{"id":8002,"date":"2026-09-04T09:26:01","date_gmt":"2026-09-04T07:26:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/foglioeuropeo.ilfoglio.it\/?p=8002"},"modified":"2026-09-04T09:26:01","modified_gmt":"2026-09-04T07:26:01","slug":"some-outstanding-british-schools-are-criticized-for-being-too-strict","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/foglioeuropeo.ilfoglio.it\/en\/some-outstanding-british-schools-are-criticized-for-being-too-strict\/","title":{"rendered":"Some outstanding British schools are criticized for being \u201ctoo strict\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

Rightly or wrongly, the British Education System seems to be an object of constant fascination to other countries, perhaps due to the endless number of books, plays and films that have been inspired by it.
\nThe variety of scholastic systems offered in the UK is unusually broad; English vs. Scottish; Boarding vs.Day Schools; Private vs State Schools; Confessional vs. non-Denominational Schools; State-controlled Schools vs. \u201cAcademies\u201d which are fully autonomous, privately funded, but state-owned schools, a hybrid system invented under the Labour government of Tony Blair in 2000, which have proved exceptionally successful, hence now very popular with parents & pupils alike.
\nAll of which systems have their supporters and their detractors amongst both politicians, educationalists and parents.
\nBut there are above all two major dividing lines in the Great British Education Debate which over the last century have fiercely divided the country and its political exponents, and continue to do so.
\nFirstly, over the last century, the Political Left have waged an incessant battle against private education, in almost all its forms, and then \u201cSelective Education\u201d, which streams pupils from the age of 11 to 18 according to their abilities.
\nIn the 1960s & 1970s, successive Labour governments fought to abolish Grammar Schools \u2013 broadly similar to Italian licei<\/em> \u2013 considering them unfairly advantage for the cleverer students, an disadvantageous towards those less bright pupils in the Secondary schools \u2013 much like the Italian scuole tecniche<\/em>.
\nDespite the fact that almost all Labour ministers of the last century benefitted from Grammar school education, for ideological reasons, they wished to abolish them in favour of the one-size-fits-all Comprehensive Schools. Conservative politicians and educationalists called this \u201cpushing away the ladder, once you have climbed up it\u201d.
\nDuring the 1980s, under Margaret Thatcher\u2019s three successive administrations, she \u2013 a proudly educated \u201cGrammar School girl\u201d attempted to restore the previous system, insisting that awarding merit was always a greater virtue than forcing a flat, “level playing field\u201d where all pupils of whatever grade of academic skill would learn in mixed ability classes.
\nSince the various Trades Unions for teachers, and most of the School Boards of most large British Town and City Councils have traditionally been of a radical Left persuasion, Margaret Thatcher \u201cthe Milk Snatcher\u201d (a soubriquet she earnt in the 1970s as Education Minster, for abolishing the free milk bottles offered to all primary schools by her Leftist opponents) had a big fight on her hands.
\nRealising in the late 1990s that the Comprehensive State school system was badly failing British children, especially those of a less economically & culturally privileged background, the incoming Labour PM Tony Blair, and his highly talented Educational advisor Andrew Adonis, (later Lord Adonis) formulated a clever way of avoiding the Grammar vs Comprehensive dichotomy \u2013 autonomous & self-governing Academies, with the right to select their own syllabus, a bold experiment which has worked very well.
\nFollowing the Conservative\/LibDem coalition victory in 2010, the incoming Education secretary Michael Gove imposed a radical, somewhat traditional fixed syllabus based on competence in Mathematics & English \u2013 making enemies of the Leftie Teaching Unions, but with a massive improvement of Britain\u2019s historically poor Maths in Europe wide PISA performance tables; In the baseline 2009\/2010 tables, the UK slumped to 27th in the world for Maths. By the major 2022 PISA cycle (the core dataset driving the 2023\u20132026 baseline), the UK rose to 11th globally, establishing it as one of the highest-performing Western nations.
\nSo if the Conservative mindset regarding a stricter, and less frivolous approach to the subjects to be studied in English schools, a fierce battle still reigns regarding the other, largely unresolved, educational Hot Potato: discipline.
\nVery few \u201cPublic Schools\u201d (ie prestigious historical boarding schools, some dating back to the 15th c. and mostly eye-wateringly costly) employ the strictly regimented rules of the past centuries or even decades, but there is an increasing trend amongst the autonomous \u201cAcademies\u201d set up by far sighted teachers or culturally ambitious business people, to return to disciplinary protocols that appear to some as being positively archaic.
\nAfter many years of teaching in London state schools, and being frustrated by the lack of support for students wishing to study seriously and to obtain good A- Level results (broadly similar to the German Abitur, or the Italian Maturit\u00e0<\/em>), rather than passively accept a widespread regime of poor discipline matched by poor academic results, Katherine Barbalsingh set up her own \u201cFree School\u201d in the rather impoverished Wembley area, called The Michaela Community, trumpeting spectacularly draconian rules of behaviour, including severe punishments for dressing scruffily (the school uniform is mandatory) or chewing gum. Most of the school\u2019s 840 pupils are from disadvantaged ethnic minority families, who are delighted by the improvement in their childrens\u2019 behaviour and even more so, by their excellent academic results.
\nAccording to the Times \u201cAlmost 70 per cent of its pupils\u2019 A-level grades were A* to A, which is more than double the national average of 28.3 per cent. One in ten students have secured places to study medicine this year and a third of grades were A* compared with a tenth nationally, despite being located in a disadvantaged area where almost 40 per cent of pupils are eligible for free school meals.\u201d
\nLabour party hacks and Leftist Educationalists are incandescent at the rigorous \u201cboot camp\u201d school rules, and are awkward when trying to explain way the school\u2019s outstanding exam results \u2013 better than most of those exclusive \u201cPublic Schools\u201d where annual fees can reach \u00a365,000 (\u20ac75,000). \u201cThere are no \u201cmiddle class\u201d children at the school because of parents\u2019 \u201csnobbery\u201d smirks Barbalsingh.
\nEven more extreme was the behaviour of a few \u201cMiddle Class\u201d ( ie wealthy metropolitan elite) parents who complained that the Mossbourne Victoria Park Academy in the impoverished area of Hackney, catering for mostly pupils from poor backgrounds, but boasting similarly outstanding academic results, and behaviour codes similar to Barbalsingh\u2019s \u201chighly controversial\u201d Academy in Wembley, leading to an official enquiry into the ethos and practice of the school. The resulting Review, supported also by several Labour Councillors on Hackney Council, was highly critical of the Academy\u2019s \u201cexcessive regime of discipline\u201d.
\nAs Matthew Toothe, the Executive Principal at Mossbourne wrote to the parents of his pupils \u201c\u201cI personally do not believe that you will agree with the review\u2019s conclusions because if you did you would not entrust your children to us on a daily basis.\u201d
\nToothe adds that he has already spent nearly \u20ac500,000 in legal fees defending the school\u2019s honour and its right \u201cto be Strict, but Kind\u201d. But the new Secretary for Education in the Andy Burnham government Lucy Powell, has indicated that she will do all she can to \u201csafeguard school childrens\u2019 human rights and mental health\u201d. Code for clamping down where possible on the New Wave of strictly disciplined schools.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rightly or wrongly, the British Education System seems to be an object of constant fascination to other countries, perhaps due to the endless number of books, plays and films that have been inspired by it. The variety of scholastic systems offered in the UK is unusually broad; English vs. Scottish; Boarding vs.Day Schools; Private vs […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":8095,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"iawp_total_views":5,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8002","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-senza-categoria"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/foglioeuropeo.ilfoglio.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8002","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/foglioeuropeo.ilfoglio.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/foglioeuropeo.ilfoglio.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foglioeuropeo.ilfoglio.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foglioeuropeo.ilfoglio.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8002"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/foglioeuropeo.ilfoglio.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8002\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8155,"href":"https:\/\/foglioeuropeo.ilfoglio.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8002\/revisions\/8155"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foglioeuropeo.ilfoglio.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8095"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/foglioeuropeo.ilfoglio.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8002"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foglioeuropeo.ilfoglio.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8002"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foglioeuropeo.ilfoglio.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8002"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}