Birmingham was targeted by a “co-ordinated, deliberate and sustained” campaign to introduce “an intolerant and aggressive Islamic ethos into a few schools”, the Government’s official inquiry into the Trojan Horse affair has concluded.
And the city council knew about the allegations long before they became public - but failed to act.
The inquiry uncovered a series of horrific examples of abuse in city schools, including pupils branded “kaffir” if they failed to attend prayers, children told that women who refused to have sex with husbands would be sent to hell and non-Muslim children excluded from school trips supposedly designed to teach foreign languages - which were really religious pilgrimages.
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Peter Clarke, who headed the inquiry, warned: “I found clear evidence that there are a number of people, associated with each other and in positions of influence in schools and governing bodies, who espouse, endorse or fail to challenge extremist views.”
And he said: “There is incontrovertible evidence that both senior officers and elected members of Birmingham City Council were aware of concerns about activities that bear a striking resemblance to those described in the ‘Trojan Horse’ letter, many months before it surfaced.”
But the council failed to act - even after headteachers asked it for support - because it was concerned about “community cohesion”.
Education Secretary Nicky Morgan told the House of Commons she was appointing a new education commissioner to oversee the city’s efforts to stamp out extremism in schools.
She said: “There has been no evidence of direct radicalisation or violent extremism. But there is a clear account in the report of people in positions of influence in these schools, with a restricted and narrow interpretation of their faith, who have not promoted fundamental British values and who have failed to challenge the extremist views of others.”
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The report found that the plot focused around people associated with Park View School, in Alum Rock, or the Park View Educational Trust, which runs Nansen Primary School and Golden Hillock School, as well as Oldknow Academy in Small Heath.
But Ladywod MP Shabana Mahmood (Lab) told the Commons that the way claims about the schools and others had been leaked “has led to children at these schools being stigmatised, being bullied, and terrified that they won’t get places at colleges, universities or jobs because they have one of these schools on their CV”.
Speaking after the statement, Hodge Hill MP Liam Byrne (Lab) said he was working with employers to ensure pupils could get work experience - because they were finding firms turned them down because of the school they went to.
And Perry Barr MP Khalid Mahmood (Lab) told the Commons that he believed further investigation was needed into four people connected with Birmingham city council - David Hughes, who was a former head of council education department’s unit to support school governors, Les Lawrence, a former Conservative councillor who was a cabinet member for Education, Jackie Hughes, a former council official who is now Director of Education at for the Church of England’s Birmingham diocese and Kira Buttwell, another former council official.
Speaking in the Commons he said: “Officers at the local authority colluded with this huge tragedy of keeping these schools in a position they should not have been in, not listening to the parents, governors and teachers who demanded action on this issue, and weren’t prepared to act on their behalf.”
The report, published officially for the first time after leaks last week, highlighted a series of shocking findings about the practices introduced into ordinary non-faith schools, including:
* Arabic was introduced at Oldknow Academy “so that children could learn the Qur’an ... following the appointment of a new vice-principal, there was increased promotion of Islamic education, with children having to learn the Qur’an by heart”.
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* At Park View Educational Trust academies - Park View, Golden Hillock and Nansen Primary - and at Oldknow Academy, sex education and discussion concerning sexual orientation have been removed from all lessons. The use of technical words, such as condom, the pill and so forth, has been banned.
* Governors in several schools restricted discussion of topics such as forced marriage and female genital mutilation.
* At Park View, three Muslim men were selected to teach Sex and Relationships Education to boys. On the lesson worksheets it was written that if a woman said ‘No’ to sex with her husband, the Angel Gabriel would strike her down and condemn her to an eternity of hell.
* Oldknow organised ten-day school holidays for the last three years to Saudi Arabia, open only to Muslim children. The trips were subsidised with public money at £400 per pupil on the grounds that they were “a foreign language holiday”but the report says “if the trips were indeed intended to be modern languages holidays then there are countries nearer to Birmingham which would welcome non-Muslim children and where they could participate in the entire visit, unlike in Saudi Arabia.”
* Staff have said that creationism has been taught as fact in science lessons and in assemblies at Park View School.
* In Park View, Oldknow and some other schools, Islamic posters, slogans and instructions were openly displayed in many classrooms, including instructions to say short prayers before and after lessons. Senior staff have called students and staff who do not attend prayers ‘kaffir’.
* At Golden Hillock, the inquiry was told that boys and girls sat separately for assemblies. After the assembly, boys shook hands with a male teacher and girls with a female when exiting. Staff state that senior leaders checked their classrooms and removed Islamic display materials before the Department for Education visited.
* Women in Park View Educational Trust schools have said that they see no point in applying for leadership posts or promotion because they know that they will not be appointed. Women and men on the same management tier in the Park View Educational Trust are treated differently, with men being invited to meetings when women are not.
* Parents were contacted if girls at Park View, a co-educational school, were seen speaking to a boy.
* Park View Staff used a WhatsApp social media discussion group to discuss school policies. Razwan Faraz, the Vice-Principal at Nansen Primary School, posted a link to a news article about gay marriage, saying: “These animals are going out full force. As teachers we must be aware and counter their satanic ways”.