Douglas
Murray
The triumph of Katharine Birbalsingh
From
magazine issue:
20 April
2024
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-triumph-of-katharine-birbalsingh/
There are
two questions that need to be asked of any society: what is it that is going
wrong; and what is it that’s going right that should be done more? It’s only
natural to focus on the first question – not least because it is easier. But it
is the second question that should be asked more.
Whenever I
think of the few things that are going well in Britain, I think of the Michaela
Community School in Wembley, London. I have visited the school a couple of
times. It sits in one of London’s most deprived communities. Set up under the
era of Michael Gove’s free schools scheme, it is the creation of Katharine
Birbalsingh. Pupils are almost all from non-advantaged backgrounds.
The
school’s success is a rebuke to a whole class of malevolent or criminally inept
educationalists
Whenever
she is profiled in the media, people tend to write about Birbalsingh as
‘Britain’s strictest headmistress’ or similar. The implication skews towards
the negative. Commentators, especially of the left, like to suggest that there
is something a bit suspect about this striving for discipline and excellence.
‘Shouldn’t the kids be allowed to let it all hang out a bit more?’ is a
frequent note, hit by people who have either forgotten what their own education
involved or like to gloss over the advantages they have had in life.
Happily,
Michaela’s success has been demonstrated beyond all doubt. Last year, Ofsted
rated the school as ‘outstanding’, noted that the pupils’ behaviour is
‘exemplary’ and that the school has an ‘exceptionally rich curriculum, which
prepares pupils exceptionally well for the next steps in education’. All of
which is very good – but the proof is in the grades. For the last two years the
school has received the country’s highest Progress 8 score – which tracks how
well secondary schools improve performance after primary school. Pupils at the
school achieve twice the national average in GCSE performance and in the
English Baccalaureate. An astonishing 82 per cent of its sixth-form students go
on to matriculate at Russell Group Universities. In other words, if you have a
huge amount of cash and want to send your child to an expensive private school
in Britain, you’d be better off saving the money and moving to Wembley.
So why
should Michaela have been the subject of so much opprobrium? Even before
Birbalsingh had found the site for her school, people tried to stop her. A
different London Labour council had the perfect site available, but when the
council found out what it was for, they sold the site to someone else. It has
been the same at every turn. Trade unions have had their members protest
outside the school and harass staff and pupils. Every attempt has been made to
take Birbalsingh and the school out. The case that hit the headlines this week
was just the latest.
It started
because a Muslim pupil claimed that the school wouldn’t allow her to practise
Muslim prayer rituals at the school. Strangely enough, this pupil’s family were
able to bring a legal case against the school. I wonder where the money and
inspiration for that came from? Perhaps someone can find out.
Of course,
the reason why the pupil was not allowed to bring Islamic prayer rituals into
the school was that the school is a non-faith school. All pupils and parents
agree when signing up to the school that they understand the school’s ethos and
that religion must be left at the school gate. There are plenty of good reasons
for this, in the Islamic space in particular. Around half of the school’s
pupils are Muslim, and reportedly most of the Muslim parents at the school were
appalled at the case.
As they
should be. I have spoken to pupils at other schools in London who have told me
first-hand about the sort of pressure which is applied once Muslim pupils get
into this kind of escalation. It starts with a Muslim girl who wears the hijab
questioning girls of Muslim origin who do not, and proceeds from there. Before
you know it, you have allowed a system of shame culture to embed in the school.
That then becomes the seedbed for bullying and worse.
The past
year must have been torture for the teachers. The case, which dragged on for
months, could easily have been the end for Michaela. If the school had lost,
everything would have fallen apart. And not just for that one school. It would
have signified that schools could be bullied into changing their principles
because of one set of parents who had clearly either not understood the school
they were signing their child up for, or who understood it very well and wanted
to pull the whole thing down from inside.
Happily,
the High Court this week ruled against the people bringing the case. The
83-page judgment said that the claimant had ‘at the very least impliedly
accepted’ the rules of the school. The court accepted the school’s claim that
allowing dozens of Muslim girls to pray in the school playground risked
‘undermining inclusion’ among pupils. Birbalsingh welcomed it as a ‘victory for
all schools’, as indeed it is. But how was this case even brought, under a
Conservative government which is meant to care about such things?
More
importantly, I go back to my original question. Why should life have been made
so difficult for the staff, teachers and parents of this demonstrably
outstanding school? And why are there not hundreds of Michaela schools all
across the country? (If you want one answer, look not far from Michaela, where
a school set up by a Labour party adviser in the same period has plummeted down
Ofsted’s rankings. Its founder will be advising the next Labour government.)
Why do
people not celebrate Michaela and want more children to have the same
education? The reason is that Birbalsingh and her school show up the utter
failure of their critics. Michaela’s success is a rebuke to a whole class of
malevolent or criminally inept educationalists. People who can’t build tear
things down. If only we could become a nation that builds.
Douglas
Murray is associate editor of The Spectator and author of The War on the West:
How to Prevail in the Age of Unreason, among other books.
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