England's strictest school is incredibly successful but would be banned in Scotland

No other school in England and Wales improves the academic performance of pupils between the end of primary school and fourth year as much as the Michaela School in London

Last week, I visited the Michaela School, near Wembley in London, which is run by Katharine Birbalsingh, ‘Britain’s toughest head’. The school – unusually – encourages visitors because Ms Birbalsingh wants the educational world to see how she thinks schools should be run.

I thought I knew what it was going to be like, but in fact my visit left me excited, perplexed and a not a little anxious. I was pleased to note that the two other visitors, both deputy heads from English schools, were left similarly bemused.

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To start with, let me say that I could never have been a pupil in a school like it, would never have taught in it, and would never have sent the imaginary Wyllie children to it. The discipline is ultra-strict, with the young people sitting upright with their arms crossed unless they are writing.

The teaching style, which is taught inhouse, is extremely didactic. I have watched young teachers teaching hundreds of lessons, but I’ve never seen the high-energy approach taken here, which is like a fast tennis rally between the teacher and the class.

The Michaela Community School in London adopts methods that would result in a failed inspection in Scotland, but has achieved remarkable results (Picture: Dan Kitwood)The Michaela Community School in London adopts methods that would result in a failed inspection in Scotland, but has achieved remarkable results (Picture: Dan Kitwood)
The Michaela Community School in London adopts methods that would result in a failed inspection in Scotland, but has achieved remarkable results (Picture: Dan Kitwood) | Getty Images

Energetic, robotic teachers

The entire emphasis is on knowledge, and the curriculum, which is restricted subject-wise, is entirely geared towards success in the GCSE exams. All four of the lessons which we watched (for precisely three minutes a lesson each) were being taught in exactly the same way, a methodology which would have left my classes exhausted (and often bored).

The teachers, who all seemed to be aged between 25 and 35, were highly energetic, very involved but also curiously robotic. They are often unqualified graduates – this being an English ‘Free School’, without the constraints of local authority control – and learn their teaching methods in-house. Ms Birbalsingh told me that older teachers had to “unlearn a lot of things” if they came to her school (so, it seems, not many do).

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Actually, the oddest thing was lunchtime: the visit, quite deliberately, includes lunch. This began with the young people chanting (actually, shouting) bits of inspirational poetry, led by an enthusiastic year head, and then moved on to a discussion on an approved topic (ours was “would it be good if human beings hibernated?”)

Finally, possibly most peculiarly of all, they had ‘appreciations’, where half a dozen randomly selected kids gave a brief speech thanking someone (usually a teacher) – I thought this would be rather a good thing to do once a term at assembly, but, my goodness, every day? Even among all this highly regulated – and frankly weird – practice, I thought the oddest thing was that almost none of the kids ate the (very nice) carrot cake for pudding.

‘Be yourself’ by doing homework

The teachers use a very extreme form of what is called direct instruction, a teaching method employed for centuries, then vilified by the left, and now (because it works) coming back into fashion.

But lunch did have the air of a cult, with the staff walking purposefully about, nodding and saying ‘yes’ as the man in charge lectured, without irony, about the importance of “being yourself”. “Being yourself” means not going to the park, and getting on with your homework instead. There is lots of homework.

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And yet, and yet. Sigh. In England, schools are given a ‘Progress 8’ figure – this is, in simple terms, a measure of how much a pupil improves between the end of primary school and the end of GCSE (ie, the Scottish fourth year, S4, when young people do their National 4 and 5 exams). The average Progress 8 figure is zero, which means that pupils perform at GCSE as their performance at primary school would suggest.

A P8 figure of 1 (which is excellent) means that – on average – the pupils’ GCSE’s are one grade higher than predicted at primary. Michaela’s figure last year was 2.5, the best in England and Wales.

A child-centred softie

Now it has a very, very mixed school population with pupils of many nationalities and ethnicities. Many students come from disadvantaged backgrounds. So, in essence, this peculiar school, with its tight, repetitive teaching style, is closing the poverty-related attainment gap for its pupils at an astonishing (really unheard of) rate. Given that this closure has been the central SNP educational policy for a decade, one in which they have spectacularly failed, maybe Michaela deserves a second look.

Now, I’m a child-centred softie. The school I helped to lead was a very tight ship, with excellent discipline, but that was a joint staff effort, and I looked on, waving and smiling and calling people ‘dear’. So, my central question was “are the young people happy at Michaela?”

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“Yes, that’s the key question,” says the Scottish educational establishment, safe in an office at Education Scotland or the university, “it’s about well-being. The child’s well-being is paramount...” Sigh. Scottish schoolchildren are historically unhappy at school at the moment.

However, in the short time I was at Michaela I spoke to as many young people as I could, even tearing them away from the house hibernation discussion. How did these smiley, articulate children feel about their school?

Pupils seemed happy

Proud. Safe. Grateful for the opportunities it gave them. Confident about their futures. One girl said: “I’ve got friends at other schools and they tell me stories I can’t believe.” Reader, they seemed happy.

All of this is theoretical, of course. Michaela is a state school of a type that would never be allowed in Scotland; a private version would fail its inspections. But in the more flexible English educational world, parents are opting for it, choosing it for their children.

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It’s a choice I wouldn’t make for my kids, but it’s a choice that’s clearly working for these cheerful young people I met last week. But… please can they have lunchtime to themselves?

Cameron Wyllie is a former head teacher. He writes a blog called A House in Joppa and is the author of a book called Is There A Pigeon in the Room? My Life in Schools

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