Britain's Strictest Headmistress - ITV, Sunday 22nd May 10:15pm

[dsr]

She's a total loon and her school isn't even in the top ten (Sunday Times 2025):

The UK’s best comprehensive state secondary schools for 2025
Tauheedul Islam Girls’ High School, Blackburn
St Andrew’s Catholic School, Leatherhead
St Paul’s School For Girls, Edgbaston
Impington Village College, Impington
JFS, Harrow
JCoss (Jewish Community Secondary School), Barnet
The Cardinal Vaughan Memorial School, London
Sandringham School, St Albans
Hasmonean School For Girls, London
Mossbourne Community Academy, London

Here's a random thought. Let teachers run schools how they think they should be run, and let parents choose which schools their child should go to. If some schools are oversubscribed, then expand them or create more schools on the same lines. If some schools are unpopular, then let them close.

[LDNBFC87]

Here's a random thought. Let teachers run schools how they think they should be run, and let parents choose which schools their child should go to. If some schools are oversubscribed, then expand them or create more schools on the same lines. If some schools are unpopular, then let them close.

Do you have children and have you tried to get them into the school you prefer? In built up areas, it's incredibly difficult. I respectfully disagree with you - there needs to be a nation wide baseline of education and disciplinary standards across the UK imo.

In response to oversubscribed schools: where will we find the land to expand existing schools or build new ones? Where will we find the money to do so?

[dsr]

Do you have children and have you tried to get them into the school you prefer? In built up areas, it's incredibly difficult. I respectfully disagree with you - there needs to be a nation wide baseline of education and disciplinary standards across the UK imo.

In response to oversubscribed schools: where will we find the land to expand existing schools or build new ones? Where will we find the money to do so?

I know it's difficult to get children into the schools that people want to go to - that's why we need more flexibility in getting more of those schools. If Michaela school is undersubscribed because parents don't want to send their children there, then let it shrink or shut. If it's popular because parents do want to send their children there, then let it grow or build more like it.

[CrosspoolClarets]

The issue here isn’t whether we like KBS - I find her irritating, but clever, and I recognise she is socially conservative (not a political point) and there are two views on how to bring up and educate children. I’m with her on that, they need discipline and structure.

The real issue is whether the current course of direction for our schools that she objects to in her letter will work. I think it will be a total disaster, and kids will grow up undereducated, smartphone-addled, bullied and mentally weak.

Schools and hospitals should be like this messageboard - completely separate from politics.

[Colburn_Claret]

Yesterday I heard that my English teacher from secondary school had died last month. He was a brilliant teacher, a proper bloke with a great sense of humour, who really got how to treat kids of that age; not like youngsters but not quite like adults. He was the king of the spelling test, to which I credit my fantastic spelling skills (but not my typing). A Bolton fan, he went to the Turf to watch them and bought copies of Marlon’s Gloves, which he gave to me, telling me to not read the swearing. He deftly made Macbeth seem like a comedy at times, most likely why I’ve been to see it 3 times as an adult despite finding it a bit of a slog in my teens. Most of all though, he knew that teaching isn’t just about passing exams, it’s about finding a passion, a love for a subject that can shape your future.

I’d rather kids went to schools that have a rounded approach and teachers like Mr Rice so they come out bright, sound people than become regimented drones, with information drilled into them by robots with the sole purpose of getting the school ‘results’.

The best teachers are the ones whose positive impact you can still draw on 30 years later.

Too true.
Teaching was always a vocation, not a job. Something died when Thatcher tarred the profession as left wing hippies, and it's never been the same since. To the detriment of 2 generations of students.