Education Leaders | Evidence Informed School Leadership
Aug 25, 2026 · 28 min · 12 segments
This week, we're revisiting a favourite from the archives. Shane sits down with Katharine Birbalsingh, founder and headmistress of Michaela Community School, the free school in a converted Wembley…
Katharine BirbalsinghGuest
Shane LeaningHostThe system at the moment in England is such that we are, are allowed autonomy, so it's then up to you to build the culture that you want around the rules that you sort of want, which, I mean, obviously this is all within reason.
... suddenly decide to only teach music and, and English and that's it.
You know? There are certain basics that you need to abide by, and what I think's really important about that is that when you have that autonomy, you really own what you're doing in the building.
The problem with diktat coming down from government is that you then get turned into a bit of a, you know, a burger flipper at McDonald's.
When you flip burgers at McDonald's, you don't really care about the quality of the flipped burger because, well, you're just doing a job.
Whereas when you own it and you believe in it because it's yours [laughs], it's a very different thing, and that's one of the things that I've been trying to explain to government more recently because people who are politicians perhaps just don't understand that.
If you haven't built anything, if you haven't owned anything, if you haven't run anything, then you don't know how important buy-in is from your staff for the institution to succeed.
It just reminds me that schools are full of human beings, and it's human beings who are in the teachers and leaders of the school, and you need to be invested in what you're doing or, at the very least, you need to understand the why.
I wonder where would you start, then? If I'm intrigued as to where you started in building that, you said ours, a sense of this is ours.
Where on earth do you begin? Because I think that a lot of leaders, they're struggling with how to create that.
Well, I think you as a leader need to be really clear on what your vision is, and I think lots of people aren't.
I think lots of people go around thinking, "I need to please Ofsted" or whatever the inspectorate is that you're scared of, or the Department for Education, or your trustee board, or whoever, that you're not doing it because you believe in it.
That's a disaster [laughs], right? It has to be yours, and you have to know what your vision is, and then you need to know, what are the signs that your vision is succeeding, and what are the signs that show you that it's failing? And then obviously you need to be able to act on the things where it's failing.
The system at the moment in England is such that we are, are allowed autonomy, so it's then up to you to build the culture that you want around the rules that you sort of want, which, I mean, obviously this is all within reason.
... suddenly decide to only teach music and, and English and that's it.
You know? There are certain basics that you need to abide by, and what I think's really important about that is that when you have that autonomy, you really own what you're doing in the building.
The problem with diktat coming down from government is that you then get turned into a bit of a, you know, a burger flipper at McDonald's.
When you flip burgers at McDonald's, you don't really care about the quality of the flipped burger because, well, you're just doing a job.
Whereas when you own it and you believe in it because it's yours [laughs], it's a very different thing, and that's one of the things that I've been trying to explain to government more recently because people who are politicians perhaps just don't understand that.
If you haven't built anything, if you haven't owned anything, if you haven't run anything, then you don't know how important buy-in is from your staff for the institution to succeed.
It just reminds me that schools are full of human beings, and it's human beings who are in the teachers and leaders of the school, and you need to be invested in what you're doing or, at the very least, you need to understand the why.
I wonder where would you start, then? If I'm intrigued as to where you started in building that, you said ours, a sense of this is ours.
Where on earth do you begin? Because I think that a lot of leaders, they're struggling with how to create that.
Well, I think you as a leader need to be really clear on what your vision is, and I think lots of people aren't.
I think lots of people go around thinking, "I need to please Ofsted" or whatever the inspectorate is that you're scared of, or the Department for Education, or your trustee board, or whoever, that you're not doing it because you believe in it.
That's a disaster [laughs], right? It has to be yours, and you have to know what your vision is, and then you need to know, what are the signs that your vision is succeeding, and what are the signs that show you that it's failing? And then obviously you need to be able to act on the things where it's failing.
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