Rethinking education in Britain

Editor's note: The following text is a transcript of a podcast story. To listen to the story, click on the arrow beneath the headline above.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Tuesday, September 30th.

Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day.

Good morning. I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard.

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: Britain’s strictest headmistress. Fed up with failing schools, she launched her own—and now she’s showing the world why it works. WORLD’s Lindsay Mast reports.

LINDSAY MAST: Fifteen years ago, a deputy head teacher of a British school stood before England’s Conservative Party with harsh words about the educational system:

BIRBALSINGH: I am fighting a generation of thinking that has left our education system in pieces, where all must have prizes and all must have a place at University. We have a situation where standards have been so dumbed down that even the children themselves know it.

She warned of dire consequences:

BIRBALSINGH: My experience of teaching for over a decade in five different schools has convinced me beyond a shadow of a doubt that the system is broken because it keeps poor children poor.

That speech changed Katharine Birbalsingh’s life.

She got a standing ovation afterward. And then lost her job. That’s when she decided to start a school of her own. It’s called a free school—kind of like a charter school in the U.S.

BIRBALSINGH: There was so much opposition against us, trying to stop us from opening.

She says outsiders came into the city to protest at her parent meetings. It took three years, but in 2014, she was back, determined to educate students differently.

BIRBALSINGH: We teach them, old fashioned, I call them small c, conservative values, traditional values of personal responsibility.

Birbalsingh opened the Michaela Community School in a diverse area of northwest London. Many children are not from native English-speaking families. Some are low-income. And the more than 700 students span a wide range of other demographics:

BIRBALSINGH: We've got Muslim children, Hindu children, Sikh children, we've got Christian children, we've got black kids, brown kids, white kids.”

It is a secular community school. But it emphasizes Judeo-Christian values and traditional academics–think deep foundational knowledge in the basics like math, history, science, and English.

AUDIO: [Sound from Julius Caesar play]

Audio from a performance of Julius Caesar the year after the school opened.

AUDIO: [Sound from Julius Caesar play]

The differences go far beyond academics. The children practice showing kindness and gratitude. They abide by a strict dress and discipline code. No talking in the halls. No gathering in groups of more than four.

TEACHER: Tripping somebody up in the corridor, okay, or interfering with someone else is a bad thing to do…

Audio of a teacher and student, from a 2022 documentary released by the school.

TEACHER: Because you know, you know that the most important thing is that you get into your lesson quickly so that you can so that you can learn as much as possible. Okay, now Ms. Jones cares a lot about your progress, so Ms. Jones is going to pull you up on that. She's going to give you a detention because it means that next time, you won't make that mistake again. Do you understand?

Birbalsingh also holds Michaela students to high academic standards and emphasizes self-discipline.

BIRBALSINGH: You know, there's an expression, which is you take care of the pennies and the pounds will take care of themselves. 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.

All of that has earned her the reputation of Britain’s Strictest Headmistress.

BIRBALSINGH: It’s funny, people think I march up and down the corridors with whips and chains. Of course that’s not true.

What is true: the school gets Outstanding ratings from the Office of Standards in Education. The majority of students get top-tier scores on exams.

But it faces stiff criticism.

ADAMS: Yeah the school sounds absolutely dreadful.

That’s British parenting blogger John Adams on GB News in 2021.

ADAMS: It sounds like a soulless place that sucks the life out of the kids, frankly. I would hate my kids to go there. We are trying to get children prepared for the outside world and that’s not just about getting 9 A-star GCSEs. It's about producing well rounded individuals and I don’t think walking down silent corridors or getting an after school detention for forgetting a paper is the way to go.

One major challenge came from within the school community itself. In 2023, a Muslim student took the school to court over a ban on prayers in the schoolyard. Birbalsingh says allowing prayers would have been divisive.

BIRBALSINGH: 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.

The student lost the challenge.

Birbalsingh remains unapologetic about Michaela’s exacting standards.

BIRBALSINGH: Everybody is treated in exactly the same way. You never hear children saying, that's unfair, because everybody has the same strict discipline.

She also stands by its traditional educational practices:

BIRBALSINGH: 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.

The school says over 1000 people a year come to see the school firsthand.

BIRBALSINGH: 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. I'm very proud of how the kids do academically, but I'm even more proud of who they are as people.”

Birbalsingh says that’s the outcome she wants for students: the character traits that no school exam can quantify.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Lindsay Mast.

WORLD Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of WORLD Radio programming is the audio record.