The Sunday Times - UK (2022-05-29)

THE

CRITICS

JAMES COWEN

TELEVISION

Chastising

kids? Not

good on TV

Britain’s Strictest

Headmistress ITV, Sun

Prehistoric Planet Apple TV+

State of the Union

BBC2, Tue

The Flight Attendant

Sky Max, Thu

Of all the inspiring, heart-

bursting things television can

do with children, filming the

strictest school in Britain

probably isn’t one of them.

You can show them

crumpling before being

glowingly built back up, or

special, tender teachers

working tirelessly and quietly

to coax them into better habits.

But filming a teacher giving a

vulnerable 12-year-old a total

hairdryering is hardly going to

feel like a sprinkle of the cosy

ol’ telly fairy dust.

The most uncomfortable

five minutes of Britain’s

Strictest Headmistress,

about the Michaela

Community School in

Wembley, northwest London,

was probably when Corliss,

a new pupil, was given an

intense dressing-down by his

head of year. If he didn’t want

to participate in the school’s

ashram methods, they would

be psychologically beaten into

him. Or as they might put it:

he’d have to “decide himself ”.

I probably should have

been thrilled that by the end

of the programme Corliss had

“decided” to fall in line with

the school’s ethos. But there is

a deep human reaction against

watching children being

treated harshly. Michaela, in

one of the poorest parts of

London, is like a school “in

Africa” where firm discipline

is “natural”, said one of the

mothers. I don’t care if it is

the right thing to do; it doesn’t

look good on TV.

The school’s headmistress,

Katharine Birbalsingh, by

contrast, looks wonderful.

Time and again this willowy,

immaculate woman told

viewers that they wouldn’t

understand the school’s

theory that boundaries,

rituals, routines and heavy

punishments worked. I still

find it strange accepting that

a “special” way of teaching

should be developed for poor

black people, but then if this

school were in the home

counties the narrative would

probably be “Look how well

they’re running this perfect

private school — it’s just like

Harry Potter” rather than one

of oppression.

Birbalsingh, of course, is a

dream subject. If there is one

thing that works on the box it

is jeopardy and I cannot work

out whether this immaculate

demon headmistress is good

news or bad. On one hand she

is right that there should be

no talking in corridors, no

looking away from teachers,

no lateness, no lack of

participation, no lolling, no

backchat, no phones — we

learnt that the source of

almost all bullying is social

media. But how far should

you go? In her school if you so

much as forget your “second

pencil”, as one child dolefully

put it, you could

get a detention. We

watched as the pupils

arrived at the school

gates on the stroke

of 7.55am, where

everyone lined

up and raised

their hands. “Oh

my God,” I said to my

there were questions. The

children who were carefully

piped on to tell us how much

they loved the school might as

well not have been there — they

were never going to criticise

the frightening Birbalsingh.

She, too, was something

of an enigma — never shown

disciplining any child, only

telling Corliss, in a surely

confected scene, that he had to

“fix” his attitude. The camera

flicked to her giving interviews

in her perfect home or in

many perfect outfits while

various teachers, no doubt

fugitives from a frustrating,

crumbling, sloppy system, told

us how brilliant it all was.

The school teaches

“personal responsibility”, one

clean-looking evangelist said.

But I’m not sure you help

people to make decisions by

simply giving out loads of

rules. The only dissenting

voice came from a visitor,

Jeremy Paxman, who said it

was good that the pupils were

never “restless or bored”, but

that they were always

“running around and not

having time to think”. But

even then you think: maybe

he has come from a place of

intellectual privilege where

it’s easy to do that. So what

right does he have to say how

poor kids should be taught?

On Apple TV+ there was

another programme to be

suspicious of: Prehistoric

Planet. I must say it boggles

my mind that its presenter,

David Attenborough, is still

giving sprightly, energised

pieces to camera. How does

he do it at 96? Is there a

picture in an attic somewhere

that shows him older than a

desiccated ornithomimus? It

is amazing when you consider

that the Queen, who is also

96, is golf-carted everywhere.

In the first episode we were

spirited to the Tethys Sea,

an ancient ocean where the

tumbling, gambolling wildlife

behaved eerily like creatures

in a Disney film. A gigantic

mosasaur — a kind of

weaponised dolphin — was

having an “all-over body

boyfriend, “are they doing a

Nazi salute?”

A lot of effort had gone into

presenting the most balanced

picture — mostly on the part,

I’m imagining, of Birbalsingh

— resulting in a rather timid,

insipid, controlled and

plastic infomercial that

told us little about

the school. We were

taken through

Birbalsingh’s rules

for better learning:

“Routines and rituals

work marvels.” Yet still

She looks great and is surely correct, but

the demon headmistress made me wince

Everyone

raised their

hands. ‘Oh my

God, is that a

Nazi salute?’

Please miss The fearsome

teacher Katharine Birbalsingh

CAMILLA

LONG

16 29 May 2022