The Strictest School in Britain 👩🏽‍🏫☝🏼

A number of colleagues talk about the permissiveness of teachers towards student behaviour at Mount Roskill Grammar School. This permissiveness relates to student behaviours like coming late to class, being disruptive in class and even not coming to class at all (whether in school or not). Of course, these behaviours are not encouraged, but they are often not actively discouraged and seemingly not even followed up at all.¹

Some colleagues have much more structured classroom environments, where at least some of this behaviour is not acceptable. For example, in Mr S and Ms R’s classes students who come late make up the time at lunch time or after school, despite our school not officially having a ‘detention’ system.² These classes are like islands of a more structured class culture. However, these islands do not make a school culture, and those individual teachers have to work very hard to establish routines and norms that they want to see. It is potentially harder for these teachers to establish this in their classroom when the school culture has an element of permissiveness.

The question to be answered, is what would our school look like if the culture was less permissive. One answer to that question, could be to go to the extreme end of the scale and have a look at the so called strictest school in Britain. I was recommended this by Mr S who is both keen on making sure students learn, and having a safe, well functioning classroom culture. Below is the trailer for the full length documentary Britain’s Strictest Headmistress .

Success at Michaela Community School

The first thing to point out is that Michaela Community School [MCS] is a very successful school. They achieve excellent academic results. They are successful despite their students coming from the most deprived areas of London. This seems uncontroversial to want students to achieve academic success, but watching the documentary, it isn’t only a want but an expectation at the school. I struggle to find the extremely high expectations of students present at MRGS. While teachers are not outright hostile towards students, I often think there are lower expectations of academic success at MRGS. For myself, I tend to have higher expectations at the beginning of the year, but once students demonstrate their willingness to learn, aptitude for the subject, or personal behaviour standards. While I’m always happy for students to surprise me, and I always say to students: “this is achievable” and “everyone can do this”, I now think this is a very naive form of high expectations.

On the other hand, MCS has actual high expectations. Routines are strict and making sure that students are learning and participating in class has high priority. They suggest that innovative teaching practice can occur when “systems are so consistently well-managed that, instead of worrying about low-level disruption, you are able to try out what works best for the pupils you are teaching” . The Behaviour and Learning. Include: Not changing assessments to make them more relevant to students.

Michaela focuses on teacher led, explicit instruction. This is something that has been suggested to me that I focus on as a beginning teacher. Other Kaiako at Ako Mātātupu have also said to me they are interest in explicit direct instruction and the different it has made in class vs making learning ‘games’. I’ve previously written about direct instruction, so I won’t cover it again, but suffice to say I’m very interested in this kind of teaching practice, and aim to work on this practice next year.

Interestingly, many teachers at MCS are Teach First Ambassadors, the equivalent of Ako Mātātupu, where both programes are part of the Teach For All Network . This was surprising to me, as I understand that Ako Mātātupu believe in a student-centred approach to education, along with co-construction of what happens and what is being learnt in the classroom. Of course, Ako Mātātupu is only one part of the Teach For All Network, and Michaela school isn’t completely antithetical to Ako Mātātupu’s approach.

Behaviour and Culture

First and most commented on is their adherence to silent corridors. Teachers in the full length documentary point out that these are usually places where students are pushed around, bullied and are generally uncomfortable spaces. Because New Zealand typically have open secondary schools, rather than multilevel urban schools, this is less of an issue here. It does make sense that corridors are silent at MCS though, it is much safer for staff and students. MCS also gives students detention for small infrigements, forgetting pens or rubbers or for not making correct eye contact (see below), for example. When visiting staff ask “What happens when you have fights?” Birbalsingh suggests that don’t have fights because the small issues are taken care of.

There are a number of routines, behaviours and norms that students are expected to display at MCS. These include getting students to sit up straight, and to look teachers in the eye. This is interesting because I’m sure that some of the cultures of the students who go to MCS would view direct eye contact as threatening, similar to Māori and [especially] Pasifika cultures . This is where the teaching content and the norms and behaviours expected of students at MCS conforms to culture of the dominant group in society. For example, MCS prioritises Shakespeare over authors that students might find more culturally familiar, under the premise that they are British too, and should have access to these great British works.

MCS has an assimilation approach to culture within their school. They want students to feel comfortable being British and feeling like part of their society. This is somewhat contrary to our own approaches in New Zealand, where teachers are expected to incorporate different cultural elements into their classroom . However, it is interesting to think about what New Zealand culture actually is, and how this is made up of different cultures, therefore bringing different cultures into the classroom. It also speaks to which knowledge is more valued in society. That all being said, MCS teachers form quality relationships with students, and this might be teachers are interesting students’ home culture but only at the individual level. Teachers in New Zealand are encouraged to bring students culture into the classroom, meaning that their culture is celebrated at the community level .

Burying the lead³

Towards the end of the Documentary, Katharine Barbalsingh says that really it comes down to love. In her words “children need to be loved”, and rejects the idea that teachers at Michaela must “hate kids”. Staff at Michael suggest that you need to form a relationship with a student and show that you are on their side before you can implement consequences for behaviour that doesn’t meet their standards . She also suggests that love means that we have strong and consistent consequences for actions and that we hold students accountable.

[MCS employ teachers that] have vibrant and authentic relationships with their pupils. We want teachers who are conscientious, enjoy being with teenagers, and love to see kids succeed .

Lessons for MRGS or other schools in Aotearoa?

Students, teachers and community would need to ‘buy into’ changes in school culture. We can’t just randomly start implementing ‘stricter’ rules. MCS was set up as a ‘strict’ school by design, and the community who decide to send their children there understand what kind of place it is before they send their children there. It would also make sense that a school like this would be created rather than an existing school modified. Another reason why is would be important to buy into changes is because some behaviours are culturally different – for example demanding eye contact from students. Aotearoa also has a different history to the United Kingdom and we need to respect our heritage and history.

Lesson 1: In a New Zealand context, to have a school that is similar to MCS, it would be easiest to start a new school with these ideas in mind rather than modify an existing school culture.

School culture is led from the top down. There is some deviation from this in individual classrooms, but an island of ‘stricter’ culture can only do so much. However, if schools want this stricter culture in general you need to start from the principal and work your way down the hierarchy ladder. I have this impression from the documentary and from other experienced teachers at my school. Different principals at MRGS have had a different focus on issues within the school. Previously, we’ve had principals that have focused on discipline and this has had a massive impact on school tone⁴.

Lesson 2: School culture is lead from the top down.

Another lesson is around what we should consider ‘fun’ at school. We shouldn’t play games in the classroom for the sake of it. Fun can be learning something difficult or overcoming a challenge. This is also about expectations of our students, if we decide that something is too hard for them (e.g. learning Shakespeare) then we do our most disadvantaged learners a disservice. Then our white middle class students are learning things that we will not teach our disadvantaged students, and making them fall even further behind.

Lesson 3: Fun comes from learning something or challenging yourself and succeeding.

My biggest takeaway is that I potentially have, is what I’m calling ‘naive high expectations’. It’s the idea that in my class I do have high expectations of what students can do and are capable of. However, I don’t set the behavioural norms and expectations to make sure this happens. This doesn’t mean that I need to become a tyrant in my classroom but it does mean that I need to set some well established routines in the classroom. This also links to my findings from my

Lesson 4: You need to create an environment where learning and behaviour expectations are high.

References

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^[1] I say seemingly because it is not always obvious what happens with pastoral issues in the school. Teachers have complained about the lack of feedback that happens from the Dean’s centre. There are reasons why this information isn’t shared in KAMAR itself (where teacher pastoral entries are logged). I believe that teachers should be involved in the restorative process (i.e. being in the room during the discussions), or at absolute minimum be updated with the progress. Next year I’ll be an Associate Dean, so I will be able to see this feedback loop (or lack thereof) more clearly.

^[2] It turns out that MRGS has a ‘trial’ detention system in place. It’s referred to as ‘community service’ and basically involves picking up rubbish after school. I have only heard about this system from colleagues, and it has not gone through consultation with staff, students or community, and it is not being used widely within the school.

^[3] Thanks to my colleague, Mr S, who pointed this out to me that the lead idea of the film was buried right at the end – “You need to love the kids”.

^[4] Although there is an opportunity cost with this (the principal won’t have as much time to spend on other issues within the school), a colleague suggested that other things in the school “fall into place” and less time is spend dealing with student conflict, lateness and disengagement.