• Login
  • Register
The Daily Sceptic
No Result
View All Result
  • Articles
  • About
  • Archive
    • ARCHIVE
    • NEWS ROUND-UPS
  • Podcasts
  • Newsletter
  • Premium
  • Donate
  • Log In
The Daily Sceptic
No Result
View All Result

Birbalsingh Blasts Phillipson: “You Don’t Know Your Own Bill”

by Will Jones
6 February 2025 1:35 PM

Katharine Birbalsingh, the headmistress of one of Britain’s best state schools, has written an excoriating letter to Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson after a disappointing meeting where Phillipson exposed her true colours. Published in full in the Spectator, the letter kicks off by noting Michaela’s extraordinary achievements under the freedoms permitted to it as an academy (52% grade 9s across all GCSEs, compared to £60,000-a-year Eton’s 53%) before launching into a devastating rundown of Phillipson’s hypocrisies, Leftist animus towards educational freedom and basic lack of understanding of her own bill. Here’s an excerpt.

You have said that you want to address recruitment. But you are making it harder for schools to hire new staff. There will be fewer maths teachers in our classrooms because of your butchery of the Advanced Maths Support Programme. You are removing schools’ ability to hire teachers without the mountains of bureaucracy that your state-sanctioned, centralised stamping requires.

You are passing a law that we must all follow a brand-new curriculum, before you have even told us what it is. Every teacher knows what this means: more money spent on new resources – such as textbooks – and thousands of man-hours ploughed into a fresh curriculum that hasn’t been finalised and might be changed. Time away from children means time away from raising standards. We tried to explain this, but to no avail.

I believe your lack of clarity and interest unfortunately stems from a deeper problem. It became apparent to me when we met that you do not appear to know your own bill.

When we asked you to explain how the recruitment of new teachers would function, you said that this detail was covered in the bill. When we read to you the relevant extracts from the bill, you said that it would be clarified elsewhere. But when we looked elsewhere, we didn’t find any answers to our questions.

When we asked you to explain how the changes to published admissions numbers would function, again you did not appear to understand. This rule change means that local councils can deliberately reduce the capacity at popular, good schools in order to force families towards less good schools which are undersubscribed. When we asked what you would say to a mother desperate for a place for her child in a successful school, who misses out because the capacity at these institutions has been deliberately reduced, you were unable to answer.

Your party has had 14 years in opposition to prepare for this. You were the Shadow Education Secretary for three years ahead of the election. It should not be left to school leaders to point out the holes in this bill.

So why do all this? Why claim to love academies when you are in fact turning all academies into the equivalent of local authority schools? The reality is that your record in Parliament reveals what you really think of academies, which is that you hate them. You repeatedly voted against academy reforms from 2010 to 2016. You claim to be a great believer in the high standards which academies have brought, but we saw you twist your face with disgust every time you said the word in our meeting, repeating that the worst schools “are, in fact, academies“.

You are pretending to like academies now that you are Education Secretary, because it is hard to openly oppose them in the way that you have done throughout your Parliamentary career, in the face of such obvious success. You don’t want school leaders to have the freedom to innovate and do what is right for their children. You want the state to have control, which is not much of a surprise; I’ve repeatedly pointed out your Marxist leanings. You should stick to your convictions and admit that you do not believe academy freedoms are a good thing and that you believe central Government is the answer. At least that would be honest.

Definitely worth reading in full.

Tags: AcademiesBridget PhillipsonEducationFree SchoolsKatharine BirbalsinghLabourLeft-wingMarxismMichaela Community SchoolSchoolSchool choice

Donate

We depend on your donations to keep this site going. Please give what you can.

Donate Today

Comment on this Article

You’ll need to set up an account to comment if you don’t already have one. We ask for a minimum donation of £5 if you'd like to make a comment or post in our Forums.

Sign Up
Previous Post

Germans Underestimate Number of Asylum Seekers in Germany, Study Finds

Next Post

‘Trump Peace Plan for Ukraine Leaked’: Ceasefire by Easter, Territory Ceded and No NATO Membership

Subscribe
Login
Notify of
Please log in to comment

To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.

Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.

54 Comments
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments

NEWSLETTER

View today’s newsletter

To receive our latest news in the form of a daily email, enter your details here:

DONATE

PODCAST

The Sceptic EP.37: David Frost on Starmer’s EU Surrender, James Price on Broken Britain and David Shipley on Lucy Connolly’s Failed Appeal

by Richard Eldred
23 May 2025
6

LISTED ARTICLES

  • Most Read
  • Most Commented
  • Editor’s Picks

Doctor Who Star Ncuti Gatwa “Axed” and BBC Show to be “Put on Pause” Amid Falling Ratings and Woke Storylines

23 May 2025
by Will Jones

News Round-Up

24 May 2025
by Toby Young

We Were Too Polite to Stop the Woke Takeover

23 May 2025
by Mary Gilleece

Follow the Silenced is the Untold Story of the Covid Vaccine Trial Victims

24 May 2025
by Antony Brush

Spanish Scientists “Were Experimenting with How Far They Could Push Renewable Energy” Before Countrywide Blackout

23 May 2025
by Will Jones

News Round-Up

27

Trump Slaps 50% Tariffs on EU – as He Tells Starmer to Get Drilling for Oil

45

Trump in Nuclear Power Push Dubbed “Manhattan Project 2”

21

We Were Too Polite to Stop the Woke Takeover

29

Starmer’s EU Reset Tethers the UK to the EU’s Green Dystopia

17

Follow the Silenced is the Untold Story of the Covid Vaccine Trial Victims

24 May 2025
by Antony Brush

Do Researchers’ Views on Immigration Affect the Results of Their Studies?

24 May 2025
by Noah Carl

Starmer’s EU Reset Tethers the UK to the EU’s Green Dystopia

24 May 2025
by Tilak Doshi

We Were Too Polite to Stop the Woke Takeover

23 May 2025
by Mary Gilleece

The Tweets Cited by the Judge to ‘Prove’ Lucy Connolly is “Racist” Do Nothing of the Sort

23 May 2025
by Laurie Wastell

POSTS BY DATE

February 2025
M T W T F S S
 12
3456789
10111213141516
17181920212223
2425262728  
« Jan   Mar »

SOCIAL LINKS

Free Speech Union

NEWSLETTER

View today’s newsletter

To receive our latest news in the form of a daily email, enter your details here:

POSTS BY DATE

February 2025
M T W T F S S
 12
3456789
10111213141516
17181920212223
2425262728  
« Jan   Mar »

DONATE

LISTED ARTICLES

  • Most Read
  • Most Commented
  • Editor’s Picks

Doctor Who Star Ncuti Gatwa “Axed” and BBC Show to be “Put on Pause” Amid Falling Ratings and Woke Storylines

23 May 2025
by Will Jones

News Round-Up

24 May 2025
by Toby Young

We Were Too Polite to Stop the Woke Takeover

23 May 2025
by Mary Gilleece

Follow the Silenced is the Untold Story of the Covid Vaccine Trial Victims

24 May 2025
by Antony Brush

Spanish Scientists “Were Experimenting with How Far They Could Push Renewable Energy” Before Countrywide Blackout

23 May 2025
by Will Jones

News Round-Up

27

Trump Slaps 50% Tariffs on EU – as He Tells Starmer to Get Drilling for Oil

45

Trump in Nuclear Power Push Dubbed “Manhattan Project 2”

21

We Were Too Polite to Stop the Woke Takeover

29

Starmer’s EU Reset Tethers the UK to the EU’s Green Dystopia

17

Follow the Silenced is the Untold Story of the Covid Vaccine Trial Victims

24 May 2025
by Antony Brush

Do Researchers’ Views on Immigration Affect the Results of Their Studies?

24 May 2025
by Noah Carl

Starmer’s EU Reset Tethers the UK to the EU’s Green Dystopia

24 May 2025
by Tilak Doshi

We Were Too Polite to Stop the Woke Takeover

23 May 2025
by Mary Gilleece

The Tweets Cited by the Judge to ‘Prove’ Lucy Connolly is “Racist” Do Nothing of the Sort

23 May 2025
by Laurie Wastell

SOCIAL LINKS

Free Speech Union
  • Home
  • About us
  • Donate
  • Privacy Policy

Facebook

  • X

Instagram

RSS

Subscribe to our newsletter

© Skeptics Ltd.

Welcome Back!

Login to your account below

Forgotten Password? Sign Up

Create New Account!

Fill the forms below to register

All fields are required. Log In

Retrieve your password

Please enter your username or email address to reset your password.

Log In
No Result
View All Result
  • Articles
  • About
  • Archive
    • ARCHIVE
    • NEWS ROUND-UPS
  • Podcasts
  • Newsletter
  • Premium
  • Donate
  • Log In

© Skeptics Ltd.

wpDiscuz
You are going to send email to

Move Comment
Perfecty
Do you wish to receive notifications of new articles?
Notifications preferences