Government minutes of a meeting between them on February 3, obtained by Schools Week under the Freedom of Information Act, claim Ms Birbalsingh repeatedly interrupted the Education Secretary and asked if she was introducing the Bill because of her own ambitions to lead the Labour Party.
Ms Birbalsingh has contested some of the Government’s minutes of the meeting, including a section where it claimed the headteacher asked Ms Phillipson if she “hates maths”.
According to government minutes of the meeting, the Education Secretary asked Ms Birbalsingh to “lower her tone” and “allow her to finish her sentences”.
Ms Birbalsingh, headteacher of Michaela Community School in Brent, north-west London, wrote an article in the Spectator in January which accused Ms Phillipson of being “blinded by a Marxist ideology”.
Ms Birbalsingh subsequently said she was not given “any water to drink” in the meeting, adding that Ms Phillipson’s team were “being horrible” and “trying to intimidate us”.
