Why Doesn’t the Education Secretary Have a Word of Praise for Michaela, the Best School in the Country?

Isabel Paterson (a pseudonym) has written a great article on her Substack about the extraordinary success of Michaela Community School, which has just recorded the best Progress 8 score in the country for the third year running. But, of course, not a word of praise for the outstanding free school has passed the lips of Bridget Phillipson, the Education Secretary. For those unfamiliar with this metric, it measures how much progress children make at a school between the ages of 11 and 16 in a core set of subjects relative to other cohorts of 11-16 year-olds with the same characteristics, including prior attainment. It’s about the most objective way we have of measuring how good a school is since it controls for so many variables. Here’s an extract:

There are ~4,000 state secondary schools in England. If Progress 8 outcomes were random:

the probability of coming top twice would be 1 in 16 million.
the probability of coming top three times would be 1 in 64 billion.

Clearly, it’s not random, it’s sticky from year to year. The worst-performing school this year is not going to be the best next year. But even assuming it was only possible for last year’s top 10 to be this year’s winner…the odds of Michaela’s hat-trick would still be 1 in a thousand.

There’s something going on here…the others aren’t even close. The extent of the “something” also comes out of this chart:

As Nick Timothy writes here it would be nice if the Education Secretary could find a few words of praise for Miss Snuffy:

It would be fantastic to hear Bridget Phillipson MP congratulate Michaela for its status as the best school in the country – and endorse its approach to curriculum, discipline and pedagogy, and the free school model that made it all possible.

And here’s what Tom Bennett wrote:

Before Michaela opened: IT WILL NEVER OPEN ; Once Michaela opened: IT WILL NEVER WORK ; Once Michaela posts incredible results: IT WILL NEVER LAST ; Once Michaela smashes the barrier of what is humanly possible for several years in a row:

THE WAY WE ASSESS SCHOOLS IS INVALID, IT SHOULD BE BASED ON HUGS & VIBES

Quite.

Why won’t Phillipson visit, acknowledge or learn from Michaela?

Many progressives give Miss Snuffy a hard time for her emphasis on discipline, because discipline is fascism y’see. On that basis, every high-performing military outfit, sports team, orchestra or start-up in history was basically colonial-fascist-transphobe-racist-checkyourprivilege… word salad. The rest of us, quite glad to win the war/the world championship/enjoy sublime Mahler/own shares in a unicorn…? Completely beside the point.

Show them excellence and they see only inequality. Off with the heads of the tall poppies.

Likewise, the fact parents really, really like Michaela. So much so that she’s seen a stream of independent school families paying her a visit, and it’s not just out of curiosity. Besides the point.

It’s impossible for progressive educationists to imagine a path starting with discipline, through self-discipline, to community, engagement, self-worth and self-awareness, and finally excellence. It’s impossible to consider that that path is shaped by manners, consistency, high standards, and ambition. It’s irrelevant that Birbalsingh’s self-described small-c conservative approach is exactly what parents what.

Isn’t it better (they think) to allow children to express themselves? If they kick off in the corridor, to trust them to learn for themselves with just a mild reprimand… no need for any of that punishment stuff.

Worth reading in full.

Stop Press: The West London Free School, the school I co-founded in 2011, has been named London Comprehensive of the Year by the Sunday Times.