Katherine Birbalsingh’s victory hides a dark truth about education
, CapX:
At a time when the Conservative Party seems to have succumbed to ban-hungry, tax-heavy social democracy, it can be difficult to have any real enthusiasm for the legacy the Tories will leave on Britain’s political landscape. The Conservative Party – once a powerhouse of freedom – seems withered, desperately chasing ideas that won’t work.
The exception to this prognosis is their achievements in education. Michael Gove’s free schools framework gave pioneering giants like Katharine Birbalsingh, founder of the extraordinarily successful Michaela Community School, an arena to transform how we educate some of Britain’s most deprived children.
[…] Given the media storm that Birbalsingh has been forced to weather for merely enforcing the rules of her school, it’s little wonder that our state education sector is experiencing such a chronic shortage of teachers.
Vacancies for teaching were 93% higher in 2023 compared to 2019. At the same time, the number of new entrants to Initial Teacher Training has fallen from 40,377 in 2020-21, to 28,991 in 2022, just 71% of the Government’s target, and missing key subject-specific targets. This episode is just the latest in a high-profile series of teachers being throttled by the court of public opinion, or indeed an actual court for promoting a value that innocuously challenges a minority view. Who can forget the Batley Grammar School case where a teacher received death threats for showing a Prophet Muhammad cartoon in class.
I left my job as a teacher, having taught in both state and independent schools for several years. In the end, it was something more akin to being a manufactured pop act than an educator, with your management constantly monitoring what you wear, what you say, how you say it and how you smile. Many MPs often anecdotally acknowledge the abuse they receive dissuades talent from entering politics, so by the same standard, who would embark on a career in education if half your time was spent pandering to militant shrill? In my former school, most were terrified of something controversial happening on their watch, so many opted to simply give into students rather than risk offense – being courageous, but ultimately, losing their job. This state of affairs clearly cannot continue.
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