Katharine Birbalsingh, Deputy Head Teacher, Suspended After Speaking Out at Britain's Conservative Party Conference - UPDATED!!

Via Ghost of a Flea, at London's Daily Mail, "Deputy head who dared attack the state education system is sent home from school":

A teacher who laid bare the chaos in the state education system has been ordered out of the classroom by her school.

Katharine Birbalsingh is facing disciplinary action for daring to speak out at the Conservative Party conference this week about the shambles in state secondaries.
The Daily Mail understands that Miss Birbalsingh, 37, was made to work from home after other senior staff at her London academy feared her speech on Tuesday created too much negative publicity.

‘I just want this issue to be resolved and to get back to teaching again.’
However, Miss Birbalsingh did not blame the school for over-reacting.

‘It is not the school or the head’s fault,’ she added. ‘They are shackled by the system which bans teachers from having freedom of speech.

‘In my conference speech, I was not attacking my school directly – I have only been there for a few weeks.

‘I was emphasising my ten years plus of experience in classrooms.’ She added: ‘I feel awful. I have been forced to choose between keeping my school happy on the one hand and my principles on the other.

‘I shouldn’t be torn in that kind of way.’

Miss Birbalsingh said she was ‘devastated’ at being kept out of the classroom while she waits to hear if she is formally suspended or sacked.

The former Marxist – who was state-educated before going to Oxford University – voted Tory for the first time in this year’s general election.

A French teacher and deputy head at St Michael and All Angels Church of England Academy in Camberwell, South London, she was the surprise star at the Tory conference.

She revealed how bad behaviour and lack of discipline in schools ‘blinded by Leftist ideology’ stopped staff from teaching children.

Her intervention against a ‘broken’ system which ‘keeps poor children poor’ earned her a standing ovation. She took up her latest job a month ago and said last night that her criticisms were not aimed at her new school.

But staff felt that she had damaged the school’s reputation – an accusation that she denies.

Miss Birbalsingh said yesterday: ‘I’m devastated by this.

‘My whole life is about helping children fulfil their potential, particularly those in less privileged areas, and I love my school.

‘All I wanted to do was to highlight the barriers that stand in the way of improving education in Britain.

She has courage. And a former Marxist too.

Speaking out is a difficult thing with the left's hate-speech ayatollah's having such crushing power. I've experienced it, but obviously British teachers have less free speech protections. Although it's not as though U.S. radical education bureaucracies haven't chilled freedom of expression inside the classroom and out. This last couple of years, amid the Obama interregnum, has been particularly stifling.

And think of all the kids harmed by this sickening hatred and rigid state bureaucracy. It's sad just to think about it.

MORE COMMENTARY at Midnight Blue, "British Teacher Speaks Out on the Shambles of State Education." The link there goes to London's Telegraph, "Teacher who criticised education standards to return to school."

AND THANKS to Glenn Reynolds for the Instalanche.