The middle class shuns Britain’s strictest school because the pupils are not wealthy, its headmistress said.
Katharine Birbalsingh said Michaela Community School in Brent, north-west London, had no middle-class pupils because of parents’ “snobbery”.
The secondary school and sixth form, located in a diverse and deprived part of the capital, is renowned for its strict discipline and above-average results.
However, middle-class parents are choosing not to send their children to the school because “they wouldn’t want their children mixing with our children”, according to Mrs Birbalsingh.
“The middle classes don’t send their children here,” the former government social-mobility tsar told The Times. “We don’t have any. They don’t want to come here.
“I am afraid – this sounds terrible – that they chose their schools for the people they are going to meet. They wouldn’t want their children mixing with our children.
“They don’t have the right accents or come from the right families. We don’t have a single middle-class child in the school. They look at our children and think, ‘No, thank you,’ and I think that is just terrible. It’s snobbery.”
Mrs Birbalsingh added that England was a “class-ridden society” where middle-class parents want their “children mixing with people like them”.
“It’s sad really,” she said. “To some extent I think you look to your own, so I am somewhat forgiving. But where I am critical is when the middle classes criticise us for the way we are transforming these children’s lives for the better. We make better academic progress than the best private schools.”
The headteacher has previously accused Bridget Phillipson, the Education Secretary, of having a “Marxist” approach to schooling and criticised her plans for changes to how academies operate.
The schools bill introduced by the Education Secretary will limit academies’ freedom to set their own pay and conditions for staff, and force them to teach the national curriculum, which they are not currently required to do.
A number of former education secretaries – Michael Gove, Sir Gavin Williamson and Nadhim Zahawi – have also warned that the changes would harm the most disadvantaged children.
Mrs Birbalsingh banned phones at Michaela when the school started in 2014 and she encourages parents not to buy them for under-16s at all.
In April last year, the High Court upheld her ban on Muslim prayers taking place during the learning day. A pupil claimed the policy was discriminatory and infringed her right to religious freedom.
However, the court sided with Mrs Birbalsingh, who had argued the ban was vital to ensure “children of all races and religions can thrive” at the school.