The miracle of Michaela

It was like being on the set of an inspirational Hollywood film about a visionary teacher who transforms the lives of disadvantaged African-American and Hispanic children in a run-down part of Los Angeles. The young woman leaping about at the front of the class, who had somehow got a group of 12- and 13-year-olds speaking fluent French, looked a bit like Emma Stone. If this was a film, she’d be a cert for an Oscar.

But this was no movie and I was in Wembley, not LA. The French class I was observing at Michaela Community School — a free school opened in 2014 by Katharine Birbalsingh — was the most impressive I’ve ever seen, and I’ve visited dozens of schools across the world, including some of Britain’s top public schools. Children on free school meals who had arrived wth a reading age of six were rattling off French verbs and sentences that would have shamed an A-level group.