Why all disadvantaged pupils need a tiger headmistress

Back in 2010, the deputy headmistress of an inner London state school told the Conservative Party conference that she had come there “to expose some of the truths about the British education system” – a system that was, and is, “broken”.

At that, people began to shift in their seats. This wasn’t just an uncomfortable truth, but one many were not prepared to hear. Yet this woman pushed on. After a decade teaching in five different state schools, she knew the system was broken “because it keeps poor children poor” and is built on “a deeper culture of excuses, of low standards, and expecting the very least from our poorest and most disadvantaged”, when, “in schools and in society, we need high expectations of everyone – even if you’re black, even if you live on a council estate”.

Her name was Katharine Birbalsingh, and in the hours, days and weeks that followed, she was ridiculed roundly by the teaching unions for her “strict” and “old-fashioned” approach to learning. I mean what could be more “off-message” and “outdated” in our limp and cowardly era than the idea that “we need to instill competition in our kids and help build their motivation”?

But Birbalsingh ignored her critics and ploughed steadily on. Thank God. Because today, the 47-yearold founder of the notoriously uncompromising Michaela Community School in north-west London has reportedly been lined up to become the new head of the Social Mobility Commission, an advisory government body that aims to help “level-up” the country’s disadvantaged communities.

As children prepare to start a new school year this week, in a return that feels so significant, so weighted with expectation, after the chaos of the past 18 months, it’s clear that Birbalsingh’s courage and optimism is precisely what the system needs. When I read about her appointment on Sunday, I couldn’t help feeling it sounded too good to be true.

Is a country that excused teachers from delivering online lessons throughout our lockdowns (“an invasion of privacy”) and left millions of children with a shameful lack of interactive schooling really going to embrace the thinking of “Britain’s toughest tiger headmistress”? Is a Government that allowed the unions’ sabotaging stances to disrupt schooling for far longer than necessary, with “Covid bubbles” – meaning hundreds of thousands missed out on chunks of learning until

as late as July – really going to brave the NEU’S wrath by putting a woman who doesn’t “believe in excuses” in charge?

Sure enough, it seems that reports may have been premature and that her reported selection by equalities minister Liz Truss has not yet been confirmed. Responding to those reports yesterday, Birbalsingh tweeted: “Applied. Have yet to hear back.”

I’m praying this isn’t about some last-minute internal wrangle. Because it’s not just Birbalsingh’s tough views on smartphones (she advises parents to keep them in a safe and delete what she calls “evil apps” such as Snapchat, Instagram and Whatsapp) and gaming (Fortnite is “poison”) that are “outdated” and “off-message” – both compliments, as far as I’m concerned. No, the daughter of a teacher of Indo-guyanese origin has spoken out against the teaching of “white privilege” in schools, saying schools should stick to “teaching children maths and English”.

“There is such a thing as white privilege,” she conceded on Andrew Gold’s On the Edge podcast earlier this month. “But if you keep telling black kids that everybody is set against them, then they are not going to engage with the thing that’s called life […]. Life may very well be hard for poor kids,” she goes on. “But what’s the point of saying that all the time? What are you doing about it? Because I can tell you that by going on about this stuff, you’re undermining what we do. You’re actually making it more difficult for these kids.”

Inevitably, the Left has criticised Birbalsingh for being too far Right, the Right for being too far Left (she’s admitted to reading Marxism Today as a student). And because we’re living at a time when even common sense has been politicised, and in a place where we’d rather obsess over that than confront the fact that, by autumn 2020, disadvantaged pupils in primary schools were seven months behind their more privileged peers – that even by that point, Covid-19 had erased up to two-thirds of the past decade’s progress on closing the educational attainment gap – I’m worried this absolute gem of a woman will be passed over.

I hope I’m wrong, and that Birbalsingh will soon be formally appointed the new head of the Social Mobility Commission. But if that appointment still hangs in the balance, I’d urge the Government to consider a quote she always uses with her students: “Success is never final. Failure is never fatal. It’s courage that counts.”