Katharine Birbalsingh
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Search complete. 8 mentions across 6 episodes found for "Katharine Birbalsingh".
Oct 8, 2026
Matt d'AnconaHOST
But she's going for that sort of old school, 1980s brought up, you know, it was defense spending, it was welfare reform.
Matt d'AnconaHOST
She talked about that headm- headmistress, uh, Katherine Birbalsingh up from Michaela-
Matt KellyHOST
Yeah
Matt d'AnconaHOST
... as a badass teacher, you know.
John PapolaHOST
Um, I also have your first big award-winning book, The Content of Our Character, and I am excited to share your experience and your ideas with our audience.
John PapolaHOST
Um, before we started rolling, I had mentioned that our, you know, our partner, um, Katherine Birbalsingh, recently referenced your ideas and you i- in her super viral speech on the stage in London at Ark.
John PapolaHOST
And so let's just start with what is white guilt? What is it?
Shelby SteeleGUEST
Well, I suppose it's many things.
Michael GoveGUEST
Within that, I would say two things.
Michael GoveGUEST
There are other people of color in education, uh, Katherine Birbalsingh, who've also been attacked on the other side because of their, uh, views.
Michael GoveGUEST
So someone like Katherine has been very vigorously attacked by people on the political left, sometimes in terms that I would consider to be beyond unchivalrous.
Michael GoveGUEST
So there are risks.
Michael GoveGUEST
But I also think that quite a lot of the Arday criticism wasn't directed at Arday himself, it was directed at Cambridge, and in particular, there was questioning of the quality of his work and the reason why Cambridge were vaunting and, uh, uh, giving luster to his work when it was, and it seems so graceless of me to, to, to mention this when the poor guy is dead, but when his work wasn't necessarily of the standard you'd expect of someone who was a professor in the Department of Education.
Alastair CampbellHOST
But when we, uh, discussed this, Rory and I discussed at the time, we had a, a long list of people of whom the same and worse could be said, of whom there was no media furore whatsoever.
Alastair CampbellHOST
Um, and, and, and the other thing, you mentioned Katherine Birbalsingh, who actually gets a-
Michael GoveGUEST
Mm.
Konstantin KisinHOST
Indeed, the failure of this approach has become so undeniable that we've given up counseling people who make this observation.
Konstantin KisinHOST
In her brilliant upcoming book, Diversity Is Not Our Strength, Katherine Birbalsingh, an inner-city teacher and founder of the Michaela School, whose life's work has been to inculcate a largely ethnic minority intake of students into uniting around their British identity, chronicles the rising self-segregation among children across schools which fail to do this.
Konstantin KisinHOST
"The inner-city scene I've described," she says, "in the long run is more divisive than is understood.
Konstantin KisinHOST
I've seen it all before.
Bridget PhillipsonGUEST
... outcomes in schools.
Camilla TomineyHOST
But what I could never understand from your period as education secretary was your enormous beef with Katharine Birbalsingh.
Camilla TomineyHOST
Now, I appreciate that Katharine does like to voice an opinion, but here you have a headteacher that is running a school that's got the highest progress eight score for the last three years running, and she is teaching disadvantaged children.
Camilla TomineyHOST
It's not as if you can look at a private school exemplar in some leafy Hertfordshire town and say, "Well, we know why the results are so good." She's taking children that don't have much opportunity at all, massively improving them, and sending a lot of them off to Oxbridge, where you studied.
Camilla TomineyHOST
Why didn't you at the time think that that was an exemplar for you? You know, she has complained that some of the measures you brought in removed her autonomy, removed her ability to set her own standards, set her own discipline codes, set her own uniform requirements, and that's actually set the school back.
Bridget PhillipsonGUEST
I have the utmost respect for our school leaders, and I have the utmost respect for Katharine Birbalsingh as well because I think being a headteacher, being a school leader is a really tough job, and they deserve our backing.
Bridget PhillipsonGUEST
I think the changes that we made around school uniform policy, for example, I, I just didn't understand the level of outrage about it because what you will see is schools often insisting that parents have to buy lots and lots of very expensive branded items that just aren't necessary.
Bridget PhillipsonGUEST
Uh, you can have kids looking smart without it, you know, costing parents the earth.
Winston MarshallPANELIST
Okay
Konstantin KisinHOST
... we have to do what Katherine Birbalsingh does with her kids at her school, which is we have to inculcate ourselves and our children with the idea that they all belong to the nation of Britain.
Konstantin KisinHOST
Right? We don't have an English passport.
Konstantin KisinHOST
We don't have a Welsh passport.