By Tom Shaw

Recent Pushback and Action of the Week features at the Solari Report have covered several ways of taking responsibility for your children’s education, whether in a homeschool environment or in more traditional school settings. The common thread that runs between all of these educational styles is the integrity and passion of the teacher—something being modeled by “the UK’s strictest headmistress,” Katharine Birbalsingh.

After speaking out in the early 2010s about schools applying different behavioral standards to children of different ethnic backgrounds in the name of “antiracism,” Birbalsingh founded the Michaela Free School in London in 2014, named after a strict-but-loving teacher who Birbalsingh previously worked with. Now called the Michaela Community School, it operates similarly to an American charter school, but embodies a strict ethos and traditional teaching methods as a means of both achieving high academic results and inspiring students to develop the knowledge they need to succeed in life.

This strict ethos has a specific purpose. As Birbalsingh explains in an interview with the Fordham Institute:

“[I]f you then deny schools consistent high-standard behavior systems, then you will never be able to connect with all of your children in a loving way.

[…] People think that in order for a child to be creative and think for himself, you must just let him go, that he’ll just figure it out and discover his love for French or science. That isn’t actually how children learn. They learn and get inspired when a passionate teacher gives them lots of knowledge, so our desks are in rows facing the teacher. The teacher is at the front of the classroom facing the children, leading the learning.

[… W]hen the teacher is leading the learning, they are able to teach the children so much because of course they know a lot more than the children. They have been doing this for many years, they have degrees, and the children are able to feel successful and happy.”

This is a key part of the erosion of the schooling system. Teachers are not encouraged to trust their own intuition and abilities—or to risk enforcing high-integrity standards. Too many follow centrally designed lesson plans to the letter, focusing solely on how to elicit the right marks in exam-board-provided papers, and refer to outsourced guidelines and non-teaching staff for managing “problem” pupils—precisely because modern teaching theory tells them that this outsourcing of their agency is the conduct expected of them. Paired with overcrowded class sizes and the volume of grading this inevitably brings, teachers are actually discouraged from making time for critical, in-depth discussions with pupils about what they’re learning, or introducing more nuanced ideas into the classroom. It is largely no different from what has happened with doctors in the medical system and the relationships they have with their patients.

All of this doesn’t even consider the damaging agendas that make their way into school curricula as a result of teachers lacking agency in their classrooms. This, too, is an arena in which Katharine Birbalsingh has been fighting. Birbalsingh has strongly criticized the “decolonization” of the British curriculum as disingenuously enforcing the idea that history is nothing more than a story of migration and oppression of “minority” groups.

Furthermore, Birbalsingh continues to challenge many other “progressive” changes to how we teach children, not only through the Michaela School’s practices, but also on social media and through her recently launched Strictly Education podcast. This includes critiques on:

• The devaluing of the role of mothers and fathers as the primary educators of children
• The encouragement of “inclusive” cultures in schools regarding sexual and personal identity
• Educational institutions’ responses to mental health diagnoses and “special educational needs” among pupils (Michaela Community School employs no dedicated staff to handle such children, because the quality of teaching is more than sufficient to address these needs)
• The harmful consequences of smartphones, EdTech, and AI for children’s learning

It speaks to a broader aspect of Birbalsingh’s approach: children should not be encouraged to be victims, but instead be empowered to become the creators of their world. As she details in an interview for Examined Life:

“[W]hat’s the point of learning Shakespeare? Is Shakespeare going to make you into a great construction worker? I don’t think so. Why do we read Shakespeare? To connect with what it is to be human and to see the depth and meaning in life.

[…] My job is to enable them to develop the skills and the knowledge and the values, the virtues that are needed to lead a meaningful life, and I think that’s what we should be doing in schools and what we should be doing at home. “

Whether your children remain in traditional educational settings, move to alternative models like that of HOPE Sussex, or are fully homeschooled, the pattern is clear: great teachers who maintain their integrity make a world of difference to a child’s learning. Teachers are learning from Birbalsingh’s example and are realizing that, while the wider system is failing them, it is on them to push back against the destruction of education.