Michaela and Charter Schools

Let us say that the thing that appears to differentiate Michaela from some of the previous iterations of charter schools in the glossy videos and puff pieces on social media and countless articles in the press is that the children appear to be happy, and the collective expressions of human misery do not appear to be coming out from the school’s alumni (though it may be that, since non-compliance will result in punishment, the compliance shown by these children is neutral, that they have become apathetic as a “necessary mechanism of self-defence,”[1] and they are suffering from the emotional death of the hostility of suffocation; also, they’ve only had a few cohorts go through the whole school experience at the time of writing: they’re all still children). But there is substantial evidence of some of the techniques that caused the expressions of human misery in the USA are used in the school, and it is not impossible that a collective sob might be heard at some point down the line. It might also be that the reverse will be true and the children, when grown up, will publicly exalt the level of education and care they were in receipt of. A school and a head teacher that states how happy the children are quite so regularly, quite so often, might be doing so as a statement of fact, but it seems an odd thing to feel the need to do.

The academic results are impeccable, the very best in the country, and the staff and students must be offered the warmest of congratulations for this outstanding achievement. But I remind readers that ‘results’ exist not solely in academic terms. If a child is not properly treated, there are results from that also.

There are claims that the fact that Michaela has achieved such excellent academic results is that they are rewriting the rule book, re-sculpting what is possible of a school, but you could also argue that some of the conditions of cultism apply. Michaela is not a normal part of educational society and, while some may say that that is why it is so good and will absolutely be within their rights to do so, the school and its acolytes cannot be questioned without either party displaying an extraordinarily defensive response, no matter how balanced the reasoning behind the question is.

I’m uncertain as to whether the head teacher’s personality counts as charismatic. Some would argue that she does. It is quite certain though that her ideology is almost proudly immoderate and that the new reality she has superimposed on the reality external to the school borders on esoteric.

She is quoted in a Guardian article from 2016 as saying, “We have the teacher standing at the front and imparting knowledge. We believe the teacher knows more than the children. Most teachers in Britain do not believe that.”[2] This profoundly immoderate expression is a bit of a silly thing to say. Unbelievably, she follows this absurd vilification of teachers in a public organ, a part of the press, by claiming that one of the problems in education is that teachers are constantly vilified in the press. 

Her defence of a conservative position is, I think, intended to create a view either that the real establishment, as opposed to the constructed former educational ‘establishment’ of the ‘Blob’, is correct, that inequality is the result of personal weakness or poor educational structures and that only certain forms of culture are valid. But there are serious questions to be asked about the culture this school has constructed. What kind of people is this school seeking to create? Is it making them become the culture they inhabit during the day? Is it seeking to reproduce itself in the children who graduate from the school? Is it taking people from an ‘oppressed’ culture and emancipating them to the barbed extent that they will, in turn, take their place as future oppressors? Has this version of education been as successful in emancipating children as it looks from the outside, or does it have a brutalising quality that will create more brutes who will brutalise others? 

Freire writes of the process of dominators: “one of the gravest obstacles to the achievement of liberation is that oppressive reality absorbs those within it and thereby acts to submerge human beings’ consciousness.”[3] What worries is that schools of this ilk can be prone to filming children on video praising the tools that seem to exist to enact this submerging of consciousness. Children at Bedford Free School, a school which claims that under half of its students getting a good pass in English and maths constitutes “world class results”,[4] and which does not do marking,[5] have been filmed praising the practice of silent corridors. 

The reality the students daily inhabit might have submerged them into believing the environment in which they are educated is the only viable one. The students may not be granted any critical awareness of the version of education they’re in receipt of. Education should be, at least partially, about itself. They may do this at Michaela, but given the head teacher’s view of herself, it is going to be a very partial version of that element of education that, in all probability, sings a single, repetitive and rather flat melody line: that of the greatness of the school. 

So, where is the evidence of the influence of the charter schools’ model and ‘Teach Like a Champion’ being used in the videos? It is everywhere. At Michaela, they say, “every second counts” and applaud themselves for getting the books out quickly. At Michaela, they pride themselves on doing this in under 30 seconds, and the students in one form enjoy knowing that their new personal best beats all other forms. At Michaela, they focus on efficient routines. At Michaela, they “achieve 100% focus from 100% of pupils 100% of the time.” At Michaela, they draw false conclusions about other approaches from a position of no knowledge, “we tell them that in other secondary schools, it takes longer than five minutes to hand out books.”[6] At Michaela, they use SLANT but are clever enough to replace the nodding nonsense with ‘never interrupt’ (don’t speak; be silent). At Michaela, like Lemov, they seem obsessed with eye contact without having any understanding whatsoever of its subtleties, its different significances for different cultures, nor any knowledge at all that forcing neurodiverse or abused kids to make eye contact is abusive. 

The complacent anti-intellectualism of those who rightly assert the importance of knowledge and of high expectations and then, quite simply, haven’t done the required reading to be in possession of such knowledge is stultifying. The head teacher’s assertions of her correctness without any real depth of knowledge of many of the things she talks about quite so confidently would shock the unshockable. Making children compulsorily sing ‘Jerusalem’ as an aid to “resilience”, as this school has done, without any knowledge of what Blake might have thought of his words being used in a way that is jingoistic in intent in a school – in London – that seems to serve the demands of establishment power is a level of paralysing nitwittedness that any education system that understands what the word ‘education’ actually means should find petrifying.

Those who would seek to lecture us about knowledge’s importance should, surely, be in possession of it. A decent analysis of Blake that, rather weirdly, appeared in the Guardian’s cricket pages, has it that “there is a school of thought that, given his very radical social and religious convictions, Blake’s ‘satanic mills’ were more the established church, top-down religious institutions, and the conservatizing moral and political influence they enjoyed, than the actual factories, for all their social and economic disruption … militating against ingrained, conservative attitudes towards what is right, and how things should be done?”[7] To use Blake as an anthem to praise conformity is imbecilic.

At Michaela, they do two claps for public praise. At Michaela, the corridors are silent. At Michaela, there are routinised drills where control is exerted over how students use their bodies in lessons. At Michaela, students are required to have their arms folded in lessons. At Michaela, the students pick up grapes.[8] At Michaela, we treat other people’s views as being what Arendt calls “non-facts.”[9] At Michaela, if your mum and dad can’t afford to pay for lunch, you eat in a separate room.[10] At Michaela, they talk of ‘habit change.’ At Michaela, we get ‘demerits’.[11] At Michaela, we believe in a better world! At Michaela, students are subject to martial metaphors and Year 7s attend ‘boot camp’. At Michaela, to use the words of Freire, we are arguably “indoctrinating [the students] to adapt to the world of oppression.”[12]

The free schools programme was allegedly about bringing new providers into the system, but it could be argued that proper due diligence may not have taken place into the psychologies of some of these new providers. Are there things that could be learned from Michaela? Absolutely: in terms of curriculum, they are light years ahead of some/many schools. Their approach to providing students with cultural capital is an enlightened one (though sometimes the awareness of what is in the canon is lacking, and there is a palpable sense of whiteness). Their intellectual expectations of inner-city children are entirely correct. These are all fantastic things. They deserve congratulations for them.

But are there things that might require examination? Almost certainly. 

 

 

 

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[1] Viktor E. Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning (Rider: London, 2004) p40.

[2] Quoted in Richard Adams, ‘No Excuses’: Inside Britain’s Strictest School, the Guardian, 30 December 2016. Remember, the cult leader lies continually about the realities of the world outside of the cult. Totalitarianism is always based on foundational lies based on conspiracies.

[3] Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed (Penguin: London 1996 [1970]) p.33

[4] https://www.bedfordfreeschool.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Bedford-Free-School-Results-with-pictures.pdf. But I can see it’s a very fine line indeed between being a little short of the national average and world class.

[5] Perhaps the results would be better if they did.

[6] Joe Kirby, No-Excuses Discipline Changes Lives in Birbalsingh, Katharine (ed), Battle Hymn of the Tiger Teachers: The Michaela Way (John Catt: Woodbridge, 2016) p81.

[7] Will Wroth, The Ashes 2023: England Versus Australia First Test, Day Two, Live the Guardian 17 June 2023 https://www.theguardian.com/sport/live/2023/jun/17/the-ashes-2023-england-vs-australia-live-updates-first-test-cricket-eng-v-aus-latest-score-day-two-egdbaston

[8] The head teacher, interviewed in the Guardian is quoted as saying, “People ask me, what’s your biggest challenge running the school? It’s the detractors on the outside ... the detractors on the outside are very time-consuming, emotionally draining. And they are obsessive”: Richard Adams, ‘No Excuses’: Inside Britain’s Strictest School, the Guardian, 30 December 2016. In the same article, a teacher tells a child to pick up a grape. The head teacher is delighted, “Do you see that?” Birbalsingh tells a group of visiting teachers. “In other schools that would never happen. You’d never see a teacher ask a pupil to pick up a grape, because they’d go mad.” And we should be so middle class as to have grapes (!).

[9] Hannah Arendt, Preface to Part Three: Totalitarianism, The Origins of Totalitarianism (Penguin Random House UK: London 1966) pxxxviii.

[10] Richard Adams, ‘No Excuses’: Inside Britain’s Strictest School, the Guardian, 30 December 2016.

[11] And let’s consider the nature of this language. I award you the opposite of merit. I take from you,  transform you into a negative. Language matters. Two demerits at Michaela equals a half hour detention. Forget both your pencil and your pen and it is detention. Does the punishment fit the crime?

[12] Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed (Penguin: London 1996 [1970]) p.59