snig.bsky.social
Food, music, politics. Views are mine: don't threaten to email my boss. (She/her).
Mini blog: http://snigskitchen.tumblr.com
Main blog: https://snigskitchen.blogspot.com
9,000 posts
5,126 followers
1,187 following
Active Commenter
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Hahaha 😆. I had a quick look at her timeline, and she's still going on about it. I blocked her because I just can't be doing with people who are classist - whether top down or vice versa. Ridiculous.
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She is the queen of foodie Bluesky for very good reason: kindness, genuine interest, and positivity.
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Totally understand and agree, Jen.
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Also, why bring her background into it? No one can help the accident of their birth. It is what you make of it that counts. Queen N connects with people, genuinely and pleasantly. Unlike Wendy.
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Everyone knows that Queen N is one of the nicest people on social media.
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Check out the Mapo Tofu recipe here:
www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle...
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You're being way too modest. The breadth of your knowledge is so impressive. But yes, humanities, and indeed a wide study of subjects, is essential in secondary school.
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You're far better read than I. But I did touch on this reference earlier this week.
bsky.app/profile/snig...
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I've felt that an irony of her is that there has never been a better case for the humanities than reading her writings rejecting them. Of course the place to start is Thomas Gradgrind in Hard Times.
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How could anyone forget?
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Sticking with the theme of how Katharine Birbalsingh makes huge assertions with no evidence base and the 2023 Telegraph piece, she admits no evidence in support of her theories on single parent families. Her remarks on separated fathers border on insulting.
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More unevidenced claims in the 2023 Telegraph piece, on ethnicity, attainment, and attitude towards education. To rely on anecdotes on such a crucial issue in society is deeply wrong, and proves her unsuitability for the Social Mobility role she eventually stepped down from.
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In January 2023, The Telegraph were pushing the line that Katharine Birbalsingh was "silenced" for anti-woke views. This thread should amply demonstrate how she puts forward unevidenced opinion as fact, relying on anecdote rather than research. Also, "silenced"? She's always in the media!
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Earlier you mentioned Seneca, now you're discussing the moderate nature of the C of E. I don't think a fully signed up culture warrior like Birbalsingh thinks that way. It's all about grabbing the nearest available culture war points.
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That's certainly a very plausible explanation.
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It seems the conference Birbalsingh spoke at, was hosted by the Family Education Trust, hardline Christian fundamentalists who want to control the curriculum.
www.thenewworld.co.uk/british-evan...
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Always.
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June 2025 and Katharine Birbalsingh says she cannot understand how to teach Shakespeare with the themes of racism or sexism, advertising her lack of knowledge/understanding. Othello, The Merchant Of Venice, The Taming of The Shrew, Hamlet - all explore these themes.
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I was mocking her lack of precision.
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June 2025 and Katharine Birbalsingh claims that an unnamed independent school (she has to say this because they're exempt from the national curriculum) is refusing to teach Shakespeare. The reference to Dr Panti Bliss feels like casual homophobia. Has she read any poetry or writing by Bliss-Cabrera?
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Enthusiastically quoted in The Times, Katharine Birbalsingh's 2023 essay on private schools has her hallmarks; zero evidence for assertions, meaningless allegations of 'Woke', defending wealth privilege, criticising "creativity" and "independent thought" as educational objectives.
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Hahaha 😆. Michael Gove would have kittens.
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In January 2023, Katharine Birbalsingh resigned as Social Mobility Tsar because she was "doing more harm than good". Suggesting people from working class backgrounds should take "smaller steps" towards social mobility is harmful. All pathways should be encouraged, even the elite ones.
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Katharine Birbalsingh reckons footballers like Sterling & Rashford aren't good role models as they encourage kids not to complete their education. Rashford has 9 GCSEs & did A levels. Saka got 4A*s & 3As. Sterling had a difficult childhood. Yet she was the UK's Social Mobility Tsar? What a joke.
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I might have been mocking her lack of precision with words.
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28 April 2022 - Katharine Birbalsingh continues assert it is "natural" for girls not to like physics. She also relies on the discredited empathetic/systematic notion of gender roles. This does not explain 16% of girls studying physics against 65% doing chemistry or biology.
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In 2022 Katharine Birbalsingh was untroubled that only 16% of girls take physics at A-Level. Fudging the issue of whether she is relying on "research" or anecdote "what they say", she claims girls don't like "hard maths".
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Putting aside the fact Finland has possibly the best educational outcomes in the world without schools imposing uniforms, what has Katharine Birbalsingh got against normal blood circulation? Why the need for tight uniforms? Surely to turn a school around you concentrate on teaching, not uniforms?
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As seen above, Katharine Birbalsingh doesn't read pedagogical research and favours rote learning. She favours the SLANT technique. She suggests criticism of it exists on the basis of baseless allegations of racism, fitting her anti-woke agenda. The issues with the approach relate to neurodiversity.
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Fantastic article - nails the Gradgrindian philosophy perfectly. The stark reality of what this means for students at Michaela and anywhere else seeking to replicate the environment feels as if we have literally travelled back to a Dickensian society, fetishised by ingenues like Williamson.
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That last screenshot shouldn't have been there.
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Katharine Birbalsingh's 2024 remarks about her school being "very secular" about Christmas celebrations are hard to reconcile with her 2018 remarks that their assemblies are "broadly Christian" and that she has claimed her school is "far more Christian than most CofE schools".
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She's a contradiction when it comes to religion.
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"teachers don't care if my tie is short, so tomorrow I'll bring a knife into school" is quite a wild thought process Birbalsingh seems to think teenagers have....
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Katharine Birbalsingh seems to think children are inherently unkind and cruel. The research basis for these assertions remains unclear. Original sin? Isn't that a religious doctrine? Or can we play fast and loose with such concepts if we are a media darling head teacher?
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Thank you Adey. She's constantly platformed as the voice of common sense and someone had to burst that bubble.
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However, it's still on the national interest for the state broadcaster to put her on Question Time more than every other headteacher in the country added together. 🙄
We are so badly served by elements of the media.
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That's coming to the thread later.
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Imagine thinking that the beautiful profession of teaching is about creating fake battles about school ties and not actually wanting to trust the young minds in your care? "I don't trust them" says Katharine Birbalsingh about her own pupils.
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Imagine thinking children can only "learn by heart" (memorisation/rote learning)? That there is no such thing as children having natural curiosity? How does independent learning come from memorisation? What educational research has Katharine Birbalsingh actually read? None.
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Imagine not wanting to use research based, evidence led pedagogy? Katharine Birbalsingh wilfully ignores "brain science" when it is done meticulously, peer reviewed, and supported by theory. This exemplifies her approach to everything: anecdotal evidence at best, no evidence at all at worst.
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June 2022 Katharine Birbalsingh's first and only speech as Social Mobility Tsar, delivered to the opaquely funded free-market lobbying group Policy Exchange, which pushes libertarian-right ideology. Birbalsingh uses 'air quotes' around the word "disadvantaged". H/T @docrussjackson.bsky.social.
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The advice from 50, 60 years ago would be "Give em a smack". Being at school in England in the 80s meant (at my school) if you stepped out of line you got thwacks with a cane across the palm of your hand from the Headmaster. Did it stop unruly behaviour? Not a chance.
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In March 2021, this was Katharine Birbalsingh's response to the Sewell Report. A moral panic about drill and grime music with racist undertones and a defence of racism. If you can deny racism exists, you don't need to do anything to address it.
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She doesn't believe in reasonable adjustments.
bsky.app/profile/snig...
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Lucy - just found this and thought you'd want to give it a read.
www.bps.org.uk/psychologist...
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With no basis in research, Katharine Birbalsingh supports the requirement of eye contact and the use of whistles in the school environment. When challenged by people with autism, she brushes their concerns away.
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In 2022, while acting as the government's Social Mobility Tsar, Katharine Birbalsingh gave an interview where she refused to recognise dyslexia, dyspraxia, ADD and ADHD, despite being recognised for decades. This is disability discrimination. Ableism, pure and simple.