‘You can hear a pin drop’: the rise of super-strict schools in England
As the teacher began counting down, the students crossed their arms and bowed their heads, completing the exercise in no time.
“Three. Two. One,” the teacher said. The pens around the classroom went down and all eyes darted back to the teacher. Under a policy called “Slant” (sit upright, lean forward, ask and answer questions, nod with your head and follow the speaker), the students aged 11 and 12 were not allowed to look away.
When a digital bell beeped (traditional bells are “not precise enough,” the director said), the students walked quickly and quietly in single file to the cafeteria. There they shouted a poem – ‘Ozymandias”, by Percy Bysshe Shelley – in unison, and then ate for 13 minutes while discussing the day’s mandatory lunch topic: how to survive a super-intelligent killer snail.
In the decade since Michaela Community School opened in north-west London, the publicly funded but independently run secondary school has become a leader in a movement that believes children from disadvantaged backgrounds need strict, rote discipline. need learning and controlled environments to succeed.
“How do people from a poor background make a success of their lives? Well, they have to work harder,” says the principal, Katharine Birbalsingh, who has a cardboard cutout of Russell Crowe from “Gladiator” in her office with the quote: “Hold the Line.” In her social media profilesshe calls herself ‘the strictest headmistress in Britain’.
“What you need to do is tighten the fence,” she added. ‘Children crave discipline.’
While some critics call Ms. Birbalsingh’s model oppressive, her school has the highest speed of academic progress in England, a government measure of the progress students make between the ages of 11 and 16 shows this approach is becoming increasingly popular.
In a growing number of schools, the days are marked by strict routines and detentions for minor infractions, such as forgetting a pencil case or having a sloppy uniform. The hallways are quiet because students are prohibited from talking to their fellow students.
Supporters of a no-excuse policy in schools, including Michael Govean influential foreign minister who previously served as Minister of Educationargue that progressive, child-centered approaches that spread in the 1970s are a behavioral crisisreduced learning ability and hindered social mobility.
Their perspective is linked to a conservative political ideology that emphasizes individual determination, rather than structural elements, that shape people’s lives. In Britain, politicians from the ruling Conservative Party, which has been in power for 14 years, have supported this educational trend, drawing on the techniques of American charter schools and educators who rose to prominence in the late 2000s.
Far-right agitator Suella Braverman, a former minister in two Tory governments, was director from the Michaela school. Martyn Oliver, the principal of a school group known for its strict approach to discipline, was appointed as the Chief Inspector of Education of the Government last fall. Mrs Birbalsingh served as the government’s head of social mobility from 2021 until last year, a position she held while running Michaela School.
Tom Bennett, a government adviser on school conduct, said sympathetic education ministers had contributed to this “momentum”.
“There are a lot of schools doing this now,” Mr Bennett said. “And they get fantastic results.”
Since Rowland Speller became principal of the Abbey School in the south of England, he has cracked down on misconduct and introduced formulaic routines inspired by Michaela’s methods. He said a regulated environment is reassuring for students with volatile home lives.
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 a lot of kids very quickly,” Mr. Speller said.
Mouhssin Ismail, another school leader who founded a high-performing school in a deprived area of London, posted a picture on social media in November of school hallways with students walking in lines. “You can hear a pin drop in the quiet rows of a school,” he wrote.
The comments sparked a backlash, with critics comparing the photos to a dystopian science fiction film.
Ms Birbalsingh argues that wealthy children can afford to waste time at school because “their parents take them to museums and art galleries”, she said, while for children from poorer backgrounds “the only way you can learn about some Roman history is when you learn at school.” Accepting the smallest misbehavior or adjusting expectations to fit students’ circumstances, she said, “means 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 prison sentences they received, and eagerly repeating the school’s mantras of self-improvement. The schools motto is ‘work hard, be kind’.
Leon, 13, said he initially didn’t want to go to school, “but now I’m grateful I went because otherwise I wouldn’t be as smart as I am now.”
With about 700 students, Michaela is smaller than the average state-funded high school, which has about 1,050, according to the government. It is so famous that it attracts about 800 visitors a year, mainly teachers, Ms Birbalsingh said. A leaflet handed to guests asks them ‘not to show disbelief towards students when they say they like their school’.
But some teachers have raised concerns about the broader zero-tolerance approach, saying that monitoring student behavior so minutely can produce excellent academic results but does not promote autonomy or critical thinking. Draconian punishments for minor infractions can also have psychological costs, they say.
“It’s like they read 1984 as a manual and not as a satire,” said Phil Beadle, a awarded British secondary school teacher and author.
For him, free time and discussion are just as important for the development of children as good school results. He worries that a “cult-like environment that required total obedience” could rob children of their childhood.
The Michaela School made headlines in January after a Muslim student took the school to court over its ban on prayer rituals, arguing it was discriminatory. Mrs Birbalsingh defended the ban on social media, saying it was critical to “a successful learning environment where children of all races and religions can thrive.”
The Supreme Court has not yet ruled in the case.
Supporters of the strict model and some parents say children with special educational needs thrive in strict, predictable environments, but others have seen their children struggle with learning disabilities in these schools.
Sarah Dalton sent her dyslexic 12-year-old son to a strict school with excellent academic results. But his fear of being punished for small mistakes caused unbearable stress, and he began to show signs of depression.
“There was a fear of being punished,” she said. “Just his mental health spiral.”
When she took him to a more relaxed school, he began to heal, Ms. Dalton said.
In England, government data from last year showed this that there were dozens of super strict schools suspend students at a much higher rate than the national average. (The Michaela school was not among them.)
Lucie Lakin, principal of Carr Manor Community School in Leeds – which does not follow the zero-tolerance model – said she realized the approach was spreading as a growing number of students enrolled at her school after being expelled. Her school deserves high academic scoresbut she said that wasn’t the only purpose of an education.
“Are you talking about successful school results, or are you trying to make successful adults?” she asked. “That is the path you must choose.”
In the United States, charter schools that took a similarly rigorous approach were initially praised for their results. But increasing criticism from some parents, teachers And students This caused a reckoning in the sector in the mid-2010s.
In 2020, Uncommon Schools, an American network of charter schools and one of the pioneers of the ‘no excuses’ approach, announced that it to leave some of its strictest policies, including “Slant.” The organization said it would remove “unnecessary focus on things like eye contact and sitting posture” and place more emphasis on building student confidence and intellectual engagement.
“A titan in the education world is falling under progressive pressure,” Ms Birbalsingh wrote on social media. “It’s rare that you’ve just abandoned hundreds of thousands of children.”