SITTING in a crime-plagued London borough, kids at Michaela Community School could be forgiven for just trying to stay alive rather than getting good grades.
But this weekend the place dubbed the “strictest” secondary in Britain is celebrating some of the country’s best GCSE results.
The news that 54 per cent of pupils got the equivalent of grade A and above was a stunning endorsement of no-nonsense head teacher Katharine Birbalsingh, who is known as the Tiger Teacher and has faced death threats over her unusual methods.
Her rules include detentions for forgetting a pencil or talking in corridors. Her teachers are compared to prison guards for shouting orders and banning mobile phones.
But on Thursday the critics were shamed into silence when scores of disadvantaged teenagers were in tears as they opened their result papers.
More than half got grades 7 to 9, equivalent of the old A and A* marks and way ahead of the national average, which is 20.8 per cent.
Katharine, 45, said: “The GCSE results didn’t make me go, ‘Oh my goodness look, we’ve got a fantastic school.’ I already knew we had a fantastic school.
“I’m really excited that the kids have got the results they got but the most important thing we do here is develop them into young adults.
“I already knew that we transformed these kids because I can see what they’re like when they arrive and how they change. The school is so much more than its results.”
She revealed that one of her kids was stabbed after sitting his exams. She said: “We are in the inner city. Children will carry knives.
“One of our Year 11s took his exam, went outside the gates, a bunch of kids from another school stormed him and stabbed him with a compass.
“We’ve had boys on bikes, masked, turn up carrying knives, waiting for our boys. This is hardcore. They get robbed on the way home.”
Katharine’s success is even more surprising given that nine years ago she was forced to leave her job as deputy head at a South London secondary school after she spoke out about the broken system of inner city education.
Her speech at the Conservative Party conference brought the faithful to their feet but also turned her left-wing colleagues against her.
Katharine was branded the “Tory teacher” and told she would never work in state education again.
She said: “I had all sorts of threats of all types of violence.”
But her blog about life as a French teacher was turned into an inspiring book called To Miss With Love. It was serialised on BBC Radio 4 and she was praised by Michael Gove, then Education Secretary.
Katharine opened Michaela in 2014. The school, near Wembley Stadium in the borough of Brent, was named after a friend who died from cancer.
The North West London borough is seen as one of the “most dangerous” in the capital, due to its high crime rates.
England’s Raheem Sterling was educated nearby at Copland School, where he was warned he would end up in prison if he did not follow football.
Katharine was determined her kids would be given a chance whether they had unique sporting talent or not.
She claims her teacher-centred approach is different to the child-centred philosophy practised at most schools, saying the emphasis is “giving the adult the authority in the classroom”.
Her fellow Tiger Teachers have been retrained and the head replaced traditional textbooks, with her own unique material.
The 597 pupils at the free school, which accepts a wide range of applications and is outside local authority control, are expected to walk to lessons in total silence — or face a detention.
During lessons their eyes must be on the book, the board or the teacher. At the shout of the command “slant” all must sit up, arms folded, and look straight ahead.
A zero- tolerance policy operates on forgetting homework and parents are given “digital detox” lessons where they are advised to ban technology such as game consoles.
A scheme is in place to help parents buy “brick” phones which do not have internet access.
Katharine said: “One boy could easily have been permanently excluded in another environment.
“His whole life would be a total disaster. His mother listened to me and at the beginning of Year 10 she took away all his devices, X-box, smartphone, everything.
“He said he could feel his brain breathe again and came out with a string of 8s and 9s.”
The school was rated as outstanding by Ofsted in 2017 and Katharine’s work was recognised in the Times Education Supplement.
This summer marked the first year her pupils have sat GCSEs and almost one in four got grade 9 in maths. Across England, just 3.7 per cent of pupils achieved that.
Katharine is the daughter of a Jamaican nurse and Guyanese academic and came to England from Canada as a teen.
Controversially, she feels that other teachers fail ethnic-minority pupils. She said: “You just don’t send that black boy to detention because you don’t want Ofsted or the senior team to think you’re racist.
“And that means you let your standards drop for that boy. Or worse still, you think: ‘He’s a black boy.
“So I need to make sure that I make his school experience relevant to him. So it would be better for him to learn about Stormzy in music lessons as opposed to Mozart.’”
Next month Michaela’s new sixth form will open, with 60 students aiming for places at top universities.
Permission has been given to open a school in Stevenage, Herts, and there are plans to create copycats, following methods in Katharine’s book: Battle Hymn Of The Tiger Teachers: The Michaela Way.
She said: “The critics will say, ‘They’re just an exam factory.’ It’s exactly the opposite. They have got great exam results but they also have great character.
“There’s a respect for authority. There is respect for ambition. Nowadays children can feel pressure to be bad boys, to be as ‘street’ as possible and talk about joining a gang.
“We have an environment here where the children can celebrate real success. I’m proud of that ethos.”
