Katharine Moana Birbalsingh
She is a British teacher and education reformer who is the founder and head teacher of Michaela Community School, a free school established in 2014 in Wembley Park, London.
1973
New Zealand
British
Indo-Guyanese/Jamaican parents
In 2017, Birbalsingh was included by Anthony Seldon in his list of the 20 most influential figures in British education, and in 2019 she was awarded the Contrarian Prize. She was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2020 Birthday Honours for services to education.
Birbalsingh grew up in Toronto and was educated at Victoria Park Collegiate Institute, with brief periods spent in Nigeria and France, She read French and philosophy at New College, Oxford.. At university she was a member of the Socialist Workers Party.
While at Oxford, Birbalsingh visited inner city schools as part of a scheme to encourage state school pupils to apply to the university. After graduation she decided to teach in state schools herself and from 2007 she wrote an anonymous blog, To Miss With Love, in which—as Miss Snuffy—she described her experiences teaching at an inner city secondary school. In 2010 she was Assistant Head of Dunraven School, Streatham, south London, and that year she joined St Michael and All Angels Academy in Camberwell as Vice Principal.[19] In 2014, she established Michaela Community School, a free school in Wembley Park, London.[20]
Birbalsingh is a supporter of the traditional teaching methods described in E D Hirsch’s The Schools We Need and Why We Don’t Have Them (1999). She writes that the book opened [her] eyes to what was wrong in schools, and argues that education should be about teaching children knowledge, not learning skills.[21][12] Responding to the removal of Michael Gove as Education Secretary in 2014—Gove was also a supporter of Hirsch—she said it was a tragedy that his work would not be completed.
Parents – Frank and Norma Birbalsingh
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-61247374 accessed 23/06/2022
https://mobile.twitter.com/miss_snuffy accessed 23/06/2022
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/06/09/social-mobility-should-celebrate-small-steps-up-ladder/ accessed 23/06/2022
https://anirishmanabroad.wordpress.com/2011/02/23/katharine-birbalsingh-the-tory-teacher/ accessed 23/06/2022
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katharine_Birbalsingh accessed 23/06/2022
https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/4678056.Katharine_Birbalsingh accessed 23/06/2022
