Introducing the case

This chapter focuses on the Trojan Horse affair. The puzzle in the Trojan Horse affair is to understand how a successful school could become the centre of a moral panic. Events unfolded quickly from the first media report in the Times on 2 March 2014, followed by Ofsted inspections of 21 schools ordered by the Secretary of State for Education, Michael Gove. On the basis of interim Ofsted reports, Peter Clarke was appointed by the Secretary of State in mid-April to provide a wider report. This appointment was controversial insofar as it placed matters directly in a context of violent extremism, since Peter Clarke was formerly in charge of Counter Terrorism Command within the Metropolitan Police in London. At around the same time, Ian Kershaw was appointed by Birmingham City Council to report on implications for the local authority.

Lessons from the Trojan Horse affair

This concluding chapter explores alternative lessons that can be drawn up from the Trojan Horse affair, presenting two tragedies that are bound up together in the affair. One tragedy is the disruption of the lives of teachers and governors in Birmingham, who made such a difference to the prospects of the pupils under their care, and were unjustly accused of placing them at risk. The educational opportunities of pupils at the school were very significantly damaged because of the way in which the DfE intervened. The second tragedy is that it has made it more difficult to realise the rights to educational opportunities more generally of young people from Muslim backgrounds — opportunities and rights that are theirs as British citizens and which are regarded as key to long term community cohesion. That is the failure of ‘British values’ that the Birmingham Trojan Horse case exposes.

‘British values’ and community cohesion

This chapter discusses the importance of promoting ‘British values’. The Trojan Horse affair has shaped subsequent debates on community cohesion and the counter-extremism agenda, but it was, in its turn, shaped by preceding events. These earlier events — urban disturbances, claims that communities are self-segregating, perceived threats of terrorism, and specific acts of terrorism themselves — have produced a variety of political interventions. These have included policies designed to mitigate what were understood to be problems of community cohesion, threatening the social fabric and security. The interventions helped to create the narratives that were drawn upon in interpretations of the Trojan Horse affair, just as the latter has been taken as evidence of the veracity of those concerns and as a motivation for further interventions.

Enter Ofsted

This chapter studies the Ofsted inspections and reports. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that the main criticism of Park View Academy was that it was overly ‘Islamic’ and that this, in turn, was associated with a ‘plot’ to ‘Islamise’ other schools. Yet the ‘takeover’ of other schools was itself the normal process associated with the academies programme. There was a fourth school associated with the PVET, namely Al-Furqan primary school. It had been deemed ‘inadequate’ at its last Ofsted inspection, and had had an interim Executive Board and interim head teacher appointed. However, the school features neither in the EFA's review of the PVET, nor in the Clarke Report. What makes it so significant is that it was an Islamic faith school.

Community cohesion, schooling and Prevent

This chapter evaluates how the debate on ‘British values’ and the security agenda associated with Prevent have been translated into policies for schools, and how those policies have been implemented. One of the immediate consequences of the publicity surrounding the Trojan Horse affair was that the Department for Education (DfE) reinforced the requirement on publicly funded schools in England to actively promote ‘shared values’, now called ‘fundamental British values’. The new guidance states that ‘schools should promote the fundamental British values of democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty, and mutual respect and tolerance of those with different faiths and beliefs’. It states further that schools should, 'enable students to acquire a broad general knowledge of and respect for public institutions and services in England'.

Prevent: from hearts and minds to muscular liberalism

This chapter examines the government's Prevent strategy for addressing extremism and radicalisation. The Prevent strategy that was launched by the Department of Communities and Local Government (DCLG) under the New Labour government in 2007 sets out a ‘hearts and minds’ approach to counterterrorism, in which engagement and partnership with British Muslims were seen as key to tackling violent extremism. It sets out four key objectives: ‘promoting shared values, supporting local solutions, building civic capacity and leadership and strengthening the role of faith institutions and leaders’. Accordingly, ‘Preventing Violent Extremism’ (PVE) or ‘Prevent’ initiatives focused on disaffected Muslim young people who were seen as particularly vulnerable to radicalisation, and mobilising Muslim women, whom government considered to be potential moderating forces on young Muslim men, as well as on modulating expressions and practices of Islam in Britain.

A plot to Islamicise schools?

This introductory chapter provides an overview on the events in Birmingham that came to the public attention in March 2014 involving an alleged plot by conservative and hardline Sunnis to Islamicise a number of state-funded schools where there were significant numbers of Muslim pupils. Attention was focused on one particular school, Park View Academy, and its associated Park View Educational Trust (PVET), incorporating two other schools, Nansen Primary and Golden Hillock secondary. The affair also drew in many others who were suspected of extremist activity — with 21 schools in Birmingham subjected to snap Office for Standards in Education (Ofsted) inspections and included in the various inquiries into the affair. The government cites the 'plot' in its argument about the need to develop a new counter-extremism strategy that confronts extremist ideology and not just threats of violence. However, the Kershaw Report and some other commentators argue that there was, in fact, no evidence of extremism.

The NCTL hearings and their collapse

This chapter discusses the National College for Teaching and Leadership (NCTL) professional misconduct hearings to which the Clarke Report gave rise. The NCTL hearings represented the first opportunity for the individuals who had been named in the investigation reports and in the media as part of a plot to Islamicise schools to respond, yet they had to do so in the context of widespread assumptions of their guilt. Ultimately, there have been fundamental flaws in the NCTL case and of the investigations leading up to it. The first is associated with a failure properly to consider the context of the affair. PVET was accused of introducing an Islamic curriculum and practices. However, there is no evidence that this was outside the guidance provided by many local authorities and other bodies.

The Clarke and Kershaw Reports

This chapter addresses the Clarke and Kershaw reports. In each report, much stands or falls on the idea that an ‘Islamic ethos’ is, in itself, problematic. This is a misunderstanding, one that is allowed to arise because neither report systematically addresses the issue of the nature of the religious requirements on schools. Indeed, notwithstanding that educational advisers from the DfE were part of the Clarke Report, it repeatedly refers to schools without a faith designation as ‘secular’. There is a further assumption in each report, too, that an ‘Islamic ethos’ would be ‘intolerant’, with the Clarke Report describing the Muslim Council of Britain's guidance on meeting the needs of Muslim pupils in state schools as a document about ‘Islamification’, although it is, in fact, a document designed to facilitate integration.

Governance, school reform and change management

This chapter looks at the changing governance of English schools. The discussion of the policy context pointed to the ‘heterarchic’ nature of school governance in Birmingham, and elsewhere, as a consequence of the emergence of new arrangements for school management and governance associated with the government's academies programme, which occurred alongside the continuation of existing arrangements for the structure and management of schools. These combined to create substantial regulatory confusion over the proper role of the Local Education Authority (LEA), the DfE, school governors and school leadership. It was in these unclear circumstances that the role of Park View in taking over the leadership of other schools, or the expression of Islam in the schools, were presented as evidence of a sinister process of Islamification.