Michaela Community School

And so you don't get to act like Britain when it was basically 100% native white British, if you don't have those demographics.

And what we've done instead is, after Singapore recreated our successes, we decided to reverse engineer the demographics of Singapore, even worse actually, because the white British majority is now fewer than that of the Han Chinese majority of Singapore, And now we're trying to reverse engineer Singapore as a solution with suggestions of the likes of David Starkey or Catherine Bubblesing with like state managed Islam and running the entire country like the Michaela School and all encompassing inclusive British identity that is secular and inoffensive and based on shared liberal principles.

Not going to work, actually.

Rather than Singapore, we're going to become South Africa or Lebanon because those are the people we've imported and demographics are destiny.

But let's say that we pursue the Lee Kuan Yew solution.

I don't think it's going to work.

I don't think it's desirable to live in a national Michaela school, and I don't think it's possible either.

I don't think that you're going to have a recognisable Britain at the end of it.

Mm.

So if you visit Michaela School or if you visit one of the, uh, preexisting excellent academy schools like Mossbourne Community Academy, which Tony Burr set up, what you don't find is a school that is drilling children only for the test.

You find a school where poetry is celebrated.

Mm.

But then also you have people like, is it the Catherine Burbles thing? That was the school...

Michaela School down there? Yes, Michaela.

I don't know if you've ever met, you've ever met Katherine Burbleson? I

haven't, you know.

I don't know if you're familiar with her really interesting character.

She's, she c- she's called Britain's strictest headmistress, and she runs a school called the Michaela School in the UK, and they're very good friends with Jordan Peterson, uh, ironically.

And she's like, "Listen, you gotta give them the right information to think about."

Mm-hmm.

Richard, what's your matter of interest this week?

Well, my matter of interest this week is academic standards in English secondary schools, and this was provoked by the recent announcements of the GCSE results at the Michaela Community School, which is a comprehensive school in Wembley in London.

It's a new school.

It was created in 2014 in a converted office building.

Thank you and welcome.

So, Catherine, you founded the Michaela Community School in 2014, which we'll dive into.

But you have a basic philosophy that I find really simple, but in this day and age, quite extraordinary.

So I want to I just want to start with you grew up with immigrant parents who had very high expectations of you, value, discipline, intellectual rigor.

[dramatic music] She edited a book with a chapter called Schools Should Teach About Dead White Men, and she meant it.

Katherine Birbalsingh is here, and she runs Michaela School in Wembley, London.

The British press have stuck her with one nickname: Britain's strictest headmistress.

This year, on an international stage, she told parents to raise their kids on duty and pride in their own country.

Yeah.

Talk to me about this concept.

I wonder how you deal with this at the Michaela School.

So discipline seems to come first, and I love that, but I am of that generation, just follow me all the way through here, that thought it had to be linear, that thought it had to be grit, that thought we had to work harder, and then all of a sudden, we watched ourselves get passed up by millennials who were working a little bit smarter, who were hacking the system.