Trojan Horse scandal
However, because some of the schools were academies under the responsibility of the Department for Education, the then Secretary of State, Michael Gove, commissioned a separate report by Peter Clarke, the former head of the Metropolitan police's counterterrorism command.
Following a forensic report by a handwriting expert for the tribunal that strongly suggested the signatures were fraudulent, Birmingham City Council advised Adderley's leadership not to fight the claims and withdrew the usual indemnity granted to council-run schools.
[32] The Times described the letter as "a crude forgery", noting that "The document appears to show that the conspirators were working to remove a primary school headmistress who was actually dismissed 20 years ago".
[44] Senior Department for Education sources have also been reported as claiming that coordinated attempts to undermine and supplant head teachers have occurred in Bradford, Manchester, and the London boroughs of Waltham Forest and Tower Hamlets.
[citation needed] Bhupinder Kondal, principal at Oldknow Academy, stated in July 2014 after the publishing of the reports that she recognised the steps illustrated in the letter and that governors had been trying to undermine her since 2009, although the Local Education Authority would not support her.
[31] Michael Gove, the Secretary of State for Education, said that "wider, more comprehensive action" was needed and appointed Peter Clarke, a former senior Metropolitan Police officer and ex-head of the Counter Terrorism Command.
Some staff at the school expressed fear that neither eating nor drinking amid high temperatures during the 18 hours of daylight in the months of June and July would compromise pupils' health and their ability to learn.
[10] In school assemblies, former staff alleged that a senior teacher frequently praised Anwar al-Awlaki, an al-Qaeda recruiter that had been involved with at least three major terror attacks, and referred to non-Muslims as "kuffar", an insulting term for "infidel".
[66] The Ofsted report stated that "students' understanding of other religions is scant as the religious education curriculum focuses primarily on the study of Islam"[67] and said there was a "perceived unfairness and lack of transparency" over appointments to the school and that female members of staff had felt intimidated.
[72] At the tribunal held in October and November 2015, Mr Saini was accused of advising a teacher who had been arrested for having extreme pornography to throw his mobile phone into the canal to make sure there was no problem.
[60] The government ordered an inspection of the Olive Tree school following comments by its head, Abdul Qadeer Baksh, that in an ideal Islamic state, homosexuality would be punishable by death.
[citation needed] During the inspection at Laisterdyke Business and Enterprise College in Bradford, a mainly Muslim secondary school,[87] pupils were forced to revise for their GCSE exams outside in the street as staff did not want them to have an opportunity to speak to inspectors.
[citation needed] An investigation ordered by the government found a "sustained, co-ordinated agenda to impose segregationist attitudes and practices of a hardline, politicised strain of Sunni Islam" in several Birmingham schools.
[3][4] This reflects the views of the neo-conservative Henry Jackson Society and included the description of a document intended to provide guidance about the needs of Muslim pupils in state schools as a "blueprint for Islamisation".
[8] Its intentions are clearly set out in the introduction where it states "its purpose is to promote greater understanding of the faith, religious and cultural needs of Muslim pupils and how they can be accommodated within schools.
Peter Clarke, former counterterrorism chief, conducted the investigation which gathered and examined 2,000 documents and generated 2,000 pages of interview transcripts from 50 witnesses, including former headteachers, teachers, council staff and school governors.
This evidence would come to light when the NCTL misconduct case against senior teachers at PVET collapsed because the prosecution had failed to disclose material from the Clarke Report that it had had in its possession since the start of the proceedings.
[4][91] The discussions contained: "Explicit homophobia, highly offensive comments about British service personnel, a stated ambition to increase segregation at the school, disparagement of Muslims in sectors other than their own, scepticism about the truth of reports of the murder of Lee Rigby and the Boston Marathon bombing and a constant undercurrent of anti-western, anti-America and anti-Israel sentiment.
[93] Another participant in the discussion said that "JEWS" (emphasis in original) were making websites with false information on the Quran, while Abdul Malik, Deputy Head of Golden Hillock in Bradford wrote "Al-Islam will prevail over all other ways of life.
"[94] The report concluded that based on the examination of emails and correspondence: "There is incontrovertible evidence that both senior officials and elected members of Birmingham council were aware of activities that bear a striking resemblance to those described in the Trojan horse letter many months before it surfaced."
[21] Mr Kershaw stated that the council had been "slow to respond" to allegations in the letter and said there was "culture within of not wanting to address difficult issues and problems with school governance" for risk of incurring accusations of racism or Islamophobia.
[102] In a letter to Park View Trust chairman Tahir Alam, Education Minister Lord Nash criticised its running of the schools, saying he was "deeply mindful of the need to eliminate discrimination, advance equality of opportunity and foster good relations".
[46] He accused Tahir Alam, chairman of the Park View Educational Trust, of "planning this for 15 years" and honing in Birmingham tactics that he had drafted in his 72-page document, published by the Muslim Council of Britain in 2007, on how to subvert schools to fundamentalist Islam.
[106] In May, David Blunkett announced that if in government again, the Labour Party would appoint an 'Independent Director of School Standards' with the power to monitor academies: "In April 2014, the alleged Operation Trojan Horse in Birmingham demonstrated the difficulties that have arisen from this 'absence of transparency'".
[112][113] The National Union of Teachers (NUT) demanded a full review of academies after the letter was revealed, expressing that political and religious groups had exploited the status at thousands of schools to indoctrinate children.
[118] Tahir Alam, a governor at Park View School since 1997, and former chair of the education committee of the Muslim Council of Britain, said that the accusations had been "motivated by anti-Muslim, anti-Islam sentiment".
The drawn out nature of the cases meant that there were no journalists present to report the detailed rebuttal of claims indicated above, for example of banning Christmas celebrations, or teacher handouts promoting the obligations on wives to consent to sex with their husbands.
The Panel had been ready to announce its decision in the case on 23 December 2016, but an urgent application for disclosure, relating, in part, to transcripts associated with the Clarke Report, was made by defence lawyers on 24 November 2016.
For example, the co-head of the security and extremism unit at Policy Exchange (the conservative think tank that had advised Michael Gove's schools programme), Hannah Stuart, and its head of education, John David Blake, proposed that, "non-disclosure of anonymous witness statements from the Clarke inquiry was described as an 'abuse of process', and that is deeply unfortunate, but this falls short of an exoneration.
Jaimie Martin, former special adviser at the Department for Education, wrote that "it is important to note as [the teachers] were not tried for the charges, they were therefore not cleared of them", and that "people who downplay the seriousness of Trojan Horse, claiming those involved exhibited 'mainstream' Islamic views, are guilty not only of stunning naivety, but of a dangerous error".
