When the teacher started counting, the students uncrossed their arms and bowed, completing the exercise in a flash.
“Three. Two. One,” said the teacher. Pens dropped across the room and all eyes turned to the teacher. Under a policy called “Slant” (Sit, Lean forward, Ask and answer questions, Nod and Follow the speaker) the students, aged 11 and 12, were forbidden to look away.
When the digital bell rang (traditional clocks were “not accurate enough,” the principal said) the students walked quickly and quietly into the cafeteria in a line. There they shouted a poem – Ozymandiasby Percy Bysshe Shelley — together, then ate for 13 minutes while they discussed the day’s mandatory lunch topic: how to survive a superintelligent killer snail.
In the decade since Michaela Community School opened in north-west London, the publicly funded but independently run secondary school has emerged as a leader of a movement convinced that children from disadvantaged backgrounds need strict discipline , learning reporting and controlled environment to succeed.
“How do those who come from poor backgrounds succeed in their lives? Well, they have to work harder,” said the principal, Katharine Birbalsingh, who has a cardboard cutout of Russell Crowe in Gladiator in her office with the quote “Hold the Line.” Her social media profilesshe proclaimed herself “Britain’s Strictest Headmistress.”
“What you have to do is pull the fence tight,” he added. “Kids crave discipline.”
While some critics call Ms.’s model oppressive. Birbalsingh, his school has the highest rate of academic progress in England, according to a government measure of the progress students make between the ages of 11 and 16, and its approach is becoming increasingly popular.
In a growing number of schools, days are marked by strict routines and detentions for minor infractions, from forgetting a pencil case to an ill-fitting uniform. The corridors are quiet as students are forbidden to speak to their peers.
Advocates of no-reason policies in schools, with Michael Govean influential secretary of state who previously served as minister of educationargue that the progressive, child-centered approaches that proliferated in the 1970s brought about a behavioral crisisreduced schooling and hindered social mobility.
Their view is tied to a conservative political ideology that emphasizes individual determination, rather than structural elements, as shaping people’s lives. In Britain, politicians from the ruling Conservative Party, which has held power for 14 years, have supported the current educational system, which borrows from the strategies of American charter schools and educators that have become popular in the last of the 2000s.
Hard-right firebrand Suella Braverman, a former minister with two Tory governments, is a director of Michaela school. Martyn Oliver, the chief executive of a group of schools known for this strict strategy in discipline, was appointed as the chief government inspector for education last fall Mrs. Birbalsingh served as the government’s head of social mobility from 2021 until last year, a position he held while running the Michaela school.
Tom Bennett, a government adviser on school behaviour, said sympathetic education ministers had helped this “momentum”.
“A lot of schools are doing it now,” Mr. Bennett said. “And they achieve amazing results.”
Since Rowland Speller became headmaster of The Abbey School in the south of England, he broke down misbehavior and introduced formulaic routines, inspired by Michaela’s methods. He said a regulated environment is reassuring for students with a volatile home life.
If a student does well, the others clap twice after a teacher says “two claps on the count of two: one, two.”
“We can celebrate a lot of kids very quickly,” said Mr. Speller.
Mouhssin Ismail, another school leader who founded a high-performing school in a deprived area of London, posted Photo on social media in November of school corridors with students walking in line. “You can hear a pin drop during a school’s silent line up,” he wrote.
The claims triggered a backlash, with critics likening the images to a dystopian science fiction film.
Arguing Ms. Birbalsingh that rich kids can afford to waste time at school because “their parents take them to museums and art galleries,” he says, while for kids from poor backgrounds, “the only way you will learn about some Roman. history is if you are in your school studying.” Accepting the slightest misbehavior or adapting expectations to students’ circumstances, he said, “means there is no social mobility for any of these kids.”
At his school, many students express gratitude when asked about their experience, even praising the detentions they received, and eagerly repeating the school’s mantras about self-improvement. The schools proverb is: “Work hard, be kind.”
Leon, 13, said that at first he didn’t want to go to school, “but now I’m thankful that I went because otherwise I wouldn’t be as smart as I am now.”
At about 700 pupils, Michaela is smaller than the average state-funded secondary, which has about 1,050, according to the government. It is so popular that it attracts about 800 visitors a year, mostly teachers, Ms. Birbalsingh. A leaflet given to visitors asks them not to “show disbelief to students when they say they like their school.”
But some educators have expressed concern about the broader zero-tolerance approach, saying that controlling students’ behavior too little may yield good academic results but not produces autonomy or critical thinking. Draconian punishments for minor infractions can also come at a psychological cost, they say.
“It’s like they took 1984 and read it as a how-to manual as opposed to a satire,” he said. Phil Beadle, a award-winning British secondary school teacher and author.
For him, free time and discussion are as important to child development as good academic results. He worries that a “cult-like environment that demands absolute obedience” could rob children of their childhood.
The Michaela school made headlines in January after a Muslim student took it to court over its ban on prayer rituals, arguing it was discriminatory. Mrs. Birbalsingh defended the ban on social media, saying it is essential for “a successful learning environment where children of all races and religions can thrive.”
The high court has yet to issue a ruling on the case.
Proponents of the strict model and some parents say that children with special educational needs thrive in strict, predictable environments, but others see their children with learning difficulties as struggling in these schools.
Sarah Dalton sends her dyslexic 12-year-old son to a rigorous school with excellent academic results. But his fear of being punished for small mistakes created unbearable stress, and he began to show signs of depression.
“There was a fear of being punished,” he says. “It’s just his mental health spiraled.”
When she transferred him to a more relaxed school, he began to recover, Ms. Dalton.
In England, last year’s government data showed which were dozens of super strict schools back then suspending students at a higher rate than the national average. (Michaela’s school is not among them.)
Lucie Lakin, the principal of Carr Manor Community School in Leeds — which does not adhere to the zero tolerance model — said she realized the approach was spreading as more and more students enrolled at her school after to be expelled. His school is profitable high academic gradesbut he says that is not the only purpose of an education.
“Are you talking about being successful in school results, or are you trying to be successful adults?” he asked. “That is the path you must choose.”
In the United States, charter schools that adopted similarly rigorous approaches were initially praised for their results. But there is growing criticism from some parents, teachers and students in the mid-2010s triggered a reckoning in the sector.
In 2020, Uncommon Schools, an American network of charter schools and one of the pioneers of the “no excuses” approach, announced that leaving some of its strict rules, including “Slant.” The organization said it would remove “undue focus on things like eye contact and chair posture” and place more emphasis on building student confidence and intellectual engagement.
“A titan in the world of education fell to progressive pressure,” Ms. Birbalsingh wrote on social media. “It’s extraordinary that you just let hundreds of thousands of children go.”
