A headteacher who rose to public attention by addressing a Conservative conference about some “utterly chaotic” state schools is a frontrunner to become the government’s new social mobility commissioner.
Katharine Birbalsingh, the founder of the “super-strict” London-based Michaela community school, heads a shortlist of preferred candidates to head the Social Mobility Commission watchdog, which seeks to ensure that the UK becomes more meritocratic, government sources confirmed.
An appointment is expected to be announced by the equalities minister, Liz Truss, within weeks.
Birbalsingh’s appointment would raise eyebrows, following previous claims that the government was placing hand-picked allies into key public roles. Although she has no formal political affiliations, she rose to prominence at the Tory party conference in 2010 with a speech about Britain’s “broken” education system.
Speaking before the then education secretary, Michael Gove, Birbalsingh was applauded for claiming that underachievement by black pupils was due partly to “the chaos of our classrooms,…
