by Chris Baylis, The Critic
It requires tremendous knowledge and compromise — not just an understanding of different cuisines
It’s fair to say that supporters of Cameron-era education reforms are on the defensive at the moment. And rightly so; Bridget Philpson’s doltish and spiteful attempt to stamp out the autonomy of England’s academies is an example of the kind of Shinwell-esque score settling that represents the very worst of the Labour tradition.
The success of the Cameron-Gove education reforms comes as an almost jarring reminder that there was a time in the not-so-distant past when the Tories just did things. Their legacy, and the schools that they allowed to flourish have already diverted countless thousands of lives from the hopelessness of semi-illiteracy and innumeracy. Their defenders point to market-style mechanisms which allow schools to experiment with different approaches to see what works — but surely much of the benefit must have accrued simply from freeing dynamic and entrepreneurial school leaders from the dead hand of Local Education Authorities.
The most outspoken defender of the Cameron-Gove reforms is Katherine Birbalsingh who has made two outings in the media this week — on Fraser Myers’ Spiked! Podcast, and in the Spectator. In her interview with Myers, she returned to familiar themes around the freedom that her school has enjoyed to set its own standards. These have enabled it to create order and serenity in place of chaos, which in turn has allowed the Michaela School to reliably churn out results that rival some of the best fee-paying schools in the country. In her analysis of how her school has been able to create a safe, orderly learning and working environment in a community made up of a hugely diverse range of ethnicities and religions, Birbalsingh has established herself as one of the few British commentators and public sector leaders who appears truly to understand what multiculturalism actually means in practice.
Birbalsingh speaks of the sacrifices that individuals, and individual faith and cultural groups have to make for the benefit of the whole. She explains how her school canteen serves only vegetarian food, so that the entire school can eat together as a family, notwithstanding certain religious groups’ vegetarianism or prohibitions on certain types of meat. Whilst scaling a functional multiculturalism from a school to a whole city or a whole country will not require communal eating, it’s a handy metaphor for the ways in which we will all be expected to avoid stepping on one another’s toes in order to get along — even if it means giving up on familiar traditions or observances. Crucially, Birbalsingh is among the few voices in the British mainstream who is adamant that this will also mean minority groups making such sacrifices, including observant Muslims.