Teacher condemns "dumbed down" standards

Katharine Birbalsingh – state school teacher in London speaking to the Conservative Party conference – Tuesday 5th October

“My name is Katharine and I have just started as a deputy head in an Academy which has been failing in inner London. I myself was educated in the state sector, went to Oxford where I was a serious lefty, reading Marxism Today and flirting with the Socialist Workers Party. Then I became a teacher.

I have come here today to expose some of the truths about the education system. My experience of teaching for over a decade in five different schools has convinced me beyond a shadow of a doubt that the system is broken, as it keeps poor children poor.

This is Kane. The other day he was in trouble and was spending his lunch hour with me. His best friend Mitchel approached wanting to talk to him and I said he couldn’t because Kane was being punished. Mitchel responded with ‘But it isn’t Kane’s fault Miss, he was born with anger management’ and Kane said ‘Yes Miss, it isn’t my fault, I AM anger management.’ Notice how these boys don’t even know what they’re saying. But their words reveal a deeper culture of excuses, of low standards in expecting the very least from our poorest and most disadvantaged. When I have Kane repeat after me, I’m responsible for myself, yes miss, I’m responsible for myself I am fighting generations of thinking which has left our education system in pieces, where all must have prizes, all must have GCSEs and all must have a place at university.

We have a situation where standards have been so dumbed down that even the children know it. When I give them past exam papers to do from 1998, they groan and beg for a 2005 or 6 paper, because they know it’ll be easier. The idea of benchmarking children and letting them know how they compare to their peers is considered so poisonous by us teachers that we don’t ever do it, and children live in darkness, without any idea of how they compare to those around them, let alone to those who are educated in the private sector.

Exclusion quotas bind our headteachers, league tables have all of us pursuing targets and grades instead of teaching properly, and the ordinary child like Jordan or Natasha is lost in a sea of bureaucracy handed down from the well meaning, politicians from up above. Kids themselves cry out for structure and discipline. I remember once a child begging me to be in my class, and when I said no, he said, But Miss please I want to be in your class because I hear you’re really MEAN.

Black underachievement is due in part to the chaos of our classrooms, and in part, to the accusation of racism. If you keep telling teachers that they’re racist for trying to discipline black boys, and if you keep telling Heads that they’re racist for trying to exclude black boys, in the end, the schools stop reprimanding these children. When the lawyers argue against a school and readmit a black boy, who do we think suffers the most? It’s all the other black boys who now look to this invincible child and copy his bad example. Black children underachieve because of what the well-meaning liberal does to him.

There are stories of success however. Rowan here, a few years ago in this photo, right now as I speak, is taking up his place at Cambridge to study History. He was an extraordinary child. I taught him for five years. And it is true that if you are exceptional as a pupil, or if you are extraordinary as a Head, you can achieve success in spite of the shackles that bind us. But if you are ordinary, in the state system as it is, you do not stand a chance. And by very definition, exceptional is rare.

I want to show you a video of my kids, playing steel pans.

When their music teacher asked for a peripatetic piano teacher, he was told that steel pans were part of these kids’ culture and that this was all they should learn to play.

At some point in history, the Left did enormous good for the teaching profession and so we teachers tend to be blinded by leftist ideology.I too have been a victim of such thinking and I come to you today, finally, ready to overthrow the shame that I have felt, literally shame, because in the last election, I voted Conservative. That, in itself, is part of the problem in education – that many of the necessary changes require right-wing thinking, and we teachers instinctively reject such developments because of our loyalty to the Left.

In schools and in society, we need high expectations, of everyone, even if you’re black, or live on a council estate – Why can’t they sit exams at the end of the year? We need to instil competition amongst the kids and help build their motivation by ensuring they’re not given everything and that they are held to account for what they do. We need to rid the classrooms of chaos by unshackling Heads and setting our schools free.

I want to end with a quote I always use with my students. Success is never final. Failure is never fatal. It’s courage that counts. And just as I have found the courage to stand before you today and point to the Emperor and say he isn’t wearing any clothes, I only hope there is enough courage in this room, enough courage in Michael Gove and in David Cameron, to glue our education system back together.”

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