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Jan. 16, 2019 - The Delingpod - James Delingpole
01:08:30
Katherine Birbalsingh
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Welcome to the Dellingpole Podcast with me, James Dellingpole.
And I know I always say this, but I am so, so, so excited about this week's guest.
She's been on the list of my dream candidates for a long time.
I've just never got my act together.
She is none other than Catherine Burblesing, possibly the greatest headteacher in the world.
Certainly a revolutionary in English, maybe even world schooling.
You are, aren't you, Catherine?
You're on a mission.
Yes, yes, I suppose so.
We all are here at Michaela.
So our school, Michaela, opened in 2014.
We now have 600 pupils, year 7 through to 11.
So our GCSE's first set of results will come out in August.
And we're opening our sixth form in September.
We are a free school.
It took us three years to set up.
Yeah, so all of us here are on a mission, and the mission is to change the lives of the children we have, but also to show what can be done in education and what different looks like.
Yeah.
Now, if I heard somebody saying that without having seen the school, I'd say, yeah, well, of course, all head teachers are going to say that they're going to be trying to change education and do...
But I've just been on the tour of your school and I'm freaked out and just almost speechless with admiration for what you've created here because it is bizarre.
I've read about it, but until you see it for yourself...
The silence with which your pupils...
So is it what you expected?
I mean, because people read about it and I always ask them, is it what you imagined?
So I'd read about the children not making a noise as they walked to the classes and about how studious the classes are and stuff.
But I hadn't been prepared for quite how quiet they are and quite how studious.
And the classes seemed really quite demanding.
Yes.
Yes, well, we do.
We push the kids and they love it and their hands are up.
I mean, often, it's interesting you say that.
What people often say when I ask them, is it what you expected?
They tend to say something along the lines of, I expected it to be kind of miserable.
And all these adults towering over the children and forcing them to be silent.
When actually, what you see are happy children rushing along to their lessons and then in the lessons...
Being, you know, really enthusiastic about learning and their hands are up and they're answering questions and they're turning to their partners and doing a bit of pair work and they're really enjoying themselves and that it isn't a question of having to force them to do this.
I think that's the key thing.
I think people often think of schools that have high expectations of children as being miserable places when actually...
What they don't get is that you'll always have your 10% on the outskirts who you have to hold in line by detention and all of that.
But in order for it to work, you have to have the tipping point.
You have to have the vast majority of them buying into what the school's about.
Yeah.
And when they do that, you see, the place just runs.
It just goes, you know.
Everything just falls into place.
Yeah, yeah.
We'll talk in a minute about how you formed your philosophy and how you worked out how to create a school like Michaela.
But I just want to describe in more detail to my special listening friend exactly what I've seen.
So I went to lunch and before lunch takes place...
All the children and one of the teachers, they shout, they were shouting if, I think, Rudyard Kipling's if.
Yes.
Well, there's several poems that they could do, but that's one of the poems that they can repeat, and they love it.
Yeah, well, exactly.
And then you sit down for lunch, which I don't think I've ever eaten food so quickly.
It's a bit like being in prison, I imagine.
A good prison, but very rapid.
Well, we have to eat quickly because otherwise we would spend too much time in lunch and my teachers would be, well, their days would be too long.
So, we keep everything quick and short.
We rush along to lessons and we make sure that we use every minute of our lessons so that teachers are not exhausted and overworked.
I mean, that's important because if things just go on and on and on and we're not efficient, then somebody pays the price somewhere along the line.
No one is ever going to accuse you of being inefficient, I tell you.
You squeeze every last drop of time out of the orange of your day.
It's a terrible analogy.
So...
I sat down at a random table, I presume.
With mixed-ability kids?
The kids looked me in the eye.
They were keen to talk to me.
One of them brought up the topic of Brexit and asked me where I stood.
And I said, I'm totally for Brexit.
And he said, yeah, yeah, me too.
Really?
Yeah, yeah.
I think half the table was for Brexit and half the table was Remain.
Really?
How remarkable.
I mean, I had no idea.
I mean, that's remarkable when you think that we're in the inner city, you know, all these ethnic minority kids, all from different backgrounds and different religions and so on.
Yes.
And isn't that fascinating?
And I think that that's because we teach our children how to think, you know?
Yes.
And what's funny is that the caricature of Michaela is that we don't do that, when in fact you will find the most deep-thinking kids here.
I'm always surprised.
You've just surprised me.
I mean, I didn't know what they thought about Brexit.
Whenever you ask them anything, they're really thoughtful.
And I think a big reason for that is because of the quality of their lessons.
Because they are able to access so much knowledge in their lessons, their opinions are then very informed.
And they get excited about learning new stuff and they're independently minded precisely because they've been taught so well in their lessons.
Yeah.
I think people need to understand that this is not a...
We're not living in a middle class area here, are we?
No.
It's not white middle class.
We are talking a complete melting pot of classes and religions and skin colours, girls in hijabs, black...
I mean...
Yeah, as I say, it's a whole variety.
White's the minority, aren't they?
White's the minority.
But, I mean, the very...
I don't...
We have one...
I always say we have one white middle-class boy here who is the son of a local headteacher.
You know, they are all working-class kids from a variety of different backgrounds.
Not selected academically either.
They're just...
No, so I was about to say, so the mixed ability table that you'll have been on, because all the lunch tables are mixed ability, you'll have had kids there who could go to Oxbridge, and you'll have had kids there who would have joined us, possibly with the reading age of a six-year-old, when in fact they were 11 years old when they started.
So that's the range of ability that we've got here.
We are very much a comprehensive school that...
That takes in anyone because, I mean, our admissions policy is such that it's run by the council.
You know, we're just like any other school.
And we take on anyone.
And here we are.
Yes.
Well, this is where it gets really interesting, isn't it?
And where your experiment, because it feels like an experiment, a good experiment.
I think it's going to upset a lot, lot, lot of people in the education sector when they realize that all their shibboleths, that the problem with education is the background the children come from, this lack of money, etc.
All the excuses they made.
I think when your first exam results are published, you are going to send shockwaves through the education world.
Am I right?
Yeah.
Well, you say that.
The thing is, there are other schools that have already done that.
You know, there are schools that are doing an amazing job.
You know, you've got old Dixon's Trinity up in Bradford, or you've got King Solomon Academy in London, northwest London, or you've got Wembley High, which is a school near to here.
You know, you've got some great schools out there already doing that with challenging intakes, and they're doing amazing things.
You know, we're doing it in our own way.
I think the big difference...
So, like, the family lunch that you saw is an idea that we've taken directly from King Solomon Academy.
The appreciations that happen at the end of family lunch is an idea that we've taken directly from Dixon's in Trinity in Bradford.
So, you know, the lines down the corridors come from King Solomon Academy.
So there's a variety of ideas here that have come from other schools.
And we still keep going out there and we visit other schools and we take ideas and we bring them back.
And, of course, people come here and take lots of our ideas and take them elsewhere.
So...
The big difference, I would say, though, between us and most other schools out there is the real focus on knowledge in lessons.
So the behavior thing, actually, I think there's lots of schools doing that.
So Harris, for instance, Academy Chain or ARC Academy Chain, they're very good at going on and taking over failing schools and bringing in teams of people to get the corridors organized and the staircases organized and so on.
So I mean, we may be a little bit further along on that, but it's a similar kind of thing in terms of behavior.
The big difference is the focus on knowledge.
And I know that sounds odd because your listeners probably think, well, what do you mean focus on knowledge?
Obviously, in a school, children are taught knowledge.
But actually that isn't what happens.
Not anymore it's not.
No.
So children tend to do lots of kind of cross-curricular projects and they do lots of group work together which of course any progressive who does that will say to you but you must teach them some knowledge and I'm not saying they don't teach them any knowledge.
They do.
But it's not the focus and it's a small amount of content in comparison to what we would teach in a lesson.
Because our teachers stand at the front and teach and our desks are in rows and the children are looking to the teacher and what I always say is that the teacher is driving the bus.
The children aren't driving the bus.
Children are too young to drive, right?
That's a key thing.
And they can't drive, so the teacher drives.
And the teacher decides where the destination is, and they are driving it.
The kids are on there.
The good teacher manages to make sure that all the children are on the bus, right?
And all the children are with him or her going towards that destination.
You know, that's what makes a good teacher.
That's what makes for good learning.
Yeah.
Your dad talks about the politics of the day.
You learn a bit about history and geography and science in these conversations.
Other children who don't have that, well, where are they going to access that knowledge?
They have to access it at school.
And sadly, Because teaching methods across the country over the last 50 years have deteriorated, I would say, into this kind of progressive thing, which is allowing the child to lead it as opposed to the teacher leading it, it's been dumbed down.
Yes, because when my mother was a school teacher, I don't know how long ago that was, I think she would have expected, I mean, if children were naughty, she was allowed to have them sent off to the headmaster and have them beaten.
You know, this was a secondary modern school.
But when did it change?
When did child-centred education start coming in?
Yeah, I suppose in the 60s.
I mean, you know, the thing is that there are some things in education that exist.
I think, rightly, I think it's good that we no longer beat children in schools.
I would not be, you know, for that.
I think detentions are a good deterrent.
And if you implement them properly and if your systems work in your school, then it's quite easy.
But like I said...
The majority of your kids, you can't have them doing it because they might get a detention.
You need the majority of your children buying into it so that they do it because they can see the benefit for themselves.
And one of the reasons why all of our kids...
I mean, yes, it will be irritating to get a detention for some little thing, but they don't mind it.
They're happy to put up with it.
And the reason why they're happy to put up with it is because they know they're getting a great education.
They know how much they've learned since starting here.
And they also compare themselves to their friends elsewhere.
And they can see how much they know in comparison.
Oh, do they?
Oh, yeah, definitely.
We tell them to.
Because we want them to know.
Hey, look at how clever you are.
Look at how good you are.
Go and ask similar.
You're having this conversation here in the playground.
That's the other thing, is that our kids sit around in the playground talking about their work in school, their subjects, you know?
Yeah.
I mean, it's amazing.
I'm constantly amazed by how interested they are in what they're learning.
And that's because they know lots about it.
That's what people think wrongly, that in order for a child to be inquisitive about something, you have to make it engaging for him.
By making it relevant.
So you want them to learn French.
I know what we do.
Let's do a French rap song.
And then you'll get interested.
When actually what you need to do is give them the building blocks of grammar and vocabulary and build that up for them in little bits, bit by bit, until they get a really thorough lot of knowledge there, which there then, that in itself will spark the excitement, right?
intrinsically interesting and that that is a fundamental misunderstanding of the progressive they don't understand that the subject is interesting so they think they need to fool the child into thinking that it's interesting when actually what you need to do is teach the child and the child will come to see how interesting it is yes i can see that a progressive visiting your school would have absolute nightmares to be in the school and the child will come to see how interesting There is so much they would not like.
They would not like the regimented seating arrangement.
They would not like the way that the teacher teaches, as you say.
They would claim that you are stifling the children's creativity, wouldn't they?
Yeah, that's exactly right.
And what I'm saying is that our systems allow them to be creative.
It's not intuitive.
So you think to yourself, oh well, in order for freedom to happen, you just need to let them be free.
When actually, it's self-control that brings you freedom, right?
Right.
That's what they don't understand.
They see it very simply when actually life is far more complex.
It's why we have great literature.
It's why we have wonderful films and what makes the marrow of life so interesting because there are paradoxes in life, right?
And And when you're raising children and when you're teaching children, there are so many paradoxes.
You need to give them structure so that later on in life they can be free.
You need to give them detention so that later on in life they don't need the detentions.
You need to motivate them so that eventually they can motivate themselves.
But if you just let them break free and do whatever they like and lead themselves, well, they're children.
So, of course they're going to choose to, I don't know, play Fortnite.
Yeah.
I mean, they're kids.
Yeah, yeah.
Absolutely.
I was touring the school with two teachers from obviously not as good schools.
And one of the things they noticed and were very impressed by was the way that the teachers here are constantly...
Giving real world examples.
Explain to the kids why the rules exist, why they're doing what they do, why merits are important, why demerits are a bad thing as applied to real life.
It's about getting a job.
Universities are always mentioned often.
Yes.
Well, we mention university all the time because for many of these children, if we didn't mention it, they'd never hear anyone talk about it.
Many of these children, you know, their families can come from backgrounds where they're not particularly educated, backgrounds where they don't necessarily speak English for some of them, backgrounds where...
The family hasn't bought into the understanding that education will get you somewhere.
So we really need to persuade them.
And that is constant.
Every day they'll be hearing from their heads of year, their form tutors at assemblies and so on.
They'll be getting the same message, which is about personal responsibility, which is about persevering when life is tough.
We have this expression of even when it's difficult, especially when it's difficult, you do the right thing, you know.
And so, you know, when they come in...
In year seven, we teach them all about Mandela.
And then we say, right, so, you know, he spent 27 years in prison.
You've got 20-minute detention.
You can get over it.
It's not a big deal.
And, you know, we let them, we get them to see.
And when you said about the narration, that's really important.
You need to be narrating all of the time why something is happening.
So that they understand it.
And you've got to be consistent.
So the biggest thing for me in running the school the big difficulty that you have in running a school I'd say is trying to keep consistency across all the teachers.
Because if everybody's doing their own thing It's okay if you're at Eton because the boys aren't going to jump out the window and so on.
The more difficult your intake, the more important it is for you to have consistency.
Now, that doesn't mean that everybody's a robot and everybody's exactly the same.
Teachers need to have their own personalities and build their own relationships with the kids and have fun with them.
In fact, a teacher was just telling me yesterday, one of my new teachers, she was saying how...
At this school, she's able to have far more fun with the kids and she's able to show much more of her personality here than she was able to elsewhere.
And the reason is because here she doesn't have to worry.
She doesn't have to think, gosh, but I might lose them.
Yes.
I have to really be tight on them because otherwise she can relax here because the low-level constant disruption that might happen elsewhere isn't going to happen.
So she knows she can trust them.
And in fact, you can really push the boat out, have a real laugh at them and then go, okay, okay, that's enough now.
Let's bring it back.
And they come back to you.
I saw that going on today.
One teacher was talking in the biology class about how he got the mumps.
And everyone was fascinated at this personal anecdote.
Right.
But you're right.
In a less disciplined school, any sign of your personality would be used against you.
It would be a weakness to be exploited by the children, I think.
Well...
I mean, either that or it's simply if you allow them to laugh and have a joke and enjoy the fun, it's hard to get the class back because they start going a bit mad.
So when I say a bit mad, kids might end up banging on the tables, shouting, screaming, rocking on their chairs, being silly.
That would never happen here, you see?
They enjoy it and then the teacher brings it back and they continue on with the learning.
So the appreciation thing, which happens after lunch.
So all the children stand up and they stick their hands in the air and one of the teachers picks one of them and they give an instant appreciation of somebody, anybody, doesn't matter.
And if they do it well, then they get a merit.
But what I loved about this was that a few people got merits because they spoke clearly and articulately and it was a sort of punchy, what they had to say was interesting and well phrased.
But there were a few that didn't quite meet the mark.
And instead of giving them a merit for making the effort, no.
Only the good people were given merits, which I think is so against the modern culture of all shall have prizes.
Yeah.
And that's because in a culture of all shall have prizes, the children know that you're kind of laughing at them.
I mean, the thing is, kids always know.
If they get prizes for things that aren't really worth anything, they don't buy into it anymore.
They don't appreciate it because they know everyone's got it.
So it doesn't mean that they're special.
You have to deserve your merit here.
Now, we generally have a kind of rule of, with teachers, try to give out four merits for every demerit you give.
So look for the children who are doing great things and make sure you're handing out merits.
But make sure that when you hand it out, that it's for something that's deserved.
You're not handing it out for just any old nonsense.
And then that means the system has value.
It was fascinating for me here because...
You know, in most schools, everybody knows that merits and demerits tend to lose favor halfway through year eight.
So it tends to work really well with year sevens, because they're young.
And by the time you get to halfway through year eight, kids don't care about merits anymore and demerits, and the system just doesn't work anymore.
That's always been my experience, and certainly friends of mine, teachers elsewhere, that that's kind of standard.
And I came here with the understanding that that would probably happen here.
But it hasn't.
Even our year 11s love their merits and demerits.
And I think that's partly because it's a system that means something, right?
What do they get for accumulating merits?
Do they deserve it?
This is it.
In some schools, they'll give them financial rewards elsewhere.
Some schools give out iPhones and stuff.
Some places give out expensive things.
Others will give out rulers and things.
It depends on the school.
We count up their merits at the end of the term and then they get, well it depends, if you're in the top half essentially of kids getting merits you'll get a bronze badge or a silver badge or a gold badge if you're right at the top and then you can wear that the following term.
Right.
I see.
And they're so proud of it.
They do it, and it's wonderful, and it works.
Listen, I saw one of the pupils with a row of badges, like having a row of medals, and I wanted those badges.
Who needs an iPhone when you can get a gold badge?
Well, I think so.
Exactly.
It didn't have some sort of animal on it.
That's the Scholosaurus badge.
Oh, the Scholosaurus.
What is the Scholosaurus?
Is it like a panther?
Well, that's for their quizzes.
Well, I don't know.
This is a made-up animal.
It's for their quizzes.
So if they've done really well in their quizzes that term, then they get one of those.
And there are attendance badges, and there's all sorts of different badges for different things.
And there's a kind of reward assembly at the end of term, and they come up and shake my hand, and I give them their badge, and it's really nice.
And they do.
They really respond to merits all the way up to year 11, which I myself, this school has taught me so much.
I mean, that is a key thing for your listeners to understand because people come and they say, oh, well, this was your vision and then you implemented it and here you go.
And I always say, well, sort of.
I mean, I figured we would do things differently and bit by bit we've done things and we change all the time.
We are constantly adapting.
And I know you were asking me earlier, you know, how did the school kind of come about?
Were they all my ideas and not at all?
Some of the ideas come from other schools.
Some are from my teachers.
We've all together come up with what's happened and it's constantly developing as things go on.
But as it's done that, I myself am constantly surprised by it and constantly learning from it and thinking, oh, well, I thought merits and demerits wouldn't work past year eight, but hey, here you go.
It's working.
Before we end the session, I've got to tell you my favourite appreciation during lunch.
A kid on my table stood up and said, I would like to appreciate Mr.
Dillingpole for talking to us in an interesting way about Brexit.
Okay, a lot of people would say he's being a creep, but actually it seemed to be totally sincere and it was great.
It will have been sincere.
He bothered to remember my name apart from anything else.
Well, that's it.
It's really great.
How many schools would you get that?
You wouldn't.
You wouldn't.
You're listening to the Dellingpole Podcast with me, James Dellingpole, and my very special guest, Catherine Burblesing.
More in a moment.
Welcome back to the Dellingpot Podcast with me, James Dellingpot, and my very special guest, Catherine Burblesink.
You are known as Britain's strictest teacher, aren't you?
That is your legend.
Well, only because it was written about in the Sunday Times once.
I don't know if I am, actually.
I mean, I'm a bit of a softie.
It was funny because we had the year six, I'm not year six, six form open event a couple of few weeks ago.
And all these year 11s from around, you know, around here and so on, externals were coming to find out and our own kids and parents and so on.
And there was this little boy, six year old boy, who was the brother of one of our year 11s was there.
And I hadn't seen him in a few years.
And I was hugging him and, you know, we were laughing together and so on.
And I could see everyone looking over to say, isn't she meant to be the dragon lady?
So, you know, I try and pretend to be the dragon lady.
But you've got the structure here now where you've got these committed young teachers who are working within the disciplinary framework that you've established.
So you can afford to be nice now.
I mean...
Well, I do like to paint the picture of being a dragon lady.
I mean, I call myself a dragon lady, deliberately, because we are in a very challenging area.
And so, not all parents...
I love that euphemism, challenging.
Yes, no, exactly.
Like, really rough.
Yeah, exactly.
And they're gangs.
I mean, they're kids who will show up on bikes, carrying knives, waiting for our kids, you know?
Oh, how do you deal with that?
Well, exactly.
How do you deal with it?
I mean, well, I don't know.
My teachers go out there and we all kind of storm out together.
We have a WhatsApp group and we know that if we see outside on there, that you come outside, everybody just goes to support the other teachers who are outside.
That must be frightening because one of the dangers about creating these super-educated children who are much, much more knowledgeable than their peer group next door, say, is that you...
You make them vulnerable, don't you?
Well, there are some.
To envy and hatred.
There is that.
There is that as a problem for some.
But then there are also some who are just...
Our kids also who are naughty, who get involved in nonsense, some criminality out there and so on.
I mean, they're obviously in the minority, but we do have an inner city intake here.
And so...
And also, I mean, you don't even have to be involved in crime.
You just need to be walking down the street and look at somebody the wrong way.
I mean, that's what happens here, right?
Right.
That's what happens on the street, as it were.
You know, that's just life, you know?
And we try and teach them how to keep themselves safe and how to get home.
We get them on the buses right away at the end of school.
Don't hang around.
Don't go and hang out at the chicken shops, etc.
We beg the parents not to give them smartphones and We try and encourage the children.
Well, tomorrow night, we've got this digital detox event happening, which I'm going to be running for the parents, and we're getting all the heads of year to ring all of the parents trying to get them in so I can teach them about, one, how dangerous these smartphones are.
The children on Snapchat and Instagram, honestly, it's not just that they don't do any of their homework.
It's that they get involved with the wrong kinds of people, right?
Right.
And then their lives are finished.
And so I've had, you know, year 11 parents who are crying, saying, what do we do?
What do we do?
Our poor girl, what do we do?
And I'm saying, well, let's go back five years and don't give her a phone, right?
I mean, now, you know, if you're middle class, you go to some private school and so on, you have a phone, well, it's perhaps not going to kill you, but Actually, I genuinely think that these phones, if they're not killing these kids, they're putting them in situations where their whole lives can be ruined because they get mixed up with people who are bad people, right?
And they get involved in activities that you don't want them to get involved in.
But you're a big fan of Fortnite, aren't you?
Yeah, so for instance, Fortnite is one of those things I will be talking about tomorrow night and telling the families how dangerous it is.
I think sadly a number of, well not a number, everyone, they don't realize how vulnerable their children are.
Everybody else is getting their child a smartphone, so they do the same.
They don't realize that the big tech CEOs in California, Bill Gates and when Steve Jobs was alive, they don't buy these things for their own children.
Their own children, they keep, until the children are 16, the children don't have smartphones.
Or they have one, they don't have a data plan.
And they do this because they know how important it is to keep children away from tech.
Because they have first-hand knowledge.
They know how addictive it is.
Our families don't know that.
And I mean, often, you know, on Twitter, I'll tweet about it.
And I get so many people saying to me, well, if they were good parents, then they would sort it out.
And there is some truth to that.
But it's also true that nobody warns them.
If you want to buy cigarettes...
There's a big warning on there saying to you, well, do it at your own risk.
Nobody warns you about smartphones.
Nobody warns you about what it might do to a child's mind.
There was an article in The Times yesterday about how it actually destroys the cortex of the brain if you're on there for more than seven hours, you know?
Like, as a child, right?
It's different for adults.
Adults, you know what?
Go on there for as long as you like.
I'm on my phone all the time trying to do work emails while I'm doing other things.
I'm on the tube, et cetera.
Thank goodness for my phone.
So I'm not saying technology is all bad.
But with children, it is dangerous.
And unsupervised access to the internet, especially if you live in the inner city, and the kinds of people who your children can access, it's what middle-class families just don't understand.
And middle-class people on Twitter say, oh, you're just being dramatic.
What's wrong with you?
I'm like, well, this is what we're living every day, right?
Yeah, yeah.
I see it.
And so then we're going to have a digital drop-off.
We're getting this big safe, and we're trying to encourage the children.
It's already been happening, actually.
The children give in their phones, maybe from Monday to Friday, so that we can keep them.
Or some kids do it for two nights.
They say, well, I can do it for one night, miss.
Let me try and see if I can stay away for a night, you know?
So we try and help them that way.
I mean, it's...
It is all-consuming, trying to save these kids, as it were, from the kind of life that they would have otherwise if it weren't for the school.
You are on a mission.
It's a holy mission, is it not?
I mean, I'm on a mission, as we know, to save Western civilization.
And you're on the same mission, actually.
Yeah, I often say it's the end of the West.
It is my known phrase.
But if every school were like this...
It would be.
That's right.
So I'm trying to slow it down.
I'm trying to slow down the end of the West by saying, look, it doesn't have to be chaos.
We can have schools where we appreciate and value silence in the corridors, where the children are able to get quickly to their lessons and feel safe, where they're able to put their hands up in the lesson and not feel they're going to get bullied for doing so, where learning and success are really celebrated.
It can be like this.
And, you know, there are other schools where they're doing that.
You know, I'm not saying that all other schools, that isn't the case.
We are doing it quite loudly, I suppose.
We're saying, hey, look, come and see what we do here.
We have visitors who come.
We have five to ten visitors, and they tend to be all teachers who come from around the country, but also around the world, from America, from Australia, New Zealand.
And they take ideas and they take them back to their schools.
I wanted to ask you about that.
Who's leading the way on this?
Is it you or America?
Is this something that American schools could learn from?
Well, we have a lot of Americans who come here, actually.
Doug Lamov, who wrote Teach Like a Champion, which is a massive book in education.
Loads of teachers read it.
He keeps sending people to us here.
He's been a few times.
And a lot of them, so Uncommon Schools, for instance, in New York, but also other charter schools in Chicago and so on.
They come here and love it and take ideas and so on.
Now, I myself have been to some of the charter schools in America and taken ideas and brought them here, so it is an exchange.
Like I said, the knowledge thing, you've mentioned appreciations at lunch where we are actively teaching them gratitude.
We believe that if you're grateful, you're a happier person and we want our children to be happy.
It's very easy, especially when you have a challenging intake in the inner city, to be consumed with the idea that life is hard and that all the various isms of sexism or racism or whatever it is out there will prevent you from succeeding in life.
And actually, I'm just not interested in that.
You know, I'm not interested.
I'm interested in what are we going to do for ourselves?
How are we going to make sure that we are the best person at interview?
That we are the best person at that job?
How we're going to...
You know, turning up on time is no longer an issue.
You know, as opposed to going through life always feeling like a victim and always blaming somebody else.
It's not going to help anybody.
You will spend your life feeling like a failure and blaming it on all these big isms out there.
And...
Who's going to die happy?
You know, the person who'll die happy is the one who said, I'm not a victim.
I'm going to go out there and I'm going to do what has to be done.
This is not...
Last night I met Candice...
Candice...
Oh, yes.
Yeah.
And, you know, what you're saying is quite similar.
What, here?
Yeah, she came over to the UK last night.
Oh, I see.
And getting off the plantation.
Right.
Indeed.
About not being...
Not blaming your ills on your accident of birth.
Well, any number of accidents that will happen through your lifetime, you may very well come across racism.
You may very well come across all sorts of things that will help hold you back.
But if your mentality is such that you're constantly feeling like a victim, that's the number one thing that's going to hold you back in life.
And, well, I say the number one thing.
Of course, my big, the reason why we have this school is I feel school will often be the number one thing that holds you back in life.
Or at least it doesn't allow you...
To get your foot up on a ladder somewhere.
Because if you leave school, 20% of our children, not our children here, but across the country, leave school functionally innumerate and functionally illiterate.
So, you know, they wouldn't know how to spell the word plumber.
They wouldn't know how to count their change in a shop.
Now, that's 20% of children.
I mean, it's shocking.
For 90 billion that we spend every year on education, right?
This is a first world country...
This is crazy, right?
Something is wrong.
And that's because there are lots of bad ideas out there, I think, in education.
And people are stuck in a kind of rut where they're doing the same thing over and over again.
And what I always say, you know, if you keep doing the same thing, you'll get what you've always got.
You need to change stuff.
And I don't necessarily even blame those in education because...
It's very hard when the system is set up in such a way that in order for you to really succeed, you have to reject what the system is telling you to do.
You have to be a little brave and a little crazy to do that.
And there are schools that have done that.
These various schools I mentioned before, like Dixon's Trinity or King Sonom Academy, Reach, Felton.
There are various schools out there.
You think, wow, they've really turned it on its head.
But that's because they've done the opposite to what the system is doing.
Why can't it be that the system is supportive of the right ideas?
Because then, perfectly ordinary people who are not crazy could come and run a school and just be normal and follow the system and they'd run a good school.
That's what I'm fighting for.
You make it sound so easy.
What I want to know is how you became who you are today.
Presumably you've been teaching all your life.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
And you've taught in some pretty rough schools, I imagine.
Yeah, I've only taught in inner city schools.
And so tell me about your early experiences, which must have, I imagine, shaped your views on education.
Yes.
So what happens is you do a PGCE and you're told to do all these games and make it all relevant and fun and so on.
And you try and do that.
And then the kids don't learn very much.
And then gradually over time, because in those days, remember, there was no Michael Gove.
There'd been no Michael Gove.
There was no discussion about skills and knowledge and so on.
Teachers nowadays, they think that that's normal.
They don't realize that in the day there was no discussion about this.
There was just a normal training where they taught you how to be a progressive teacher because that's what teaching was.
It wasn't that the word progressive didn't exist.
You see what I mean?
Everybody was just progressive.
And that's what it is.
It's like a fish doesn't know it's in water because everybody's in water.
Right.
So you get taught.
You try out these things.
And some people, namely say Michaela the woman, right, who we named the school after and she sadly died of cancer in 2011, she was one of these teachers, I was one of these teachers, where eventually you begin to reject the stuff that you've been taught to do because you realize it's not working.
But this takes time.
It takes years of trial and error, trial and error, and then you begin to fall back on all the kind of traditional ways of teaching, which do work, and traditional behaviour methods, which work.
And when I say traditional behaviour methods, I simply mean having really high standards, expecting children to be obedient, for instance.
That's a word that no one would ever use.
Understanding the concepts of praise and punishment.
Punishment, again, is a word that nobody would use in education.
They use sanctions instead.
They don't want to just treat children like children.
And that's not a bad thing.
They're kids.
That's fine.
And to celebrate them being children by giving them the structure and the order that they need.
So I did that in my own classroom and then I would take over failing departments and I would turn them around.
And how would I do that as a head of department?
And how would I do that?
By doing all these sorts of things that I'm talking to you about.
And then I became an assistant head.
Oh, that's our pips going for the changeover of lessons.
Oh, that's right.
And so, and then assistant head, deputy head, and so on.
And, of course, then I was writing a blog.
So 2005, 6, 7, 8, around that time, I was writing this blog anonymously.
It was cathartic.
I really enjoyed being able to come home and just say, little Johnny had his money stolen and isn't this dreadful?
And I'd tell a little story and that was it, you know.
I didn't know that at the time there were various people like Boris Johnson and Michael Gove reading my blog.
I didn't know this.
I mean, I didn't really take much notice of them.
I wasn't into politics.
I mean, I was a teacher.
I mean, I just got on with my life.
And you probably thought you were left-wing, if anything at all.
Yeah, definitely.
I mean, I was left-wing.
I was left-wing.
And then, I mean, I didn't really...
In fact, what used to happen, this is what happened.
So on my blog, in those days there was no Twitter.
So people would have conversations via blogs on the blog comment section where one comment would be made and then somebody would go back and write another comment and so on.
And I would write various pieces and left-wingers would come on and say this is dreadful, you're so right-wing, etc.
And I'd always be saying...
No, no, no, no.
I'm just like you.
You know, I'm a good person.
Of course I'm not on the right.
I'm working in the inner city trying to change lives.
So how could I possibly be on the right?
I'm a good person.
And then these right-wingers would come on.
And say, look again.
I think you'll find that you are on the right.
And this would go on for months, years, where I kept on denying the right-wingers.
The left-wingers kept on criticizing me.
And then I started to see a pattern, which was that the right-wingers kept on agreeing with me.
And the left-wingers were constantly slating me.
And they weren't just disagreeing.
They would get really angry, you know.
And I then thought, oh...
Well, maybe I am on the right after all.
So then what happened was that in 2010, Michael Gove, I mean, I met him and he asked me to go and speak at the Conservative Party conference and talk about various things that were wrong.
And I said, okay, I was a bit naive.
I didn't really think about it.
Well, I say I was naive.
I mean...
They did tell me that it would be aired on BBC Parliament, but I figured nobody watches BBC Parliament.
I mean, who cares?
But I hadn't really thought about the fact that once something's on film, it can be watched over and over and over again.
And I obviously did not imagine that my speech from that year would be watched more than David Cameron, the then Prime Minister's speech.
So you struck a chord with people?
Well, this was it.
I spoke and people gave me a standing ovation and then the whole kind of thing blew up.
What did you say?
I said the system was broken, essentially.
I said the system was broken for various reasons.
Kids are given excuses for their behaviour.
We don't hold them to account.
You know, white teachers are afraid to be called racist, you know, so they can't discipline the black kids, blah, blah.
I mean, I just...
You're lucky in that respect, by the way, because you're Guyana, is that right?
Well, my mother is Jamaican and my father's from Guyana in South America.
So that's your get-out-of-jail-free.
No one's going to accuse you of being too white.
No, no, I'm definitely not white.
And you've got your classless accent as well.
I mean, you've got an American accent.
Yes, I do.
But although you say that, it's really funny.
So my father's Indian Guyanese and my mother is a black Jamaican.
And because in the eyes of some people, there's this hierarchy in terms of race, at one point on the Wikipedia page that was created for me by, I don't know, some random people, there was this constant kind of battle between my detractors and my supporters, where my supporters were saying what I actually am, which is half black and half Indian, and the others were saying, no, no, no, she's Indian, she's Indian, because they felt...
That to make me black was to give me too much power.
Do you see what I mean?
Yes, I do.
So they had to push me up the totem pole of identity politics and make me Indian.
I mean, it is mad.
But that is the reality in 2018.
And just going back, you said about how you changed your practice in classes.
So bringing back the old values of discipline and self-respect and punishment and reward.
Is that not quite hard to do in a school where all the other teachers are using the crap methods, the progressive methods?
What do you mean, all the other teachers?
So you've got children coming from Sir's class where Sir is a standard lefty progressive and just, you know, anything goes.
And then they've imbibed that culture and then they come to your class.
Oh, you mean when I was at my other school?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Oh, I see.
Yeah, well, and that's where you really do need to be sort of exceptional in the classroom.
I mean, it sounds very arrogant when I say that, but what I mean by that, there are loads of exceptional teachers out there who are all singing and all dancing in front of the kids, and you spend your time ringing their parents all the time, and you're giving them gold stars in their books, and you're building relationships with them, and you're spending 80-hour, 90-hour weeks, literally, killing yourself, No, no, no.
That's obvious.
Yeah.
And it allows them to really, well, to be great teachers without having to do all that other stuff that I used to have to do.
So yes, I did all that stuff.
I, you know, I had a great time.
I mean, I'm really pleased.
You know, I spent all those years teaching.
And then, of course, 2010 happened.
And then I decided I needed to set up a school.
And so we set up the school.
And this is where we're at now.
What happened in 2010?
So that's my speech.
Oh, sorry, okay.
So that's the Conservative Party speech.
So tell me about the reaction to your speech, because obviously people like me thought, finally, finally a bloody teacher gets it.
But I imagine the blob, as Gove calls the educational establishment, which is pretty left-wing, isn't it?
I imagine you must have become public enemy number one.
Yeah, I was.
That's why I had to set up a school, because I was never going to get a job in the state sector again.
So tell me about the grief that you got.
Well, I mean, it's interesting because I did get loads of emails, hundreds of emails.
I mean, four or five hundred emails from teachers around the country who anonymously would say, thank God somebody said something.
Thank you.
But I'm not telling you who I am because they're all terrified.
Yeah.
So, yeah, I mean, I ended up without a job eventually, and then I was told by various people I just would not work in the state sector again, and I needed to go to the private sector.
And I did think about going to the private sector, but I love disadvantaged kids in the inner city.
It's what I do.
You know, it's what I've always done.
There's more room for value added, isn't there?
Yeah, and I don't know.
It's just what I do.
It's what I love.
I love these kids.
I mean, it's what I know.
I have nothing against the private sector.
You know, more power to them.
I have nothing against Eaton and those kinds of places, but it's not what I know.
But just going back, basically, after your 2010 speech...
Your career could have been dead in the water if the educational mainstream had its way because people would determine that you weren't going to get a job.
Worse than that.
I mean, they'd send me hate mail, racist hate mail.
Awful things.
I mean, you cannot imagine.
Oh, they'd use racist terms on you.
Yeah, yeah.
What?
These are supposed to be the people who have got the guardians of our national conscience.
Awful stuff.
I mean, awful stuff.
And they, yeah, they just wanted to ruin me.
I mean, and I suppose, you know, they might have done that to somebody else.
I mean, I've just kept going.
And I've kept going.
And now what is great is that we're now in a position where...
A lot of people who would normally just be sitting on the fence about these things have changed their minds.
And that's really great.
They have.
They really have.
People come here and maybe they come a second time or we have a book and they buy the book, they read it, they're not sure.
Then they come and see the school.
Then they hear a speech, a talk of mine at a conference or something.
And they gradually change their minds.
And that's the most satisfying thing about the school because it's not...
It's not about winning.
Winning is getting people to see what's possible and helping other teachers elsewhere to create this kind of thing in their own classroom or in their own schools.
You're listening to the Dellingpole Podcast with me, James Dellingpole, and my very special, exciting and wonderful, wonderful guest, Catherine Burblesing, more in a moment.
Every school in Britain is, certainly every state school in Britain is like yours.
And it could be, couldn't it?
I mean, it won't happen, but it's not an impossible dream to aim for.
No.
In fact, you know, that's my aim.
I mean, well, I say that.
The thing is, I do recognise that Michaela isn't necessarily everyone's choice.
And I do believe in parents having choice and that different options should be available to them.
I just want there to be more than just one Michaela.
It'd be lovely if we had a few hundred out there.
Well, isn't that...
You can do that, can't you?
Can't you be like a superhead and have a whole chain of...
Well, we might have a few, but we probably only have five or six in the end.
What I'd like is for other people to copy ideas and so on and to make their own versions of Michaela elsewhere.
And it is happening.
We've got a whole book of letters from people who've come here, heads who come and say, I've taken certain ideas and it's really improved my school.
Thanks very much.
So it is happening.
They're not necessarily copies of Michaela, but they've taken ideas and they've used them in their different contexts.
One doesn't necessarily need to have exactly what's in Michaela in every school out there.
Different contexts demand different things.
But I do think that there are certain themes, general themes, that all schools would be better off having.
Themes like believing in personal responsibility for the children.
And wanting to teach that.
Teaching the children gratitude and understanding that that's our role to do that.
Understanding that adults should be in authority.
That it's not bad to want adults to be in authority.
Often teachers think somehow that you're a bad person to think that you're the one in charge.
But of course you're in charge.
You're the adult.
So there are just various themes like those that I think every school would benefit from.
And also, you've got a sort of broken windows policy as regards the tiny things like if people forget to bring in their pens or any of their equipment.
You have a daily inspection, don't you?
Everyone's kit.
Yeah.
Now, I have to say, that's one thing, for instance, I'm not sure is something that every school would necessarily need.
If you didn't have such a challenging intake, it might not be such a big deal.
You know, if we didn't have that system, more than half the children would show up without pens.
And then it becomes unworkable.
You just can't teach the class, right?
Right.
Whereas if you're in a more affluent school and everybody turns up with a pen, but once in a while little Johnny forgets his pen.
What do you do?
It's not a big deal.
Yeah.
Yeah.
People, for instance, come and say, why do you go to such an extreme with silence in the in the corridors?
And it's never completely silent because, of course, all the children are saying morning and good afternoon to their teachers and so on.
So that happens.
But why silence?
Because if we didn't have that.
Children would have their heads punched in.
You know, they would be smashed against the walls.
There'd be fights going on.
And if your intake isn't going to do that, then you don't need to have silence necessarily.
You know, you have to judge it according to the intake you've got.
I was wondering...
What the barriers to our dream of having every school like Michaela are.
And it seems to me they're fairly obvious.
That there is a kind of progressive mindset which I think does not share our view that the purpose of education is to make children happy and intellectually fulfilled and capable of getting a good job and knowing stuff.
I think really they see it as a kind of social engineering process whereby every child, they wouldn't admit this of course, whereby every child is ground down to a certain level.
Do you think that's fair?
No, I'm not sure that is fair.
What I'm saying is that they want equality more than they want quality.
They do want equality, but I tell you what a lot of people, I think, think education's about.
I agree with you that it's about having happy children who are taught the right kinds of skills to be able to go out there and make something of their lives, who are also taught to appreciate Beethoven so that later in life they don't just look at Fortnite.
They're able to appreciate wonderful literature and look at a plane and have some understanding of how it works and so on and so forth.
So, I agree with you on all of that.
I think some people in education think that the point of education is to create revolutionaries.
That they want to teach children to overthrow their so-called oppressors.
And if they see the so-called oppressors as dead white men, for instance, then they don't want to teach them dead white men, like Charles Dickens or whoever it is, because those are the people who are oppressing them.
And so they want to set them free to be able to lead themselves and to have this kind of revolution.
And my point is...
I fully expect some of our children to become revolutionaries, but the only way you can become a revolutionary is if you know something about the revolution, right?
If you know something about the people you're trying to overthrow.
I mean, and I also fully expect some of our children to become, you know...
Bankers in the city and doctors and lawyers.
They'll do whatever they want to do.
My job isn't to tell them what to do.
My job is to give them all of the skills and knowledge that they need to be able to access a whole world out there.
And when you see the social engineering thing, you see...
If you're not really teaching them knowledge, and if you are uncomfortable about, say, teaching them dead white men and so on, then that dumbs everything down.
And that's where you see what you're calling social engineering, where everybody seems to be made very similar.
But it's not intentional.
I don't believe it's intentional.
It just sort of happens.
Also, people are...
A lot of teachers are just trying to get through the day, right?
Like, they don't have any intentions about anything.
They're just trying to wake up in the morning and go home in the evening safe.
And you can sympathize with those teachers who are stuck in these schools with no discipline.
How can you teach a class where the children are just...
Exactly.
Those teachers, honestly, they are not thinking, my vision for the world is X. Right.
They are just trying to pay the bills and trying not to have a breakdown.
Okay.
So maybe the grunts are not, well, obviously some of them are to blame, but they're not wholly to blame.
But there is that higher tier of educationalists, let's call them, who are stuck with this progressive dogma, which is anathema to children actually getting a good education.
I'll give you an example.
Phonics.
We know that phonics, do we not, is the best way to teach a child to read, whatever their class or their Well, Nick Gibb has done an extraordinary job with Fun Access, to be said.
Most schools have taken that on.
There's an example of where there has been real success.
And we are having success here, you know, with people coming here and taking ideas.
So, you are right, though.
That there is a small minority of people who will not budge in education.
Professors who are...
That's it.
They are people with power.
That's the problem.
The people who are powerless don't have a voice.
The people with power do.
And they are fighting tooth and nail to keep it the way that it is.
And you're right that they hate us and schools like us because we turn things on their head.
And then they have to say, oh, well, actually, maybe it isn't the case that all poor children have to fail because they're poor.
Maybe it isn't the case that, you know, black kids can't achieve and that kind of thing.
Various assumptions that would go round in education circles.
Yeah.
And it's not just us alone.
As I say, there are other schools as well that are forcing those lies, really.
They're forcing them back, right?
I do feel we're winning overall.
Those of us with a more traditional mindset...
I mean, I say we're winning.
Education is overwhelmingly progressive.
But especially in this country, there's no other country where a traditional mindset has taken hold as it has done.
And that's thanks to Michael Gove and the work that he did from 2010 in trying to shake up the system.
He managed, he hoped, I think, to allow different ways of thinking to grow organically in education.
So he didn't want to just pull a lever in Whitehall and force everybody to teach knowledge and lessons because he knew that we were going to do it.
knew that wouldn't work.
What he wanted to do was break up the system so that free schools could pop up and maybe the occasional free school would pop up and do it differently in the way that we have.
Yes.
And thanks to that, thanks to Gove and thanks to social media that has brought all of these traditionalists together, they've become quite powerful.
And they argue their corners vociferously on Twitter and so on.
People have to...
The progressives have had to take a step back.
I mean, they really have.
Ground has been gained in this country.
He was clever in the way that he used effectively, insofar as you can use the market in education, he used the market and used competition.
To embarrass other schools with beacons like yours.
Yeah, although, but as I say, it's more the ideas.
So there's something called Research Ed, for instance, which are these education conferences, where it's become mainstream in these conferences to talk about traditional ways of teaching.
Really, yeah.
Before 2010, this was unheard of, right?
And yet, look at what happened to Gove.
He was vilified for all these achievements.
And he lost his job, ultimately.
David Cameron sacked him because he was considered, what, too toxic?
Yeah, I mean, I sort of understand.
I was devastated when he was asked to step down.
You understand, do you?
I do understand why.
Because they were trying to win an election.
I mean, from the party's point of view, I kind of get it.
I mean, look, my hope has always been that Michael Gove would return because he's the only person who really gets an education on any party.
I mean, this is just...
He loved education.
Most politicians don't love education.
They do it because that's where they've been put to do...
You know, they do it for a while and then they move on to something more important.
Yeah.
Michael Gove never wanted to move on to something more important until things went horribly wrong for him.
But when he was in education, he loved it and he was so good at it.
And he was so willing to listen to ordinary people.
You know, he listened to ordinary teachers and what we had to say.
And he respected us.
For the first time ever, an education secretary listened to what ordinary teachers were saying.
It was wonderful.
And he made some real change in education, which is fantastic.
It is more difficult now, obviously, because we don't have somebody leading at the top politically.
Yes, exactly.
Now, I witnessed some of the miseries that you went through in trying to establish the Michaela School, because you tried to establish a Michaela School near me when I was living in South East London.
And I was so excited that you were coming to my area.
I thought, my God, my kids are going to get a free education and it's going to be the best you could possibly get.
And there was the meeting, wasn't there?
In the garden of a pub, I think.
That's right.
And people from all races and classes and backgrounds came to...
And we were all parents.
We all wanted the best for our kids.
But...
There were people in the audience who positioned themselves.
Apparently this is a technique that revolutionary, the communists use, where they position themselves at strategic points in the audience.
Yeah, that's right.
And they disrupt the event.
Well, the thing is then they weren't even from the local community.
They bused them in from outside of London.
Did they?
Yeah.
And then stood outside with placards saying things like Tory teacher and so on and shouting abuse at me.
We had to hire a bouncer for the evening because we were so worried about the possible violence that might ensue.
And then you saw us.
We'd be talking to the audience, to these mums who were interested in getting a better education for their kids.
Desperate, exactly.
I mean, I had mums who would cry in front of me when they were wanting a new place for their child.
And these idiots were standing up shouting abuse at us deliberately because they wanted to stop us from opening up a school.
I mean, I used to say, well, you'd think we were building nuclear arms.
I mean, all we want to do is set up a school and help poor kids.
I mean, this is the other thing.
It's not even like we've got all these white middle class kids here.
We've got all these poor kids who are benefiting from a great education.
What exactly is the problem?
Now, I have to say these people have now gone away.
But we, I mean, there are papers here I could show you.
They used to stand outside the school here protesting again with their placards.
And kids would be leaving, so our 11-year-olds would leave, and they would hand them sheets of paper that would say...
Here, if I show you.
Oh, I'd love to see this.
They would hand them this stuff saying that the school was a health and safety hazard.
Oh, right.
They actually broke onto the site here.
You see this?
Saying that we were putting pupils' lives at risk.
A potential death trap.
A potential, yeah.
And so you can imagine parents ringing, terrified, thinking, why?
I've sent my child to this school.
Is he safe?
You know...
I mean, and they broke onto the site to do that.
Now, you know, they've left us alone now.
And that's where I feel like we are winning.
Because ultimately, it's hard to argue against us now because we're doing great things for kids.
The parents are supportive.
We're changing kids' lives.
Why would you want to close us down?
I wanted to ask you about that, actually.
The parents, do you have any difficulty getting the parents on board with your programs?
Yeah, so there are some parents.
There are some parents who are, you know, 100%, and then there are other parents, parents who haven't necessarily chosen the school, for instance, who don't necessarily like what we're offering.
Oh, really?
Do you get children taken away from the school?
A couple have done that, but what tends to happen is we'll confiscate their mobile phone, and then the mum comes in screaming, saying she wants the phone.
Funny, you don't turn up to parent meetings.
Funny, that is really shocking to me.
I think the only time you actually manage to come into the school is when you want to get your child's mobile phone back.
So that kind of thing.
They'll get angry about that.
Oh, I'd love to see one of your confrontations.
Are you good at sort of dialing them down?
Well, Well, you know, sometimes, sometimes not.
It depends.
Sometimes if they're that bad, I mean, you just had to call the police.
Oh, really?
This is the inner city, right?
That's what it is, you know?
And that's what I mean.
That's what I've done my whole life.
I'm used to this.
You know, it's people who aren't used to this kind of thing.
They think, really?
What on earth?
Although, quite a lot of your teachers, I notice, I mean, they're young.
They're very committed.
They've got a kind of...
They remind me a bit of evangelical Christians, and I mean that in a good way.
They've got this fire in them, but they seem to be quite well-spoken and probably quite well-educated.
I imagine you get quite a lot of people wanting to work here.
Yeah, well, I mean, sometimes it's teaching, so, you know, there's certain sort of subjects and so on.
It's hard.
It can be hard.
But what I always say is you only need one person to walk through the door as long as they're the right person, right?
And so, yes, the teachers here are very committed and very enthusiastic and love the kids.
And they want to be able to look back on their lives later and say, I really did something that changed the world, you know?
I must say, if you're going to go onto the front line and feel good about yourself, I'd rather do it here than your average, bog-standard comp.
Well, and more importantly, you'll have more impact here.
Of course you will.
Right?
Because the systems support you.
So you will see the impact of your teaching every single day.
Yeah.
You often hear schools, lefty teachers complaining that money is a big problem, that schools are underfunded.
Do you think that's true?
I will never say no to more money.
Yeah, you're right.
Sure, yes, it'd be nice to have more money, but I do think that there are ways to save on money that we can all try and do.
I suppose, to put it another way, does your school get any more money per pupil than any other school?
We get less money.
We get less money because we're a free school that opened when we did, therefore we have less money.
The schools that have been open for ages get far more money than we do.
Also, we're a very small school, so you get money per pupil.
It's much harder to make a school work the smaller it is, and we're very small.
So if you have a large school with 2,000 children, it's a much easier thing to do than what we've got.
I mean, we have a hard time.
We have a playground outside for the kids that is the old car park for this building.
There is no car park for the staff.
There are no trees for the children.
I've just spent bloody fortune on my parking.
Where do you park?
Well, they don't.
They take the tube.
I mean, there's no car park.
There's no trees.
There's no grass.
There's...
The tiny yard outside.
We can't put the whole school out there at one time.
We have to arrange our timetable in such a way so that the kids aren't out there at the same time.
The school is not ideal by any stretch of the imagination, but you make it work, right?
We all know the stories of buildings where they've spent $35 million on a building, and then they've had to close the school down.
It's happened over and over again.
It's not just about spending money.
Money can be really good, but it's the ideas that are the most important thing.
I think that's a good note to end on because it's so true.
Yes.
Well, I can't wait for your first exam results to prove, A, that your system works, and B, it's going to so upset the leftists.
It really is, the progressives.
They're going to hate you even more, which is a win.
Well, what I want is for as many people as possible to come and visit the school and change their minds about it.
Yeah.
Well, they should.
If anyone gets the chance, come to the Michaela.
I've been blown away.
Well, and they're very welcome.
They just need to go on the website and they can book in.
Anybody's welcome anytime to come have lunch with the kids.
Okay, cool.
So, thank you to my very special podcast guest, Catherine Berbalsing.
You're listening to me, James Dellingpole on the Dellingpole Podcast.
Thank you and goodbye.
Thank you, as ever, special friend, for listening to the Dellingpole podcast.
I hoped you enjoyed it as much as I did.
Now you're probably asking yourself, how can I stop this podcast dying a miserable, sad, lonely death?
How can I ensure that James keeps producing podcasts of this standard?
Well, my special friend, the answer is very simple.
You go to my website, DellingpoleWorld.com.
And you have a look at the different funding options available.
Some of them aren't easy, but that's because the left is trying to close conservative voices like mine down and make it as difficult as possible for people like you to enable people like me to go on producing the product that you like.
But anyway, I know it's a hassle, but please, please give it a go.
I do need your support.
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I hope you're going to stay loyal and happy.
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