Ireland should beware the move towards “progressive” and “child-centred” approaches to learning, according to a London school principal.

On Newstalk Breakfast this morning, Katharine Birbalsingh, Principal at Michaela Community School (MCS) near Wembley in London said modern teaching styles can see children form disadvantaged backgrounds falling behind.

Ms Birbalsingh has become known as “Britain’s strictest teacher” – running the inner-city London school with a strong emphasis on order and discipline.

Students at the school can find themselves in detention for the smallest indiscretions, from slouching to not wearing their uniforms correctly, while teaching is firmly based on ‘traditional’ rather than ‘progressive’ methods.

Then-Mayor of London Boris Johnson visits the Michaela Community School, 23-06-2015. Image: Paul Davey / Alamy Stock Photo

On Newstalk Breakfast this morning, Ms Birbalsingh said ‘traditional’ teaching places the teacher at the top of the class in a position of authority with “desks set up in rows and the children looking towards the teacher for leadership”.

She said ‘progressive’ or ‘child-centred’ methods involve turning the desks towards each other and asking children to take on a greater role in their own learning.

She said the progressive approach leads to children from disadvantaged backgrounds being left behind.

“If you have a middle-class family, they talk about the politics of the day around the dinner table, they have lots of books at home and they get taken to museums on the weekend,” she said. “So, the children learn lots at home

“But in disadvantaged families they are depending entirely on the school to teach their child. That is the job of a teacher – to teach and lead the children. In a progressive classroom, that just isn’t happening.”

Principal Katharine Birbalsingh at Michaela Community School, Wembley, London, 23-06-2015. Image: Paul Davey/Alamy Live News `

She said children form privileged backgrounds can make up for any lost learning in their own time – while their disadvantaged friends fall further behind.

“Then people will say the reason they underachieved was because they were poor,” she said. “And it won’t be because they were poor, it will be because of the teaching methods in the classroom.”

She said instilling discipline ensure pupils turn up to class on time and ready to learn.

“When you are trying to catch up a child that is 11 years old and has a chronological reading age of a six-year-old, you need every minute of the lesson,” she said.

“You need them to be focused and motivated and ambitious. You cannot depend on the family to do this for you if you are teaching disadvantaged kids.

“You can do it the progressive way, but you are going to let down a whole bunch of kids in your class and the divide between the disadvantaged and the advantaged kids will widen.”

Ms Birbalsingh has seen success with her methods at MCS – where exam results are among the best in England.

Pupils at the school achieve twice as many A-grades as the national average and more than 80% go on to top-tier universities.