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Ar Top School In Britain Tests A Historic Constitutional Principle
Top School In Britain Tests A Historic Constitutional Principle
A daughter of the Caribbean – Katharine Birbalsingh, Oxon – is about to test a theory and rule of democracy, that was first promulgated in Britain as The Toleration Act 1688, which granted freedom of worship to nonconformists who had pledged allegiance to and inconsideration of the supremacy of the British crown.
Ambassador Professor Gilbert Morris
Whilst these rules in their generality prevent impositions on religious beliefs, the lingering question is namely: whether “freedom of religion” includes the idea that a state can establish a religion, or impose religious practices.
Who is Before the Courts?
Katharine is Headmistress of the best performing school in the United Kingdom by GCSE results; coming tops and beating out every school in Britain by sheer achievement, to the point that she and her school have become a global phenomenon, copied from Florida to Australia to Africa as a standard of and for educational excellence.
Why then is the best school led by the most visionary educator in British history, with the best performance in the United Kingdom before the courts?
Backstory
First, Katharine is the daughter of Professor Frank Birbalsingh of Guyana – a distinguished scholar who taught for many years as York University in Canada – whilst her mother is a Jamaican medical professional; both in the tradition of excellence of the Caribbean diaspora.
Katharine completed a degree in Philosophy and French at New College, Oxford and entered the teaching profession in the UK. From her Oxford days, Katharine expressed a thoughtful consistent concern for ‘inner city’ children and their life prospects, which she argued could be assuaged more readily through education than by any other means. From her teaching experience, Katharine grew despondent, as the education system seemed to place inner city children on auto-pilot to failure. Her argument was not that this was deliberate, but that a culture of failure had become comfortable and routine.
Matters came to head, when Katharine was invited by the UK Conservative Party (October 5th 2010 – see on YouTube) to speak at their party conference on the future of education in the UK; from which event, her speech catapulted her to the front pages of every newspaper in the country. She told the conference: “The [Education] system was broken because it keeps poor children poor…by a culture of excuses and low expectations…chaos in the classrooms and in a sea of bureaucracy”.
It was as if a bomb detonated through the U.K. educational establishment, and though it is not to be believed in the 21st century in a democracy, the school fired Katharine.
However, in 2014 – with typical Caribbean resilience – Katharine established and opened a “free school” (something like a charter school in America), using a government grant programme. The now famous school is called “Micheala”, named in honour of a former colleague, and now serves just over 700 inner city children, mostly black and brown – in that manner of speaking – about 50% of whom are Muslim.
All of Britain awaited Micheala’s first GCSE results – given Katharine’s 2010 speech – not least of which, teacher’s unions and political operatives literally campaigned for the school to fail; as obviously, any success would give credence to Katharine’s criticism of failure and sclerosis throughout the UK education system. But not only did Micheala School, Katharine, her staff and students succeed, they bested every government school and were first in all the United Kingdom in results (better than 6,959 other schools) and have been first in results each year since and last year 2023, two thirds of all Micheala students achieved ‘A’ grades. That’s better than any school in the UK and better than every school in the Commonwealth of Nations – where the GCSE or its equivalent is sat, covering 2.6 billion people.
The school has become a worldwide sensation. And in 2016, Katharine and her teaching staff produced a bestselling book: “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Teachers” (Penguin), which explained the Micheala pedagogical model. One would imagine that such a repeated and demonstrative success would have quelled Katharine’s critics and brought them round to the effectiveness of her approach. Instead, amidst continued results demolishing records of success year-after year and more importantly, changing the lives of young
people who were once on a steady path to failure, critics became louder, sniping at every aspect of Micheala school’s approach, ignoring its success. Katharine launched a programme inviting anyone who wanted to visit Micheala school, with the opportunity of speaking to its students, allowing any visitor to assess the school’s culture. Famous philosophers, psychiatrists, lawyers, politicians from around the world, even celebrities visited, all giving rave reviews, marvelling at the culture of discipline and the infectious intellectual development there to be witnessed, and still the critics brayed.
In all the press, in news papers and on television, Katharine had become known as ‘the strictest headmistress in Britain’, and she is that exactly, with the aim of providing structure for children with often unstructured lives. Typical of the Caribbean – at least when I was young, with Jamaican, Guyanese and Barbadian teachers – teachers where the centres of authority. It is the same at Michaela. When students change classrooms, there is silence in the corridors and teachers and guests are greeted with a respect we reserve for elders, parents and teachers in the Caribbean.
Additionally, Micheala rejects the new fashions in education, where children learn fluff, and give their opinions on subjects, events, personages and data. At Micheala, students must learn through practice the periodic arithmetic tables, they must learn world geography, and volumes of poetry and fine literary and historical dates, events and passages by heart; they must learn languages and music and be tested for proficiency so that when the moment comes, they can perform and perform they have. Katharine’s philosophy is there are things children must know and must commit to memory and be able to recall. She demands – and rightly so – that learning begins by rote and practice before that base of knowledge marinates and begins to inform perspectives.
Beyond these contributing factors of educational success, in perhaps the most infamous challenge to the status quo, Micheala banned mobile phones at school. The newspapers and television studios filled with pundits – ignoring Micheala’s number one status in GCSE results – bellowing inconsolably that this was tyranny to ban mobile phones, or to have children walk in silence or – without a pause for irony – to have them learn so many things by heart; even in the face of the “results day” jubilation amongst Micheala’s families owing to their children’s unprecedented successes.
The Issue:
There is a saying: All greatness though assaulted from the outside, collapses from within. The UK Education Act 1944, calls for all schools to allow for the observation of some religious practise. The assumption at the time was Britain was primarily an Anglican (Church of England) society. But in reality, Britain has become – particularly in the school system – a multi-religious society, with some religious practises being more fastidiously active than others.
Nearly all schools observe the 1944 rule in breach. In the case of Micheala, two issues rise immediately:
- Space and Resources: Micheala is an inner city school with not merely limited space, but insufficient space for its official educational activities
- Michaela is an inner city school and so is at the forefront of religious tensions in the community
Micheala’s administration responded to this by eschewing any religious practises, but making some incisive compromises to accommodate varieties of religious beliefs… but adopted with the overwhelming goal of maintaining harmony amongst its students of varying ethnic, racial and religious backgrounds.
Specifically, Micheala did not ignore the question of religious belief, but created a culture of acceptance and compromise as a generator of a harmony that is the acclaimed interest of all religions.
For instance, using an ancient Japanese model of community, at lunch, students sit in groups of six, with (as reported also in the Telegraph 18th January 2024), one student waiting the table for fellow students, another student serving, and yet another student clearing the table, so that rotationally, everyone serves and is served. Additional complications were met with additional compromises: Hindu students recoiled at serving beef. Whilst Muslims recoiled at serving pork. Micheala resolved that everyone would eat healthy vegetarian so that everyone could be accommodated.
Under this same spirit of accommodation and compromise, Micheala stuck to its principle that it was a secular school that would not permit any religious practise within its precincts; with the aim of cohesion and preserving the school’s community spirit.
However, a student sought to separate from the community lunchtime and pray during lunch. It was forbidden on the principle that the lunch – which had come into being by such delicate compromises – would disintegrate into different religious practices, which would undermine cohesion, when the students suffered so much of that outside the school already.
The parents of the child who was forbidden sued and now the school is threatened by having its harmony decided from outside its culture. And of course, longtime Micheala critics have lined up a social media attack campaign with glee – ignoring how Micheala’s culture has produced national success – with some critics – shockingly but unsurprisingly – demanding the abolition of the school.
The Law and Religion:
The Toleration Act permitted allowances of free religious worships upon sworn allegiance to the British crown. However, by intention, it did not apply to Roman Catholics, Jews, nontrinitarians and atheists. That appears to have left a lacunae in the law, yet, common law principles evolve in the British constitutional context. Therefore, in sundry laws and treaty undertakings since 1688, Britain has attested to and confirmed its commitment to the freedom of religion; not least of which is the Human Rights Act 1998 (HRA) (Section 1 ss. (1)(a)) and Article 18 of the “International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights”, which was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in resolution 2200A (XXI) on 16 December 1966.
The United Kingdom Parliament retained an authority to govern the Church of England, delegated in 1919 to the Church’s General Synod. Parliament retains a veto power – invoked rarely – in respect of decisions taken by the General Synod; which was exercised in 1927 and 1928 against adoption of a revised prayer book. However, these are powers to manage the church as a church and are distinct from the current case, and do not impose religious practise or schedule their manifestations.
The distinction lies in the freedom to hold a religious belief – which is absolute and cannot be limited for any reason – in contrast to the freedom to manifest a religion in practise, which may be subject to necessary legitimate limitations, as the manifestation of religious practise – such as holding prayers – can potentially conflict with other human rights in certain circumstances.
Those ‘circumstances’ addressed in the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) of which Britain has been a signatory since 1951 states: “The freedom to manifest one’s religion or beliefs shall be subject only to such limitations as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society in the interests of public safety, for the protection of public order, health or morals, or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others.”
These pithy considerations thus examined, the court must find in favour of Micheala’s secular approach and must say that the Education Act 1944 is unconstitutional insofar as it establishes a state mandate for the practise of religion – contravening the Toleration Act – and is inconsistent with the freedom of religion, a fundamental principle of constitutional democracy.
The court must conclude further that the forbidding of religious practises on or within school precincts during school time, or the observance of ‘secularism’ – is consistent with the ECHR – whilst promoting a cohesion that is a higher priority in pursuit of the purpose of the school, which is education…rather than to impose or support religious practises for which chapel, mosque, synagogue and home are the appropriate venues.
The court must find that Micheala’s adoption of a series of ‘delicate balances’ aimed at accommodating each belief system evinces an intention toward fairness and respect for each student’s beliefs, the disruption of which undermines the active fine balance, imposing on Micheala, its community and students a mode of community inconsistent with the social harmony it achieved already, without a method to manage the fallout of disharmony which is likely to result.
There are those who will say the prohibition on prayer is ‘anti Muslim’. But that is the cheapest sort of nonsense on its face: in the instance, the matter concerns a Muslim, but the balancing compromises made by Micheala addressed myriad religious beliefs and practises. The objective is to have the school prioritise that which is conducive to general education rather than particulars of worship. Others will say their schools support worship facilities. Michaela lacks the space ‘on the one hand’ and frankly, it is not for underperforming schools to tell the top school what it may do better. If Tiger Woods says there is a regime for training in golf, 99.999% of humans that have ever existed are not in position to say: ‘that’s too much’, including 99.999% of the best golfers that ever played.
As a further constitutional matter: some may argue that the British state may establish religion since the Monarch, HRH King Charles III is head of the Church of England. That’s quaint. But His Majesty is merely a ceremonial head of government, which is elected by his subjects of the United Kingdom acting in their roles as citizens of Great Britain. By authority of the common law of the British constitution – as evolved – the monarch has no substantive political role in establishing religion. Moreover, if he did, per chance, it would be the Church of England, and upon that alone, the case against Micheala must fail.
There are two further considerations the court and the citizens of the United Kingdom could bear in mind:
- Micheala’s ‘delicate balancing’ is consistent with classical Enlightenment thought, which limits the rights of each person at the boundaries of the rights of every other person as the ECHR avers.
- By these lights, no one can have all they want, whenever they want without infringing upon the rights of others. Moreover, before rights, each person in a constitutional democracy has a duty to uphold that which vouches safe the entire community…hence Micheala’s system of compromises.
As such, the citizens and subjects of Britain must be aware, that should the court rule against Micheala, it would lead to the expansion of religious practise – manifesting unforeseeably, with ever increasing demands for comparative accommodations – with each group demanding the same resources as they perceive being available to other groups
and soon, environments like Micheala cease to be cohesive learning centres for children and will be reduced to battlegrounds for unending demands, which, though they cannot be satisfied, will undermine schools across the nation.
No vitriol must come to the child or its family for having brought this case and certainly none towards Micheala for fighting it. The catalyst for this was ignited in political hubris long ago, when Britain held its empire and moved imperiously across the world, yet assumed religious rules would apply in a Anglo-Saxon singular religious society. This conceit must be corrected and must exempt schools from religious practice as a means of preserving learning environments beyond the ‘din and fray’ of social convulsions whipped and woven by self-insisting religious particularisms.
Finally, there is a dilemma from Game Theory – which informs comparative choices in constitutional democracies – which is likely to emerge, unfold and metastasise, should the court take to law in error in the Micheala case: If in a democracy any person or group receives all they want, when they want, wherever they want, then no one will end with anything they want as that democracy will have failed.
About the author
H. E. Ambassador Gilbert Morris took his studies at The London School of Economics (LSE). He was Professor at George Mason University – where he taught in four faculties – 1995-2001 and served two terms as Director of African Americans Studies. Morris was Visiting Clerk to Justice Michael Farrell in 1995 at the District of Colombia Court of Appeal. From 1999-2001, he served as Lecturer in History of Revolutions at the Smithsonian Associates, Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC. Morris was appointed Economist to the Bahamas $100 Million Dollar Education Loan Committee in 2002. He served as Special Envoy from the Office of the Premier of Turks and Caicos to the House of Lords, UK and is currently National Public Reader in Diplomacy and Ambassador-at-Large in the Bahamas. His recently published co-edited book is: “Al Centric Modelling and Analytics Concepts, Technologies, and Applications” (2024) Routledge Press; his forthcoming book is: “New World Order” (2025).