country, because children are the future to any country, and children are become the adults who they are thanks to the influence of their parents and their teachers. 

And all parents will recognize that by the time children get to be teenagers, they are actually having a lot less influence on them. What has the most influence on them is their peers, and the culture of their peers is created by their teachers. And because we tend to ignore how important teachers and schools are, we don't recognize that teachers are the most important thing when it comes to the future of the country, because children are the future, and teachers have the most influence on them, because their peers have huge influence on them, and the culture in which they are in their schools is everything. So, you know, I am just trying to ring the alarm bells and tell people, Look, care about what's happening in our schools.

And I know in America, of course, it's fascinating, because I think a lot more of you realize this. Actually, I don't think in the UK, people have any understanding of what I've just said, but in America, you do, because a lot of you homeschool, and I think a lot of you homeschool because you recognize that sometimes the schools are not doing a great job, and so you pull your kids out of there, because you don't want them to be influenced by the culture that you see as really quite harmful to who your child is going to grow up to be. And so in that sense, I take a lot of you know, I'm really pleased with what the Americans can see, having said that, in America, you're so polarized that the solution is just pull my kid out. And I don't see how that can be a solution. It can't be that everybody needs to home school. We need to fix our schools. That's what we need to do. And I don't think there's enough of us talking about how we can fix our schools.

MAST: Katharine Birbalsingh is the headmistress at Michaela Community School in London. Britain’s strictest headmistress….thank you for joining us.

BIRBALSINGH: Thank you for having me.

MAST: Thank you for listening to our extended interview with Katharine Birbalsingh. I’m Lindsay Mast.

Let us know you’re listening. You can do that by dropping us a line. Email us at editor@wng.org. That’s editor@wng.org. Or you can subscribe and leave a review wherever you listen toThe World and Everything in It. We'll talk to you Monday. Have a great weekend!

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