The Times Magazine 23impossible to prove one way or the other.
But when you’ve been working for as long as
I have in the inner city, you know how much
culture has an impact on children... People
underestimate its impact and its existence.”
“People” is a word she often uses as a
generic term for those middle-class folk who
are doing very well, thank you, and so moving
up the social mobility ladder is not a matter of
life or death. They are obstructive with their
patronising do-gooding, forever telling her
how to run her school. “I have spent a lifetime
trying to persuade nice, middle-class people
with compassionate views that the things
they are doing hurt my kids,” she says.
“They may be trendy and sensible, but I wish
they’d go and volunteer at a school with a
challenging intake, or work in a soup kitchen
- something other than chatting at dinner
parties. Because you’re not helping my kids.”
Birbalsingh’s argument is that most of
these people don’t “get” her children, don’t
“get” how far behind they’ve fallen, or how
little they know. When Brent Council sends
them to her in year 7 they are “rude, surly,
miserable”, she says, “walking in a certain kind
of street manner. It’s hard to believe when you
meet them now, but I promise you we teach
them to be like this.”
Every child is put through behaviour boot
camp. Detentions are given for lateness (even
by one minute), for homework that’s not
handed in, poor presentation, talking back,
tutting, eye rolling, untucked shirts, forgetting
to bring a pen. They are taught to pick crumbs
off the floor without complaint, to lay the
table at lunch, to serve each other, ask
questions and have conversations. In assembly,
they are instilled with Michaela’s culture of
obedience and achievement and drilled with
pep talks throughout the day.
One of her strategies is to keep introducing
the children to things they wouldn’t otherwise
experience. In music they learn Mozart over
Stormzy, because “whether you think Mozart’s
better than Stormzy is neither here nor there - the fact is, they already know Stormzy”.
She recalls an assembly on Beethoven’s
Fifth Symphony. “I put a picture of Beethoven
in on the screen and I played dah-dah-dah
DAH. And then I spoke about Kylie Minogue.”
I should say here that Birbalsingh is
focused and relentless, but does occasionally
skid off in unexpected directions. “I said,
‘When I was growing up in the Eighties, the
most scandalous thing was Kylie Minogue in
a little pair of shorts. Whereas you lot are up
against much more.’ ” She told her assembly
she knows it’s hard to turn a blind eye to
[female rapper] Cardi B, but, “You must. Don’t
listen to this stuff. It destroys your innocence;
it destroys your idea of what’s real, decent and
honest. Listen to Beethoven’s Fifth!”
Later, when she sat down with them, she
realised, “They were totally confused by my
talk. They thought I meant Kylie Minogue
and Beethoven were contemporaries. Even
with his wig and everything.”
I ask if footballers like Raheem Sterling and
Marcus Rashford are good role models. “No.”
Why? “What happens is kids imagine that
they’re going to become footballers and don’t
spend time on their GCSEs. You need them
working on GCSEs, because they’re not
going to become footballers.” But what about
the drive and determination of those two?
“I would use Serena Williams as an example.
Because she is far away and they don’t play
tennis, so they’re not going to think, ‘I’m
going be a tennis player like Serena.’ They’ll
take from that her work ethic. Whereas if I
put Marcus Rashford up there, it would be too
dangerous because they would think, ‘Oh,
I want to be a footballer.’ And I don’t want
them to be a footballer. Because we’ve worked
very hard on moving them away from that.If you go to local schools, kids will often say
they want to be a footballer or some kind of
social media, pop star-type thing.”
Birbalsingh takes a dim view of all of that.
She is appalled by TikTok, gaming, Snapchat,
by screens in general. She says it won’t matter
that my son, say, plays computer games
because as a middle-class child he won’t be
doing it until 3am. When I say don’t be so
sure, she counters by saying, without realising
it, I impart information to my kids at all times.
“It happens by osmosis. Privileged people
don’t understand just how privileged they are,”
she says. Even if you’re not reading to them
every night, you are having conversations,
watching documentaries, making up for it
in various ways. And I don’t just mean tutors
[she bats away discussion of them with her
hand], but in far bigger ways. These children
[her pupils] only learn through school.”
The pandemic has magnified their
problems because, “If you’re prevented from
going into school for months, you’re falling
further behind. Disadvantaged children have
never been so disadvantaged.”
Students are taught subjects she sees as
culturally relevant. British history, Gandhi’s
India, the Mau Mau rebellion in Kenya. But is
there too much British Empire nostalgia? How
is Kipling relevant today? “It’s not Kipling,”
she bristles. “It’s If, which is a beautiful poem.”
She says that if one of her pupils were to
offer a repudiation of Kipling, she would be
“absolutely thrilled”.
She argues that our Britishness “binds us”
as a multicultural society. “When Britishpeople feel guilt around the past, it denies
ethnic minority kids the right to feel this is
their home. And if everyone is always talking
about the fact that they’re brown and black
[it makes them feel] that they’re outsiders.”
Birbalsingh had a complicated relationship
with identity growing up, not just because
her parents were immigrants in Toronto, but
because her father’s work frequently took
them abroad. She was born in New Zealand,
lived in Nigeria for a year, aged four, and
in France aged ten. They moved to England
when she was 15 (she stayed alone aged 16,
when her parents returned to Canada, so that
she could finish her A-levels).
“My parents never talked about the world
of blackness,” she says. “My father was always
very critical of my mother’s sister, who gave
her children black dolls. He didn’t want us to
have black dolls; he felt that was too much of
a political statement. You were positioning
yourself as an outsider in society.”This left her confused about how she was
perceived by others. “I used to think people
didn’t realise [my mum was black]. I used
to look in the mirror and think, ‘Maybe I’m
getting away with it. They don’t know.’ ” That
made it all the more hurtful when people
commented on her skin. “When somebody
calls you a racist name or says, ‘Does it come
off ?’ you think, ‘I’ve been found out.’ There
I was, never inviting friends home because
they were going to realise...” She is about to
say that they were going to realise her mother
was black and then she laughs at her younger
self. “Well, they already knew, honey.”
She remembers thinking as a child,
“I would just get lighter and lighter and then
one day I would be white and I would be a
proper human being.” And yes, she knows that
is a comment that will make you wince and
that, “When we talk about white privilege,
that’s the sort of thing we mean.” But she is
also “anti privilege talk”.
Why? “It’s all gone far too far. And I don’t
think it’s helpful for black kids or brown kids
to be told that they’re oppressed all the time.
We never do that here. We don’t go on about
how life is difficult for black people because
a child internalises that and thinks there’s
something wrong with them. We might say,
‘You’re up against these private school kids,’
and then they know they need to work extra
hard. But that’s different from saying, ‘Oh, woe
is me, the world is really racist.’ ”
She returns to her original point, “which
is that when people talk about white privilege- even though I would never do so – there
IS RAHEEM STERLING A GOOD ROLE MODEL? ‘I NEED
PUPILS TO STUDY, NOT IMAGINE BEING FOOTBALLERS’