John Bald/language and literacy

Katharine Birbalsingh CBE, on how she and her colleagues have closed the education gap.

 

 

The Secretary of State is rarely the most important person in education. With a few exceptions, such as Butler, Crosland, or Gove, they either don’t do much, or launch projects that don’t work or don’t last. So it is no disrespect to the present holder of the office to say that the most important person in British education is Katharine Birbalsingh. No disrespect, either, to pioneers like the late Sir Rhodes Boyson and Sir Michael Wilshaw, or to others doing excellent work. But Birbalsingh and her colleagues at Michaela have achieved the educational equivalent of squaring the circle. While Sir Keir Starmer talks about closing the attainment gap between poor and advantaged pupils, they have done it.

This gap has set the scene for educational debate since I started in the early seventies, and it has widened during the pandemic. Children with the least support and fewest resources at home, depend entirely on their teachers for opportunities to learn, and around 40 per cent have had little or no contact with them while schools have been closed. A substantial number of parents have made the problem worse. One of the few state schools to ignore union advice and provide online teaching during the lockdown reports that almost a third of pupils did not take part, and that some parents blocked its phone calls. We can’t compel anyone to pick up a phone or switch on a computer.

The gap starts at birth, and can be the equivalent of eighteen months to two years’ learning when children start school. Thirty years ago, Harvard professor Jeanne Chall showed that it widened on transfer to secondary school, as the children of highly educated parents picked up on the more complex vocabulary used in school work, while the others could not, and so fell farther behind. This makes closing the gap from a start with 11-year-old pupils even more remarkable. So, am I right in saying that Michaela has done it? And, if it has, can others do it too?

First, the evidence. Last year’s examination results, from a non-selective intake, go beyond excellence. They change our understanding of what can be achieved, perhaps particularly in Michaela’s four times national average success at the super A* Level 9. Such results show that the leftist argument, that achievement is inevitably limited by social background, is an error. Nevertheless, it is set in stone among the progressive octopus that still controls most university education departments. As Labour’s thinking is infused with their views from top to bottom, Starmer would have to ditch the whole of his Party’s thinking on education for the past 70 years in order to do it, and there is no reason to think he will do so.

I’ve described Michaela’s latest book, The Power of Culture, as the best I’ve ever read on schools education, and better than I ever expected to find. Katharine Birbalsingh’s excellent chapter, on “servant leadership”, reminds me of the late Cardinal Hume’s address to Catholic headteachers. Elsewhere, she edits, but the writing is the work of the staff. Hin-Tai Ting was the head of the Year 11 that achieved last year’s results, and his chapter contains extensive testimony from pupils, many of them with special needs, serious behavioural problems, and disturbed and violent lives outside school. Michaela has given them a future by enabling them to buy into its system and succeed. These are precisely the pupils who are failing in droves elsewhere, and Mr Ting’s work shows that there is nothing elitist about Michaela’s excellence – like other schools it uses nurture groups, but expects the same standard of work and behaviour there as in other classes.

The GCSE results were so good that the bar for sixth form entry is among the highest in the country – at least 7 A grades or above (Levels 7-9). This is the same as a typical offer from Manchester Grammar School . For comparison, the published admission criteria of Maidstone’s grammar schools are 6 subjects at Level 5 or above (girls) and a grade average of 5.5 (boys). Jessica Lund’s 6th Form chapter shows how Michaela pupils are guided towards the highest aspirations for their talents and abilities, both through the teaching and by tackling the social issues that might otherwise hold them back. Michaela streams, but without the stigma that has come to be associated with it. Streaming enables teachers consistently to pitch work at the right level for the pupils, so that all know that they are making progress. The excellence of this teaching of less academically able pupils is a key point in Michaela’s success. Every child matters, and everyone knows it.

The basis of this teaching is contained in four excellent chapters, respectively on religious education, history, geography, and art. The RE chapter, in particular, stands out as the only piece of work I’ve ever read on the subject that does not involve some kind of preaching or self-righteous cant, and the art shows how attention to technique enables pupils to work spontaneously. Deputy Head, Katie Ashford’s chapter brings many of these threads together, and distinguishes Michaela’s approach from its critics’ caricature of “rote-learning”. The big difference is in the use of context, which builds understanding of what has been learned, and enables pupils to apply it. Just as order and discipline free pupils by enabling learning to take place in peace, basing the curriculum on knowledge gives them the means to move towards independence. The picture is complete.

The Power of Culture is a long book at 400 pages, and the close argument and intensity of each chapter make it a most demanding read. It has taken me a month to complete. The significance of Michaela’s achievement makes it not only worthwhile, but imperative. If Michael Gove’s goal of breaking down education’s Berlin Wall is ultimately to be achieved, it will be Katharine Birbalsingh and her colleagues who have made the first breach. We now need to follow it up.

Michaela Community School - results, and their significance.

Now that the euphoria over Michaela Community School’s results has calmed down, we can consider their wider implications.

First, the facts. Four times the national average of the new top grade of Level 9 – 18 per cent of all entries, with two pupils (from 850 or so nationally) this grade in all subjects. Two and a half times the national average at L7+, equivalent to the former A grade, and 58 per cent Ebacc passes, compared to a national average over recent years in the low twenties. I’ve questioned the validity of the “progress 8” measure, which assesses GCSE results in terms of scores in English and maths tests at 11, but this is still an astonishing 1.5.

The Guardian, no friend of Michaela, said these results placed Michaela among the best state schools in the country, an understatement. They represent the latest milestone in a long journey that has extended the idea of who can succeed academically from the 25 per cent of pupils in the grammar school era, via 50 per cent in the Newsom “Half our Future” report of the early 60s, to the over 80 per cent achieved by Mossbourne nine years ago. Over 90 per cent of Michaela’s passes were at Level 4 (old C) and above, and there are grammar schiools not far away.

Michaela has not merely broken the mould but, as Katharine Birbalsingh put it, “smashed it”. Discussions with teachers at the school’s celebration evening on Friday added to what I’d learned on my visit two years ago. First, the low-level disruption that plagues education in many schools, including some rated outstanding – pupils only do it when inspectors are there if they really hate their teachers – is eliminated during the induction “boot camp”. Pupils who have been used to setting their own behaviour patterns have to change their ways – a smirk across the table when a teacher is talking brings an immediate 25 minute detention, and teachers do not back down in the face of a tantrum.

Second, pupils are grouped according to their abilities and learning needs. Unlike almost all other schools that do this, however, the same attention to detail is paid to the teaching of lower-attaining pupils as to top sets. The one valid objection to ability grouping, that lower sets do not get their share of the best teaching, does not apply, and Deputy Head Katy Ashford, who doubles as special needs co-ordinator, is a key figure in making this happen. No stigma is attached to lower sets, and visitors mentioning setting in front of pupils may be asked to leave.

Third, Michaela’s teaching is consistently thoughtful and systematic. Maths in the first year is arithmetic, based on the computer programme Times Tables Rockstars. Mr Bullock, Head of Year 7, does not comment when I say that this should have been done in primary school, but it ensures that nothing is left out by the time algebra is introduced in the second year. Pupils then work on the programme Hegarty Maths, which tracks individual progress, and do so every day. Detention is there if they don’t, but the constant positive feedback makes them want to. This is another key feature at Michaela – everyone, including nearly all visitors, comes to want to buy into the system.

Despite the obstacles and abuse she faced while setting up the school, Birbalsingh, like Sir Michael Wilshaw at Mossbourne. started with one advantage – a new staff who shared her values, commitment and determination. The young teachers joining the school this year, including some from the private sector, and a physics teacher straight from the Higgs boson project, have this experience to learn from, as well as making their own contribution. Former deputy Barry Smith, who has applied Michaela principles at Great Yarmouth, has had to overcome opposition from established staff, and deal with a group of seriously, and at times violently, disruptive pupils and hostile parents. Birbalsingh gives credit to nearby Ark Wembley Park school for adopting Michaela principles, with similarly positive results, showing that the approach works beyond her own school.

There were no politicians at the celebration evening, leaving the field to the people who have done the work – the staff, and pupils who have joined the new sixth form – entry level 7 passes at Grade 7 or above, aiming for Oxbridge and Russell Group universities, and the social mobility that these bring. It was a pity that Michael Gove could not be present at what is, in my view, his greatest achievement. But if the Conservative Conference in 2010 was Katharine Birbalsingh’s day, this was her night. And Michaela’s.

Katharine Birbalsingh - Michaela Triumph.

Katharine Birbalsingh

 

@Miss_Snuffy

 

1. Told you will never work in the state sector again.

 

2. 3 years fighting detractors to set up a free school, call it Michaela.

 

3. 5 years with an amazing team, transforming kids’ lives & fighting the good fight every day!

 

4. Thursday August 22: GCSE results finally here 

 

Nine years ago, and perhaps not entirely aware of it, Katharine Birbalsingh stood on the Conservative Conference platform and risked her career by telling the truth about education in typical London schools. She got the sack, and the progressive establishment showed what it thought by honouring the head who had forced her out. When she tried to set up her Free School, local authorities in South London fought tooth and nail to deny her a site by refusing planning permission. When Michaela finally opened, five years ago, in an office block on a main road beside Wembley Stadium, its location was about as unsuitable as could be imagined. I’d only seen one school work successfully in such circumstances – Menorah High School, also in Brent – but I’d seen in Esther Pearlman what a brilliant head could do in those circumstances,and knew that Katharine would succeed.

The wonderful atmosphere I saw on my visit two years ago https://www.conservativehome.com/localgovernment/2017/07/john-bald-a-visit-to-michaela.html convinced me, in common with virtually every other visitor, that we were seeing something very special. The pupils were happy, polite, and grateful for all of the work the teachers were doing for them – those I talked to were frank about having done virtually no work in their primary schools, and about their satisfaction now that they were succeeding. Pupils learning French could speak French, progress in written English was astonishing, in scope and content as well as accuracy, and there was genuine partnership in every lesson.

Ofsted had been equally impressed, and noted exceptional progress across the ability range. But – early days, no results, many a slip. Barry Jones, the brilliant French teacher and Deputy Head, left soon afterwards to take his version of the Michaela message to Great Yarmouth. Not an easy person to replace, although another deputy (and special needs co-ordinator), Katie Ashford remained within a strong senior team. Would Michaela’s first GCSE results have the same impact as Mossbourne’s had in 2010, when it smashed the glass ceiling for Hackney pupils and inspired the revolution in Conservative education policy?

We now know the answer is yes. Or rather, YES! Katharine and her colleagues have hit the ball so far out of the park that we’ll never find it again. Social mobility depends on giving young people the skills they need to compete on equal terms, and for the most able, that means top grades and not passes. Level 9 on the reformed system is set at a very demanding level, with an average of 4.5% of the entry achieving it. Michaela pupils, who are not selected by ability, did not just match or even double that figure, but quadrupled it, with 18% of passes at level 9. Passes at L7+ were over double the national average. Overall pass rates were well into the nineties in virtually all subjects. Triumph is an understatement. Michaela is the first unequivocal success of Conservative Ministers’ determination to return schools to their proper purposes, and may well turn out to be the greatest.

Elsewhere, the positive picture of this year’s results has come as a disappointment to the government’s opponents in the Unions, who have called for a review of reforms. They have a point about the level of stress for lower-attaining candidates, which needs to be tackled by providing a gentler curve of difficulty in some examination paper. They discount, though, the negative effects of Labour’s grind of incessant coursework and resits, which in some cases was as bad or worse. Michaela’s provisional score on the statistical progress 8 measure is close to a record at 1.5, though this remnant of the LibDem influence in the coalition is less reliable, as some schools game it by choosing soft subjects in which passing grades are easier to obtain. Such manipulation is denying some pupils the chance to study a new language. The best way to stop it would be to replace Progress 8 with publication of each school’s full results by grade and subject, leaving parent and employers to take account of the context of the school for themselves. As the starting point for progress 8 is restricted to SAT test scores in maths and English at 11, it is hardly an indication of progress in any other subjects.

Nick Gibb gave a wide-ranging and effective presentation of the reforms on the Today programme, pointing to the first sign of improvement in the take-up of languages, and to the protection of candidates from wide fluctuations in results, a point that applies equally to A level. There is still proper concern at the quality of marking – the appeals system changes only a small proportion of grades, but makes each board judge in its own cause. It should be replaced by an independent system, responsible to Ofqual. More on this, and on other schools’ success stories, in the weeks to come, but in the meantime I look forward to raising a glass to Katharine Birbalsingh, her colleagues and pupils, in what must surely be their finest hour.

Katharine Birbalsingh on the riots and David Starkey

"The longer they last, the more I'll take," says the young rioter to Katharine Birbalsingh, here.  Another excellent piece. What exactly will the looters do if no-one restocks the shops? The Guardian has been complaining that no-one has looted Waterstones. This of course is part of the problem. Looting and literacy do not go together. 

A quote stands out

When I ask him if the experience of prison – the locked cell, the hard bed, the dreadful food – had made him question his lifestyle, if it made him fearful of returning there, he is confused. “Nah, nah… I liked it there. It had nice hospitality. And I had time to think.”

Ms Birbalsingh has followed this with an interesting piece on David Starkey, here.  I didn't post on this as I didn't understand what he meant. Perhaps she does. Perhaps he doesn't understand what he meant. He's not always the brightest when it comes to the world outside his history books.

Michaela Community (Free) School, Katharine Birbalsingh

Katharine Birbalsingh, here, is very good on the trials of setting up a free school, picketed by the NUT and various furthe Left groups. How teachers can picket an information evening for a school is puzzling - unless it were a fascist school or some other extremist organisation - until you see that some people do not see education as primarily about teaching people things, as Ms Birbalsingh and I do, but about leftist politics. Good luck to her, and to the "have not" parents who want to sign up to her school, named after a teacher, Michaela, whom Ms Birbalsingh admires. A change to have a school named after a teacher rather than a self-important local politician. 

Love's Labours Lost - Katharine Birbalsingh, her book and her critics.

To Miss With Love was an obvious choice of title for Ms Birbalsingh's book, but maybe not the best. The love here is pretty much a one-way street, teachers making nearly all the effort and only the occasional pupil, like Stoic, deciding to join them. Stoic is a a realist. As he puts it  "if you were black, you had to be bad...So I made the decision to go without friends, and to work hard instead."

Stoic is well-named, as are most of Ms Birbalsingh's characters (try Babybarrista for the same idea in law). The teachers are Mr Goodheart (HT), Ms Sensible (DH), Mr Sporty, Hadenough, Ms Useless, Ms Joyful, Ms Alternative (who leaves), Inspirational (who has left to go to Basic School, where they have mixed-ability, and who hates it) Mr Cajole (DH, these places always need more than one) Ms Magical (whom KB admires, and who gets a satisfactory from an formulaic Ofsted inspector). Pupils - Seething, Deranged, Munchkin, Cavalier, who is bullied badly by Furious, gets expelled and comes back to put Furious in hospital - justice! - Adorable, Beautiful (Furious's girlfriend, and cause of the bullying of Cavalier), Dopey, Dreamer, Psycho, Smartie, Inspired ( a pupil KB talked to once, and who got to Oxford) etc. Ofsted hangs over the book like the sword of Damocles until near the end, when the school is rated good - which shows how much David Bell's Ofsted knew - and Mr Goodheart congratulates KB, aka Snuffleupagus or Snuffy, on her having made sure the inspectors did not see the fight or the ambulance turning up for Furious. 

The Secretary is Ms Reliable, parents Ms Principled, Mr and Mrs Well-meaning (he Chair of GB, and keen for teachers to learn from the pupils, even if it is how to spot drug dealers on slow bicycles), Mrs Important (solicitor, mother to Adorable, who has her phone stolen by Furious), Mr Inevitable and Ms Desperate, foster carers to Furious, and completely at sea. Oh, and Mrs Nutter, who yells down the phone at KB over her objection to Seething's nose stud -"You teachers are always victimising these kids. I know what you teachers do. It's illegal...I've taught Seething how to stand up against you teachers. I've taught Seething how to stand up for her rights."

The book is summed up in a phrase toward the end, when KB talks of "the excruciating madness that is the secondary-school system", but I have to admit to a touch of disappointment. KB is not the only writer to shine in brilliant, brief moments - I think the same of Burns - but the powers that be have got to her. KB's blog had the directness of something that happened yesterday. It seems from her account, here, that the problem is that the truth is actionable, and Penguin were afraid of being sued, as were the lawyers from The Sunday Times once it was clear that schools she had worked in could be traced. The book is still interesting, still true at heart, but the immediate, pin sharp focus has gone. And of course her critics are now saying that she's written a work of fiction because she's disguised children's identities - one of them is even citing an Ofsted report on a school she taught in as evidence that it was a good school, no doubt the report in which Ofsted failed to spot the fight and the ambulance. The criticisms of Ofsted in the book seem fully justified, as it is set in Ofsted's bad period of 2005-10.

Are most schools as bad as Ordinary and Basic?  No,  but South London schools in the early seventies certainly were. I  was at Beaufoy, and my head of department, a man of 6ft 4 and built to match, was put in hospital for three weeks by a gang of pupils who attacked him on the school site. The Inner London Education Authority refused to take action, as they usually did. Tulse Hill had a reputation worse than ours, and yet when a colleague of mine took over as HT, the first thing he said was what a good school it was! I have worked for Mr Goodheart.  It's now six months since KB's brilliant, brave, conference speech. What she said needed to be said, and she was and is an authentic voice from the lower depths. Thankfully, it is not all as bad as this. I hope that she will be happier in her next job.

Katharine Birbalsingh on her critics...guess who they might be?

Katharine Birbalsingh's To Miss With Love has arrived and I've started reading it. It read immediately less vividly than her blog, which had the directness of something that happened yesterday, as most of it in fact had. It seems from her account, here, that the problem is that the truth is likely to be actionable, and Penguin, no doubt sensibly, were afraid of being sued. The book is still interesting, still true at heart, but the immediate, pin sharp focus has been dulled by these effects of political correctness. And of course her critics are now saying that she's written a work of fiction because she's disguised children's identities - one of them is even citing an ofsted report on a school she taught in as evidence that it was a good school. A pity that Ofsted reports since 2005, or at least between 2005 and 2010, were based on so little evidence that they were mostly written before the inspectors arrived in school.

Katharine Birbalsingh on teaching, and why the Left is wrong

Interesting piece by Katharine Birbalsingh, here, on how teaching has gone wrong in the state sector - overly rigid, formulaic, and based, ultimately, on institutionalised ignorance, so that each class is treated in the same way each time. I'm not sure that she's right in saying that Ofsted is to blame, though. She will never find this nonsense in any Ofsted handbook, although David Bell, in his time as Chief Inspector, did much to distort and abuse the process of inspection for political ends. The real problem is with New Labour's domineering strategies and their cloned generation of school leaders and managers, whose dictatorial style is leading far too many children, as Ms Birbalsingh says, to waste their time copying out "objectives" as if that led to their learning anything.

It's also too simple to think in terms of a simple opposition of knowledge and skills, as too many do on the Right. If you don't have skills you can't write an essay, speak French, solve a mathematical problem or indeed lay a brick. HMI's expression under Sir Mike Tomlinson was "knowledge, skills and understanding". The three go together.

The Left has done most of the damage, and is based on a contradiction. On the one hand, it worships people it sees as great intellectuals - Marx, Trotsky, Gramsci, Lilburne, and in educational circles, Labov, Harold Rosen, James Britton, Dewey, Bourdieu, even the small fry Terry Eagleton. On the other, it treats intellect and intellectual achievement as profoundly anti-social and elitist. Some achieve more than others, therefore education is divisive. In practical terms, the subversion and control taken by the Left, through the National Association for the Teaching of English and the more diverse group that has wrecked language teaching, has seen the idea that literacy and formal language are the basis of education as elitist and has almost succeeded in destroying them. In so doing, they have deprived the people they thought they were setting out to help of essential skills - without precise, formal language, there is no science, no technology, no history, no employment and no future.

Katharine Birbalsingh at the Select Committee. Quentin Letts.

While we wait for the publication of the select committee minutes, here are the comments of the estimable Quentin Letts in The Daily Mail:

The Education Select Committee is holding an inquiry into the matter and its witnesses yesterday morning included Katharine Birbalsingh.

She is that London schoolmistress who, at the Tory conference, described the parlous state of some teaching in state schools - and promptly lost her job.

Miss Birbalsingh is dry gunpowder. Tremendous woman.

Flares up and explodes and destroys all in one.

She is the most exciting voice on education since Chris Woodhead.

Despite all the publicity which has suddenly hit her, she entered the room tentatively, as if not quite believing that MPs could be interested in what she had to say. She was giving evidence alongside four other people and kept raising her hand when she wished to say something. Gold star for good behaviour!

Nic Dakin (Lab, Scunthorpe) put it to her that Oftsed found that there was little to worry about as regards school discipline.

Miss Birbalsingh: 'In my experience, when Oftsed says something is good, it is not very good.

'The thousands of teachers I have spoken to say that bad behaviour is quite common.' ThE cause of this behaviour, she said, was the cosy job security of senior teachers who were never fired, even if utterly useless.

If a school was out of control, something was plainly wrong and the head teacher should be given a rocket.

Instead there was an 'excuse culture' where oikish behaviour by pupils always had some sociological explanation.

'We need to say, "this isn't good enough",' said Miss B. 'I want to work in a profession where, if as an individual you don't do your job, you lose it.

'We must have the highest expectation of behaviour.

'Instead, senior staff say they're looking at "community cohesion" and that nonsense.' Three hundred cheers for Miss Birbalsingh.

There is extensive corroboration of Ms Birbalsingh's comments in this report from The Daily Telegraph, which also indicates that Ofsted is still not doing its work properly. There is a similar report in The Guardian, here.

Katharine Birbalsingh - the Guardian Knot...

Ms Birbalsingh's interview with The Guardian, here, ties that worthy journal in a knot. On the one hand, she is the classic Black victim of a bullying White headteacher. On the other, the truth she told at the Conservative conference, and keeps on telling, is an outright and very effective attack on the educational politics of the previous government, on curriculum, on behaviour, and even on their sacred cow of "child protection", in this case the perfectly legitimate use of photographs.  An interesting question is on the impact on her friends. Ms Birbalsingh says she's kept her Black friends and her teaching friends, but lost a few White liberals. Guardian readers, no doubt.