Katharine Birbalsingh CBE is a teacher, author, and one of Britain’s most outspoken voices on education. She founded Michaela Community School in London in 2014 and she has led it as headmistress ever since. Known affectionately—and not always affectionately—as “Britain’s strictest headmistress,” she runs a school where phones are banned, manners are taught, and students from disadvantaged homes post exam results among the best in England. She has been named one of the twenty most influential figures in British education, won the Contrarian Prize, chaired the government’s Social Mobility Commission from 2021 to 2023, and was appointed CBE in 2020. Her books include Battle Hymn of the Tiger Teachers and Michaela: The Power of Culture, and her school is the subject of the 2022 documentary Britain’s Strictest Headmistress. The daughter of an Indo-Guyanese literature professor and a Jamaican nurse, she was born in New Zealand, grew up mostly in Toronto, and studied French and philosophy at Oxford. She has spent more than two decades teaching in London, and she considers Michaela her life’s work.