The woman known as Britain’s strictest headteacher has accused the education secretary of acting like a “Marxist” by trying to give the state more control over how academies are run.
Katharine Birbalsingh, who runs the Michaela Community School, in Wembley, north London, has become renowned for her focus on discipline and high standards.
After meeting Bridget Phillipson last week, she told Sunday Morning With Trevor Phillips the education secretary “wants to centralise power in the state”.
Asked whether it was fair to describe the Labour minister as a “Marxist”, she explained that said she used the term because “she was wanting to centralise… I’m saying she’s centralising powers into the state and that those freedoms should be left with the academies”.
Currently, academies do not have to follow the national curriculum and can set their own pay and conditions, although they must follow the same rules on admissions, special educational needs, and exclusions as other state schools, and their students sit the same exams, according to the House Of Lords website.
Under the terms of the bill, all state schools, including academies, will be required to teach the core national curriculum, in order that parents have “certainty over the core of their children’s education,” the government has said.
New teachers at academies would be required to either have or be working towards qualified teacher status (QTS) and standardising their approach to inducting new teaching staff.
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In the 2022/23 academic year, the website said, there were 10,176 academies and 4.9 million pupils attending them, or in other words, more than 41% of all schools and 54% of pupils.
Reforms to academies in Ms Phillipson’s education bill “make no sense”, the headteacher added, and “take away the freedoms that school leaders currently have in academies to give a “bespoke and tailored approach to their community”.
Among the powers that will be handed back to the state, Ms Birbalsingh said, are the right to adapt curriculums “according to what your children might need” and the power to “hire from different routes”.
Ms Phillipson was unable to respond, the headteacher said, when she asked her what she would say to a parent “desperate to get her child into a good school and the places at that good school have been reduced”.
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The proposed legislation will mean “good schools simply have fewer places, which means the good schools have less money, fewer teachers”, she added.
School leaders across the country “are up in arms” and “very worried” about the bill, she said.
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“Some have spoken out. Many people are awkward and don’t want to because they don’t want to get themselves into trouble, which is understandable.”
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Reminded by Trevor Phillips that Ms Phillipson had in turn accused her of interrupting her during their meeting, she denied it and claimed they [Ms Phillipson and colleagues] “kept staring at us and being horrible and huffing and puffing and all kinds of things and trying to intimidate us. And they didn’t give us any water to drink”.
Ms Phillipson is already under pressure over proposed changes to how schools are inspected after a snap poll by school leaders’ union NAHT published on Thursday found more than nine in 10 (92%) were against the reforms.
Ofsted, the education standards watchdog, plans to grade schools on a five-point scale across at least eight areas.
The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill is currently in its second committee stage with the next debate scheduled for Tuesday.
The Department for Education told Sky they would not comment on a private meeting, Trevor Phillips said.
