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Ofsted reports on Birmingham schools delayed by a week

Ofsted reports on Birmingham schools delayed by a week

Categories: Latest News

Wednesday June 04 2014

The Independent, The Guardian, The Daily Mail, and The Times continue to provide coverage on the alleged ‘Trojan’ plot in Birmingham schools as the publication of the findings of Ofsted are awaited. The reports which were expected to be published this week have been deferred by a further week.

Of the 21 schools in Birmingham that have been investigated in the inquiry, 6 are expected to be placed under special measures including Park View Academy.

According to the Daily Mail, a source at the Department of Education revealed that the Ofsted inquiry has prompted the provision of school staff guidance and training in an attempt to prevent issues raised in the ‘Trojan Horse’ scandal from re-emerging. Issues include allegations regarding gender segregation in classrooms and the forced adoption of headscarves upon some female students.

However, the Guardian reveals that a leaked draft report containing the inquiry’s initial findings cleared the Park View Academy of allegations on discrimination and consequently retained its ‘outstanding’ rating.

The initial results of the early inspection called for recommendations including the improvement of “systems for safeguarding students” such as “strategies to ensure students are safe from extremism” and a review of monitoring the school’s equality bodies. The inspectors also recommended a review of its “spiritual, moral, social and cultural development” programmes according to The Guardian. There is speculation that this will be reversed with the school deemed as ‘inadequate’ in the final report. The reversal of fortune, from an ‘outstanding’ assessment last year to ‘inadequate’ this year, is stark indeed.

It is interesting that the Guardian observes that Ofsted’s initial inspection and recommendations did not substantiate the claims of gender segregation and homophobia, as prominently reported in the media since the anonymous ‘Trojan Horse’ letter came to light in February. In fact, much of the speculation about goings-in at the schools have conveniently sidelined the letter whose authenticity remains unproven. It is noteworthy too that the second inspection resulted in a media furore with leaked reports claiming to confirm the allegations.

The Times thus rightly points to the revelations suggesting Ofsted may have been placed under pressure to substantiate by any means necessary the allegations contained in the anonymous letter. Yet, this did not prevent the Sunday Times from claiming Park View Academy’s Chair, Tahir Alam, was “the leader of a fundamentalist group which had aspired to turn Britain into an Islamic state.”

The Mail on Sunday in its feature article on the case alludes to the report published by the Muslim Council of Britain on schools and Muslim pupils and suggests it formed the blueprint of Tahir Alam’s design to ‘Islamise’ education. The paper neglects to mention that the report, which once featured as a cover story in the Daily Express, ‘Muslims tell us how to run our schools’, was welcomed at the time by Professor Sir Timothy Brighouse, former Schools Commissioner for London.

The Sunday Times and the Guardian further report that Sir Michael Wilshaw, Ofsted’s Chief Inspector, will also criticise the Birmingham schools for denying the children “a “rounded education” to prepare them for life as British citizens”.

While the Sunday Times expects Wilshaw to confirm that there is evidence of “some governing bodies being dominated by individuals intent on changing the character of school” the Guardian states that the reports will reveal that overall “there was scant evidence of religious extremism… with most criticism reserved for school management and cases of overbearing behaviour by school governors.”

The Daily Mail nonetheless goes with the headline ‘Teachers to be offered training to combat Muslim radicalisation in classrooms in wake of the Birmingham Trojan Horse scandal’. The notion that schools harbour extremists is not new with similar reports surfacing back in 2011 claiming that “Experts in Islamic extremism have been drafted in by Education Secretary Michael Gove to identify dangerous radicals in schools.’

Identifying financial mismanagement and not religious attitudes as key factors in the inspection process echoes the case of the Al Madinah school in Derby which was closed and placed under ‘special measures’ last year as a result of financial mismanagement by its governors despite intense media rumours that the school practiced sex segregation and forced the hijab on female staff. 

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