‘You can hear a pin drop’: The rise of super strict schools in England
Method tied to conservative political ideology
LONDON — As the teacher started to count down, the students uncrossed their arms and bowed their heads, completing the exercise in a flash.
“Three. Two. One,” the teacher said. Pens across the room went down and all eyes shot back to the teacher. Under a policy called “Slant” (Sit up, Lean forward, Ask and answer questions, Nod your head, and Track the speaker) the students, ages 11 and 12, were barred from looking away.
When a digital bell beeped (traditional clocks are “not precise enough,” the principal said) the students walked quickly and silently to the cafeteria in a single line. There they yelled a poem — “Ozymandias,” by Percy Bysshe Shelley — in unison, then ate for 13 minutes as they discussed that day’s mandatory lunch topic: how to survive a superintelligent killer snail.
In the decade since the Michaela Community School opened in northwest London, the publicly funded but independently run secondary school has emerged as a leader of a movement convinced that children from disadvantaged backgrounds need strict discipline, rote learning, and controlled environments to succeed.
“How do those who come from poor backgrounds make a success of their lives? Well, they have to work harder,” said the principal, Katharine Birbalsingh, who has a cardboard cutout of Russell Crowe in “Gladiator” in her office with the quote “Hold the Line.” In her social media profiles, she proclaims herself “Britain’s Strictest Headmistress.”
“What you need to do is pull the fence tight,” she added. “Children crave discipline.”
While some critics call Birbalsingh’s model oppressive, her school has the highest rate of academic progress in England, according to a government measure of the improvement pupils make between ages 11 and 16, and its approach is becoming increasingly popular.
In a growing number of schools, days are marked by strict routines and detentions for minor infractions, such as forgetting a pencil case or having an untidy uniform. Corridors are silent, as students are forbidden to speak with their peers.
Advocates of no-excuses policies in schools, including Michael Gove, an influential secretary of state who previously served as education minister, argue that progressive, child-centered approaches that spread in the 1970s caused a behavioral crisis, reduced learning, and hindered social mobility.
Their perspective is tied to a conservative political ideology that emphasizes individual determination, rather than structural elements, as shaping people’s lives. In Britain, politicians from the governing Conservative Party, which has held power for 14 years, have supported this educational current, borrowing from the techniques of American charter schools and educators who rose to prominence in the late 2000s.
Tom Bennett, a government adviser for school behavior, said that sympathetic education ministers had helped this “momentum.”
“There are lots of schools doing this now,” Bennett said. “And they achieve fantastic results.”
Since Rowland Speller became the principal of The Abbey School in the south of England, he has cracked down on misbehavior and introduced formulaic routines, inspired by Michaela’s methods. He said that a regulated environment is reassuring for students who have a volatile home life.
If one student does well, the others clap twice after a teacher says, “Two claps on the count of two: one, two.”
“We can celebrate lots of children really quickly,” Speller said.
Mouhssin Ismail, another school leader who founded a high performing school in a disadvantaged area of London, posted a picture on social media in November of school corridors with students walking in lines. “You can hear a pin drop during a school’s silent line ups,” he wrote.
The remarks triggered a backlash, with critics likening the pictures to a dystopian science fiction movie.
Birbalsingh argues wealthy children can afford to waste time at school because “their parents take them to museums and art galleries,” she said, whereas for children from poorer backgrounds, “the only way you’re going to know about some Roman history is if you’re in your school learning.” Accepting the tiniest misbehavior or adapting expectations to students’ circumstances, she said, “means that there is no social mobility for any of these children.”
At her school, many students expressed gratitude when asked about their experiences, even praising the detentions they received, and eagerly repeating the school’s mantras about self improvement. The school’s motto is: “Work hard, be kind.”
Leon, 13, said that initially he did not want to go to the school, “but now I am thankful I went because otherwise I wouldn’t be as smart as I am now.”
But some educators have expressed concern about the broader zero-tolerance approach, saying that controlling students’ behavior so minutely might produce excellent academic results but does not foster autonomy or critical thinking. Draconian punishments for minor infractions can also come at a psychological cost, they say.
“It’s like they’ve taken ‘1984’ and read it as a how-to manual as opposed to a satire,” said Phil Beadle, an award-winning British secondary school teacher and author.