9. Punishment

It's 2010 and deputy head Katharine Birbalsingh delivers a speech at the Conservative Party conference in Birmingham, outlining how schools are failing poor and black pupils. Her comments, calling for more robust discipline and traditional teaching methods, may have gone unnoticed in South London but for the fact she’d just joined the senior leadership team of St Michael and All Angels.

Alan Johnson examines punishment from Victorian times to the present day and meets children only too happy to push the boundaries. He looks at attempts to rescue the two consecutive schools on the site from special measures, falling rolls and poor reputation. Changing the name or even the leadership team wasn’t enough, even the best-ever recorded GCSE results and a glowing Ofsted report failed to save the school.

Series in which the former Education Secretary tells the story of English education over the last 140 years through the prism of one school - St Michael and All Angels in Camberwell, London.

Over the decades, it’s undergone many transformations, including names, in response to changes in policy, but its purpose has remained constant - to provide decent and free education to local children.

The story is told through original documents – from headmasters’ logs and inspection reports – and the testimony of the children and teachers who went there.

It’s as much a social history of inner-city life down the ages as it is a study of our attempts to educate the children of poor families.

Producer: Sara Parker
Executive Producer: Samir Shah

A Juniper Connect production for BBC Radio 4, first broadcast in March 2019.