Gove's disciple starts consulting on her 'elite traditional' free school

Arena House where 'elite' education will take place

 The Michaela Community Secondary Free School has embarked on a 'consultation' regarding its intention to open at Arena House, opposite Wembley Park Station. 

The person behind the application is Katharine Birbalsingh who was lauded at the Tory Party conference after attacking comprehensive education. Controversially she showed slides of her pupils as part of her attack.

She has used this appearance as a platform to put forward some decidedly odd ideas on the curriculum and is hoping that Michael Gove will follow up his enthusiasm for her right-wing ideas with plenty of tax payers' money for her new school - money that could have been used to support other schools in the borough.

Michaela promise an 'elite traditional' education and there will be a longer extended day with activities including 'competitive' sport, Mandarin, business and financial skills.There will be an emphasis on discipline. I hope Michaela and Ark Academy do not get into a who can be toughest war.

Free schools receive disproportionate funding and it is clear that Arena House will need a lot of costly work before it is fit for purpose. There will be 840 pupils and anyone who knows the building will realise that there is very little space that could be used as a playground. Its position right up against a noisy railway line and adjacent to a busy road is not exactly ideal either.

Emails advertising the consultation have been sent to local schools and consultation meetings will be held at Chalkhill Community Centre, Barnhill Road on Tuesday 26th March (3-5pm) and Thursday 4th April (6-8pm).

If the school does open its 840 pupils will join those of Ark Academy, which is not yet operating at capacity,  the1,000 students who will attend the Brent Town Hall  independent French secondary school,  pupils from the Preston Manor All-through school and children from Chalkhill Primary School in one small area of Wembley.

The consultation brochure can be found HERE

Barry Gardiner quizzes Michael Gove on Michaela Free School

A Brent North resident writes:

 

I thought followers of Wembley Matters  might be interested in the copy letter below. It appears that I was one of several people to contact our MP raising concerns about the proposed Free School at Wembley Park. Barry Gardiner has put our questions to Michael Gove, and has promised to forward a copy of his response as soon as he receives it.

 

When Gove and David Cameron launched their latest list of approved Free School bids in July last year, it showed that its funding for the Michaela Community School was on the basis that it was to meet demand for a Free School in Lambeth, which it highlighted as a deprived area. I know that Brent has some deprived areas as well, and our schools do need to be fairly funded; but it seems unfair that the money for this school should be taken away from Lambeth, where there is the need and apparently the demand for it, and spent in Wembley Park, where I am not aware of any such demand.

 

Barry Gardiner's letter to Michael Gove:

 

Click on image to enlarge

 

Brent Council confirms Birbalsingh Free School in Wembley Park

Arena House opposite Wembley Park Station

Cllr Mary Arnold, lead member for Children and Families announced that she had heard today that Katharine Birbalsingh is acquiring the ex-CNWL site at Wembley Park for her Michaela Community Free Secondary School.

Arnold said that the Council had not been consulted by the DfE. Although the school will have to apply for planning position the Council has no powers over it.  However she said that the Council was concerned about teaching and learning, equalities and conditions of employment in the school. They would have talks with the providers in order to try and apply the Council's free school criteria.

Cllr Michael Pavey (Labour Barnhill) said that he shared Cllr Arnold's concern.  As Chair of Governors at Wembley Primary he said that his school did not educate its pupils in order to hand them over to unqualified teachers at a Free School. Free Schools had an average of 9% of children on free school meals whereas Wembley Primary had about a third. Schools should be run to nurture and educate children, not for private profit.

To applause, he urged the Council to take a strong and principled stand on this issue.

The school will be subject to planning permission but this is unlikely to be a problem given the very lose regulation around Free Schools and the buildings previous use as a further education college.  Play space will be limited but I suspect a deal may be done with the Ark Academy which is just across the road and has extensive playing fields.

Birbalsingh, Gove's heroine, to open free school in Wembley Park

Michael Gove and Katharine Birbalsingh

 The controversial teacher who attacked the 'chaos' of comprehensive education at the Conservative Party Conference and illustrated her talk with photographs of her pupils, claims to have found premises for a secondary free school in Wembley Park.

Katharine Birbalsingh, who got a standing ovation from the Tories,  lost her job as a consequence of her attack and tried to set up a free school in Tooting but was forced to abandon the plans.

A great fan of traditional education and discipline she is prone to throw away remarks, obscure quotations and huge generalisations. She and Michael Gove are mutual admirers and the Daily Mail worships her.

 In a Guardian interview LINK she discussed her views on education:

But Birbalsingh is adamant: "Teaching is the most wonderful job on the planet." She was devastated, she says, when, after her speech, she was suspended from her job and eventually had to resign. "I was unemployable in the state system. You're just not allowed to speak out. I talked to a couple of heads and the atmosphere was: you've done the unthinkable. I went to see a headhunter and he told me to go under the radar for a couple of years and said failed heads get jobs eventually. And I thought: I'm not a failed head, this is ridiculous."

Birbalsingh insists she has nothing against teachers, nor against comprehensives. "It's the system," she says. Her Penguin, To Miss With Love, is withering about Ofsted, which, in Birbalsingh/Snuffy's (she blogged as Snuffy) view, measures the wrong things in the wrong way. She says standards are in headlong decline so that, to get a C in GCSE English, "you don't have to read a Shakespeare play", whereas in fee-charging schools, "they read one Shakespeare play a year". She believes mixed-ability teaching, used in "about half" the schools, is "political fantasy", and says children should be held back a year if they're failing. She thinks black children misbehave because they know that any teacher who disciplines them is accused of racism. "Black kids," writes Miss Snuffy, "all have that winning ace up their sleeve – the race card ... The kid can literally smell the fear. So the teacher starts to back off."

I am unclear where Birbalsingh's Wembley Park free school premises  are, and whether her school (Michaela Community School) had their eyes on Brent Town Hall, but she seems a very unlikely free school partner for Brent Council given the terms for partnerships the council set out last year.LINK

On the MSC website LINK  the proposers state:

The proposers of the Michaela Community School are delighted to announce that they have secured a building in the Wembley Park area of Brent and are now progressing through the pre-opening phase.

We have always been committed to setting up a community school which serves London’s inner-city which sets high expectations and raises standards and aspirations and our choice of location and building is perfect in this respect.

We will be out and about in Brent discussing the school with parents, carers and potential pupils and will post more information here when we have it.

Birbalsingh,  who is named as the 'Proposed' headteacher (I wonder who proposed her?) writes:

Welcome to the website which sets out our proposals for a free school based in the Wembley Park area of Brent.

Michaela Community School (MCS) will be a mixed community secondary school for pupils aged 11-18 of all backgrounds, offering an excellent, traditional education.

The school is approved into ‘pre-opening’ for September 2013 and we have secured a wonderful building in the Wembley Park area of Brent. If you would like to be kept up-to-date with our progress and wish to consider MCS for your child(ren), please fill register your details through this site.

We believe that a first-class education based upon traditional values should be within the reach of every child, no matter their background. MCS will bring the values and advantages of a private school education to young people by providing a highly academic curriculum and strong discipline.

The school is named after Michaela, an inspirational teacher whose traditional values ensured her pupils achieved great success. Michaela died in 2011 but her commitment to tradition, discipline and providing pupils with confidence and ambition will live on through the MCS.

The curriculum will prioritise academic subjects with an emphasis on knowledge-acquisition. Click here to find out more about our curriculum. We will encourage aspiration and motivation and ensure our pupils are confident in the basics. Mastering English and Maths to a high standard will form the basis of learning at the school for every pupil. High-achieving pupils will be stretched and those who are struggling will be given extra tuition in English and Maths as part of an extended day. The academic rigour at the school will offer pupils the opportunity to progress to the very best universities in the country, including the Russell Group universities and Oxford and Cambridge. All of our pupils will leave MCS with high levels of numeracy, reading, writing and spoken English.

If this proposal comes to anything the concentration of schools in the Wembley Park area will increase even more. What will be the impact on neighbouring schools as well as on the image of education in Brent if this  school opens and  Birbalsingh becomes part of our local landscape?