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- Herausgeber: Crown House Publishing
- Kategorie: Bildung
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022
The Trojan Horse affair sent shock waves across England's education system in 2014. The affair centred around an anonymous letter that contained instructions on how to take over schools with a majority Muslim population by influencing their governing bodies and undermining head teachers. The authenticity of the letter remains hotly disputed, yet its publication generated huge turbulence - not only in Birmingham's schools and communities, but also in both Parliament and the national news. The book offers fresh perspectives based on unique access to information from within the city, written by respected educationalists who have worked successfully in Birmingham for many years both during the Trojan Horse era and since. It explains what led to the publication of the letter, its profound consequences for education in Birmingham, and how it influenced events in the city since. Crucially the book also opens up an informed discussion around the issues raised during Trojan Horse, such as delivering a well-rounded curriculum suitable for a diverse school community, developing working partnerships in the local area, and boosting the attainment and aspirations of children from disadvantaged backgrounds. Colin shares case studies of school improvement in local and national MATs in tough, multicultural urban environments, and how schools worked to develop pupils' social capital. The Birmingham Book reveals how the Trojan Horse affair was handled by the Department for Education as their academies and free schools policies underwent their first major stress tests. Furthermore, the book provides an up-to-date appraisal of the interrelationship between education in England's schools and the cultural and religious practice of the local communities the schools serve - and of the underachievement levels of the different ethnic groups in Birmingham. Suitable for teachers, school leaders, governors and policymakers.
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Praise for The Birmingham Book
The writers’ views about the effects of the Trojan Horse affair, drawn together by Colin Diamond, are a reminder of the damage wreaked upon the reputation of a city and a part of its community by some politicians and a section of the press determined to find radicalised violent extremism where there was none. The Birmingham Book reveals a deeper and disturbing truth which forces one to consider why it is we have failed to encourage, mentor and promote sufficient numbers of teachers of the Muslim faith to become future leaders in our British schools.
Ian Kershaw, Independent Chief Adviser to Birmingham City Council
Colin Diamond, and those he persuaded to write these always illuminating chapters from the viewpoints of community and professional leaders, deserves our deepest thanks as he calmly sets out the key issues which arose from the extraordinary affair of the Trojan Horse letter – in its way more damaging than the other notorious fake Zinoviev letter ninety years earlier. That one affected politics while this one damaged children’s futures in vulnerable parts of a great city. It’s harder to forgive. Diamond’s book – always calm, generous and informed – reveals the issues which beset that shifting mix of diverse communities, rival faiths and the interplay of professional commitment and parental ambition – or lack of it – which is veiled under the easy heading of ‘urban education’. Those who engage with it will find plenty of stimulus from these pages.
Tim Brighouse, former Commissioner for London Schools
Diamond’s book is very relevant and has implications beyond Birmingham. It sheds light onto how the needs of the largest minority group in England – Muslims – are or are not being met and the reaction by authorities to alarmist levels, escalating prejudice, fear and mistrust despite it resulting in no criminal charges whatsoever. His privileged position to bring together many of the key actors in the Trojan Horse affair allows a focus on the causes of the series of incidents. His reference to Holmwood provides an apt interjection in the discourse. The subsequent effects on the professional lives of many are alluded to in an authentic narrative by Campbell-Stephens. With this, the book leaves the reader wanting to ask more questions – four of which I allude to here: how can the mistrust amongst the Muslim community be repaired with an authentic voice? How can pupil outcomes be regained to the high levels of attainment pre-Trojan Horse? What is the accountability of governance Bacross all multi-academy trusts in England? Lastly, how can barriers be removed for aspiring Muslim school leaders in their career progression who are still in the shadow of the incidents from 2013–2014?
Kausor Amin-Ali, author of A-Z School Leadership: A Guide For New School Leaders, founder of All Children Read, experienced Head Teacher
The Birmingham Book is not just a book about Birmingham. There are warnings here – and lessons aplenty – for school leaders, administrators and governors everywhere. And, of course, for local and national politicians. More than a book about what happened in Birmingham, this is a book about politics, religion, equality, tolerance and intolerance, about the politicisation of education, abuses of power at local and national level and the ability of ethical school leaders to do what needs to be done, despite enormous pressure, wherever they may be.
There are many lessons to be learnt by unpicking the debacle that was Birmingham’s sorry Trojan Horse scandal. One is about the uses and abuses of power in the education system at school, local and national level. Another asks us to reflect how far we have genuinely come as a society in matters of tolerance, acceptance and equity. And among many takeaways from the inspiring education leaders in this book, it is clear that ‘community, community, community’ will always be at the heart of all great schools.
Ian Gilbert, founder of Independent Thinking Ltd, education writer, editor of The Working Class
The Trojan Horse affair in Birmingham, as it is popularly referred to, was a watershed moment for the way educationalists, community leaders and politicians, both locally and nationally, perceived the local Muslim communities in this great city. In the three decades from the end of the 1950s to the end of the 1980s, Muslims from the predominately rural areas of Kashmir, Pakistan and Bangladesh came and settled in the highly urbanised city of Birmingham. Uppermost in their minds is to live a better quality of life than that which they came from; one route in achieving this is through the education of their children. This book of essays is a must-read for those wishing to understand the important underlying dynamic between Muslims considering the education of their children, and the educational establishment’s quest for a quality education based on British values. The Trojan Horse affair provides the fertile context for drawing together those issues. The contributors provide serious and authentic perspectives on the systemic issues of structural racism, Islamophobia, class and cultural imperialism that gave rise to the hysterical response to an unsubstantiated letter. This is excellently achieved by many of Cthe authors giving candid biographical accounts of their own personal experience growing up in Birmingham schools and then of their professional experience as educators. This is balanced by well-researched evidence-based contributions on future policy and lessons for contemporary urban school leadership. The book is the first opportunity for those in the mix of the Trojan Horse affair to give a sober and thoughtful appreciation of the events and of the lessons learnt.
Dr. Muhammad Mashuq Ally, Chair of Governors, Bordesley Green Girls’ School and Sixth Form
Professor Colin Diamond presides over a cornucopia of authentic and inspiring, hitherto untold stories from school leaders; stories of recovery that offer an alternative lens through which to view the kaleidoscope that embodied the Trojan Horse affair.
Refreshing and vividly personal accounts of recovery – the existential angst that refines the compassion that inspires motivational leadership – are woven through every chapter and each one offers alternative dimensions through which schools can work relationally with communities.
The most compelling takeaways from this book are offered by Reza Gholami and Joy Warmington; a reminder of the importance of preparing and equipping teachers and school leaders to work in intersectional spaces, to develop the critical social awareness and cultural humility that enable all learners to flourish.
Razia Butt, MBE, Isonomy Education
Chapter 12 is a go-to for all educationalists from teachers to leaders as it inspires and is part of the book that is the phoenix rising from the ashes of the Trojan Horse debacle.
Colin takes us on a roller coaster of a journey, sequencing the historical political contexts from Labour’s high investment and equally high accountability to Gove’s vision of leadership encapsulating low investment and high accountability with ‘corporate management’ approaches to educational leadership. Amazingly well researched, Colin has collated the historical and present-day theories of school leadership from all angles. He then brings all these vividly to life though citing the lived narratives of exemplary school leaders he has worked alongside in the urban Birmingham context. He sums up what works simply as ‘a combination of adaptive leadership and pragmatic interpretation of government education policy from a secure base in the community, driven by a passion for Birmingham’s children’.
DColin rightly stresses the unique challenges these leaders face and analyses their commonality of moral purpose, values and character – ‘quiet leadership at the heart of the moral compass’. The matrix of the three characteristics is key for any aspiring or established leader. Best of all, Colin has distilled the experiences of the urban leaders into ten wise takeaways for the ‘survive to thrive’ journey. These are the valuable diamonds of wisdom (deliberate pun intended!) such as ‘roots to grow and wings to fly’ and ‘YNWA’ (you never work alone) and the superb UNICEF RRSA as a framework for a diverse, equitable and inclusive curriculum.
Meena Wood, international Edu-speaker, trainer, author and leadership coach
The Birmingham Book
Lessons in urban education leadership and policy from the Trojan Horse affair
Edited by Colin Diamond
Foreword by Mick Waters
GTo Birmingham school leaders who quietly transform children’s lives every day.
Foreword
I remember my feelings as I drove away from Park View Academy in November 2012. I had visited at the invitation of the head teacher, Lindsey Clark, ten years after her appointment. She had written to me following her attendance at a conference at which I had spoken:
After your presentation I came back to work refreshed and excited as you made sense about what matters in education. I am writing to invite you to visit Park View School, a school that I know you knew. I would be interested in your observations about the journey we have travelled and suggestions about what we need to do to keep on the right tracks. I am also interested in a conversation regarding multi-academy trusts – if you are willing. Park View is now an academy and is sponsoring Nansen Primary School. We want to do it ‘right’ and in a way that lasts, but making sure that each and every child gets the best possible deal.
The academy had been judged outstanding following an Ofsted inspection on the new and more demanding framework introduced by Sir Michael Wilshaw in January that year.
I was in the school for an hour and a half, so I gained only a snapshot. Lindsey showed me around some classrooms and I talked with an enthusiastic team of teachers in the mathematics department, committed to teaching maths and teaching it well, inspiring children towards the joy and intrigue of the discipline. I talked with a few pupils and with Lindsey and the chair of governors, Tahir Alam. The Park View Academy Trust was thinking of expanding, and we shared an open debate about the benefits or otherwise of becoming further engaged in the national schooling development that had so few clear organisational guidelines.
I remember raising questions, in the way I do, about the rather subdued nature of several classrooms, the subtle difference between rigour and suppression. I felt there was an uneasy discipline based more on external control than self-control. I wondered whether it was me: whether children had been told to show their best image and had overcooked it. We talked about the very clerical nature of every lesson we had visited and, as in many schools, the feeling of anticlimax that many pupils must experience at not doing what it ‘says on the door’: science or design technology, for example, and instead doing writing. I raised the issue of single-gender classes, but only tentatively, as I know it is a personal view that single-gender teaching in a mixed school is unsatisfactory. I am tentative because I am aware that the city prizes its single-gender foundation schools, and most of our esteemed public schools are also single-gender entry. Each of my reservations or questions was met with the trump card so often played: ‘Ofsted says we are outstanding.’ I sensed it wasn’t, but who would I be to judge based on just a short time in the school?
As I drove away, I reflected that the school was infinitely improved from the one I had last visited in 2002. That was the day when I had been part of the panel that had appointed Lindsey Clark as head teacher. Whilst the school had been improving in the period at the start of the new millennium, it was still struggling when Lindsey took over. Now, the tone of the school was controlled as opposed to unpredictable. Building Schools for the Future had transformed the environment and created a business-like environment compared with the previously shabby secondary modern atmosphere. I respected Lindsey’s efforts and assumed that Tahir would be proud of his contribution after the previous frustrations over the poor performance of the school and others in the area. I didn’t think it was superb, but it had improved certainly and significantly.
I was not as effusive as I felt both Lindsey and Tahir probably wanted me to be, especially since Sir Michael Wilshaw, Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector, had visited earlier in the year and used the school as a benchmark for others.
Just over a year after my visit, the Trojan Horse row broke. It is hard to believe that such a small piece of paper with no signature could cause such turmoil in a school, community and city – and even central government. The fallout was significant: a swathe of schools subject to inspection, previous success obliterated, individuals ostracised, court cases that collapsed through lack of authoritative evidence, and a confused community once more doubting its schools, its city and itself. When I was invited to contribute to this book, I was intrigued to know whether I was going to understand the events which had caused such upset and which I had watched from a distance.
However, this book does far more than revisit the turmoil and tread again the complexity explored in two major enquiries. Some of the issues are contentious, and many people tend to overlook their complexity or have iiisimplistic views on them. This book avoids pointing the finger and raking up bad blood. It doesn’t settle scores, but nor does it turn a blind eye to the uncomfortable.
Colin Diamond offers an excellent analysis of the turbulent period that engulfed the schools, as parallel enquiries did their work against a background of political point-scoring. His introduction is followed by first-hand accounts of the efforts to rebuild both the schools and the community’s belief in its schools. There are personal accounts of a harrowing time for a community alongside life stories of awareness of unfairness and underestimation. There are examples of responsibility and accountability being shifted and responsibility and accountability being accepted. It is a book about rights and wrongs that avoids recrimination and blame, and instead relates stories of hope, ambition and collaborative partnership.
This book offers a fascinating read; it is informative and revealing whilst at the same time unsettling, salutary and uplifting. The recollections in each chapter are vivid. Images of childhood half a century ago sit alongside the reflections of head teachers working to establish trust against a backdrop of suspicion. Frustration comes through the feeling of the unfulfilled potential of communities and young people, now adults, subject to historic under-expectation and underachievement within a school system unprepared for their arrival from abroad, slow to adjust and quick to rationalise shortcomings.
Reading this book, it is easy to imagine the screenplay for a film of the ‘feel-good’ genre. The vignettes appear so often. With the right music, a cinema audience would be carried along with a story offering an emotional switchback: funny, poignant and homely scenes set against confused and angry images of injustice, interspersed with the order and certainty of officialdom. The clichés would be there, along with a musical score and settings that would drift from the tension and wrath of the period to the rise of a community, and particularly its schools, and which would highlight certain individuals who would be overstated and over-characterised. Of course, even in this harmless observation there is an irony, for some of the main protagonists and some of those involved in the story would not want the music and would not tolerate a film.
What the book reveals is the outcome of a managerial age where organisations such as Ofsted and the Department for Education applied themselves to the challenge of their targets, tick-lists and risk assess ments without looking closely enough at the reality in front of them. ivAcademy trusts were created to accelerate the number of academies in the education system but with little regard as to how they would work in practice. Schools were allowed to be classified as ‘outstanding’ and then ‘fail’ within a very short time, seemingly without turning the mirror to question the processes of inspection itself. The academy regime had played into the hands of people who wanted the best for their own children and had taken at face value Michael Gove’s offer of autonomy at school level.
It is easy to forget that the crisis arose at a time of a tightening screw. We had a prime minister and an education secretary who had announced that they were ‘declaring war’ on coasting schools (Daily Mail, 2010) and referring to people who questioned policy as ‘enemies of promise’ (Gove, 2013). Gove’s review of curriculum and qualifications was emphasising an intellectually demanding approach at the expense of vocational and practical aspects. The English Baccalaureate, which Gove had admitted the previous year was a ‘bridge too far’,1 was becoming the currency of approach through the Progress 8 measure and schools were looking over their shoulders at the newly invigorated Ofsted. Inspectors were fixated by data to the extent that struggling schools were being visited by Her Majesty’s Inspectors half-termly to look at data drops and expecting to see ‘spikes’ of improvement. For a community previously disappointed and frustrated with the schooling of their children, these sorts of standpoints would have convinced those involved that they were on the right path, and the political zeal would have been welcomed and used as a spur. Governors were being urged to exert influence on their schools. Would these criticised governing bodies have compared unfavourably in their determination for success with other dominating governing bodies driving their own agenda within their own community elsewhere? Don’t most multi-academy trusts seek to appoint trustees who accord with their outlook?
It was also the time of the Prevent agenda, which at the time asked schools to ‘respect’ fundamental British values. There was a sense of contradiction for professionals, with an evolving shift away from the community cohesion agenda that schools had been expected to address in previous years.
vThe label of ‘social deprivation’, along with the accompanying poor results at GCSE and low positions in league tables, was distorting the way that children in schools in such areas had been treated. Someone else had decided they were socially deprived and that they were inadequate in terms of results. Yet, when those results had been addressed, the schools initially acclaimed by inspection were now seen to be not addressing the right issues.
Much was made of the lack of cultural opportunities for these pupils, and that a narrowed curriculum restricted opportunity for the arts. It is easy to forget that, at the time, it would have been relatively easy to find a school where the curriculum focus was on a narrowing range of supposedly academic subjects, to the detriment of arts and culturally based disciplines. There is considerable reference to the work done by school leaders in encouraging communities to embrace a wider landscape, as well as examples of teenagers who had never ventured into their city centre. Head teachers elsewhere could provide examples (even now) of youngsters reluctant to leave their estate or postcode, but, against a backdrop of political rhetoric, changing this became a priority and a ‘measurable’ for these communities in a way that it did not for others under scrutiny.
The vital importance of place runs throughout the story; people leaving their place, mainly Pakistan, from the late 1960s and making a home in a new place – in a community within a city which welcomed them by default rather than with a warm embrace. There are stories of the efforts to be taken seriously, to secure some sort of equality and then equity; stories of a community bringing its traditions, routines and religious practices; stories of people dissatisfied with authority, trying to exert influence on those in charge and eventually seeking to use the government’s own policies to secure the best interests for their young people and a sense of self-esteem for their community.
Adrian Packer (Chapter 7), who picked up the mantle of headship at Park View Academy, the school at the centre of Trojan Horse, describes that confusion finding its way into the whole school community, not least the pupils who appeared bemused at the way they had become the centre of a crisis. He communicates the loyalty to an ideal achieved through a homemade recipe, yet turned to dust after such short-lived success.
Whilst Packer moved in from elsewhere with fresh eyes, others were working at the heart of a community they knew well. Sajid Gulzar vi(Chapter 8), CEO of Prince Albert Community Trust, was in the unique position of trying to support Highfield Junior and Infant School, which he had attended as a child. Building upon previous experience of helping schools to lift themselves, he knew there was no blueprint. Adrian Packer describes the way he had to resist urgings to impose a new regime to replace the discredited one. Professionalism shines through his description of a desire to build community, and through Azita Zohhadi’s (Chapter 6) commitment to bold spirit and purpose at Nelson Mandela Primary School. There is a recognition that the crisis presented a wider challenge to the city and to people such as Pat Smart – mentioned several times for her contribution – who epitomises all those head teachers and teachers across the city who have, over time, committed themselves to making Birmingham the best place it can be for children in schools.
Much of the book is also about the way schools relate to their parent community. Joy Warmington’s (Chapter 13) analysis of the more recent dispute at nearby Parkfield Community School, which centred on the No Outsiders programme, goes below the surface and looks first at the reasons for the protests and then the way forward. She explores the detail of larger tensions, the lack of clarity in law and the importance of each side listening to the other and working towards compromise. She describes a situation where parents ‘trusted’ their school because it secured good results and was deemed outstanding and, as a result, both school and parents accepted a relationship that was muted.
Azita Zohhadi proposes that better futures for children rely on trust (there is an irony in the use of that word) and tells of the early days in her headship as parents viewed with suspicion the steps that she was taking to move the school forward. As parents bought into the developments and saw evidence of the children achieving, that trust became the fuel for an immensely positive relationship. Similarly, Herminder Channa (Chapter 10) portrays her leadership role at Ark Boulton Academy being built upon a rejection of draconian approaches of ‘zero tolerance’ regimes in favour of listening to pupils and parents as they considered what their school could offer them.
It is the need to address that ‘muted’ relationship between school and parents that comes through as a message that is applicable to schools elsewhere and in other aspects of schooling. Do parents accept too easily the reassurances, rules and expectations of schools? Perhaps Trojan viiHorse was simply an example of members of a community taking a form of direct action as opposed to undermining or plotting anything sinister.
Kamal Hanif (Chapter 2) brings a fascinating perspective on the world beyond schooling. He traces developments using milestones such as the murder of Stephen Lawrence, the Swann Report on multiracial education, the impact of the Rushdie episode and the events of 9/11. The tension associated with being a British Muslim and recognising the perceptions of Islam beyond the community was significant – and not relieved by the response of ministers. There are fascinating and at times upsetting reflections on incidents in school staffrooms. Coming through so much of the book is a sense of a community lacking insight about how to influence.
Karamat Iqbal (Chapter 3) questions systemic issues which result in the continuing lack of representation of the Pakistani community in decision-making roles in the city and delves into questions of competence in bureaucracy at the highest level. This is also picked up by Thomas Perry (Chapter 4) from the University of Warwick who provides an analysis of national and school-level data and poses many important questions for policy-makers and school leaders about differential performance and educational inequalities by ethnicity, gender, English language status and socio-economic status. He acknowledges the unique position of school leaders to respond to need, but asserts that government and community should not shirk from their responsibility to address social problems, and nor should the accountability system be excused from its wilful blindness to school context and (dis)advantage.
Nearly all the writers based in schools saw recognition of their quality through inspection as important in terms of acknowledging that the schools had a clean bill of health. This was surprising given that, at least in part, Ofsted had been a cause of the turmoil wrought upon the community and its schools. Several contributors express doubt about the validity and integrity of the inspection agency in the twenty-one inspections commissioned by the secretary of state. Perhaps this is because many of the writers saw the events from the perspective of arriving on the scene after the negative judgement, and perhaps also there is something about recognition from outside seeming like validation.
Ultimately, The Birmingham Book is a kaleidoscope of relationships and values: trust, belief, tolerance, professionalism. It is about a community and its shared commitment to making childhood the very best it can be viiifor all its children and seeing schools as a vital part of that process. It always was.
Professor Mick Waters
References
Daily Mail (2010) Gove Declares War on Failure in Our Schools (25 November). Available at: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1332891/Michael-Gove-declares-war-failure-schools.html.
Gove, Michael (2013) I Refuse to Surrender to the Marxist Teachers Hell-Bent on Destroying Our Schools: Education Secretary Berates ‘The New Enemies of Promise’ for Opposing His Plans, Daily Mail (23 March). Available at: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2298146/I-refuse-surrender-Marxist-teachers-hell-bent-destroying-schools-Education-Secretary-berates-new-enemies-promise-opposing-plans.html.
Swann, Michael (1985) Education for All: Report of the Committee of Enquiry into the Education of Children from Ethnic Minority Groups [Swann Report]. London: HMSO. Available at: http://www.educationengland.org.uk/documents/swann/swann1985.html.
1 See Hansard, HC Deb vol. 558, col. 441 (7 February 2013). Available at: https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/2013-02-07/debates/13020759000004/CurriculumAndExamReform.
Provenance – a personal journey
Colin Diamond
It is important to explain the origins of this book. First, I need to confess my affection for Birmingham. I often describe the city as England’s best-kept secret because, whilst Brummies are immensely proud people, they keep it to themselves and are generally self-effacing about their achievements. As a professor at the University of Birmingham, my colleagues would expect me to be upfront about conscious bias – and probe my unconscious bias too. I like working in the city and feel at home. I have even been conferred the status of ‘honorary Brummie’ on a few occasions. There, I have said it. Make of it what you will.
An urban educationalist at heart, with my own schooling in downtown Liverpool and teaching career in inner London, working in Birmingham felt natural from the outset. Twenty years ago, the city’s schools were recognised for their cutting-edge innovation and transcending the social disadvantage of the children and families they served. The commitment to Birmingham’s children continues. Every day, thousands of miracles occur in the city’s classrooms against a backdrop of severe socio-economic deprivation. In communities that are on the bottom rung of the ladder in English society, schools work to give those children a foothold, and they begin to climb. It isn’t glamorous work and it is well known that the school inspectorate is less likely to judge inner-city schools to be outstanding, no matter what the quality of the education. Walk the streets just beyond the magnificent civic piazza and Victorian municipal buildings and you will find schools that are beacons of hope amid the urban jumble of roads, dilapidated factories and housing estates. It was always a privilege to visit and celebrate their achievements.
When I left Birmingham City Council in summer 2018 to take up a post at the university, it provided me with the opportunity to reflect on four intense years. Starting with little knowledge of the city and its communities, it had been a crash-course induction. Working initially for the x Department for Education and then moving to the council in 2015, the pace was relentless. Trojan Horse and its legacy dominated those years.
I needed to make sense of what had happened, and there is no greater discipline than writing a book to create a framework for reflection and learning. My understanding has deepened during the process of writing and editing. This book became possible when all of the authors agreed to tell their stories. I asked them to imagine we were in a cafe or pub and to describe their journeys through the Trojan Horse era. Francis Bacon’s quotation, ‘Reading maketh a Full man, Conference a Ready man & Writing an Exact man’, which sits above the entrance to Kensington public library in Liverpool, has been my lodestar.
The strength of the book lies in the integrity of its authors, who have lived and breathed Birmingham education for many years. There is a range of experiences and perspectives defined by each author’s position as school leader, academic or their leadership of related organisations such as brap (formerly Birmingham Race Action Partnership) and the National Governance Association. I deliberately set wide parameters for the authors and trusted their judgement and scholarship. Each contributor read near-final drafts of my introduction and early chapters and agreed to write, knowing my take on events.
The result is a rich brew of powerful accounts which dispels the myth that there is a single version of ‘the truth’ about Trojan Horse. This is the opposite of a simplistic and convenient single-line narrative that some commentators prefer. It is easy to take a position that supports Michael Gove’s paranoia about supposed Islamic extremism infiltrating schools or to create a hagiography that beatifies the principal players at Park View Education Trust (PVET). The multi-layered perspectives found in this book reveal a complex intersectional landscape that continues to evolve.
What took you so long to get here?
By April 2014, it had become apparent to ministers and officials in the Department for Education that something really serious had gone wrong in Birmingham. I was asked to pull together a team drawn from the department’s official education adviser team (experienced school leaders and former Ofsted inspectors) who would work with Education Funding xi Agency staff to find out what was really going on in the PVET academies and in Oldknow Junior School following the Ofsted inspection judgements. It was meant to be a six-week assignment.
I am still working in Birmingham eight years later. It wasn’t the chaos and dysfunction that detained me, and nor was it the immediate task of getting two damaged academy trusts into safe hands. It was an invitation from Pat Smart, at that time executive head teacher of the Greet Federation, to come and see her primary school in Sparkhill that hadn’t been directly caught up in Trojan Horse but had experienced some of the behaviours aimed at its leadership.
Sir Mike Tomlinson, the education commissioner for Birmingham, and I visited Greet and were seriously impressed by the standards that pupils achieved. Here was an inner-city primary with almost 100% Muslim children, of whom the majority were of British Pakistani Mirpuri heritage, achieving brilliant results. The Year 6 pupils’ books contained writing of sophistication and maturity, testimony to the progress they had made at Greet. And yet many of those pupils, high achievers in Year 6, went on to the neighbouring Golden Hillock secondary school where by 2014 their progress was being halted abruptly.
It was the generosity of Birmingham’s head teachers that I found most compelling. The sense of family and loyalty to the city was palpable. Many heads were asked to step up to the plate to remedy what had gone badly wrong because of Trojan Horse. None refused. They wanted to purge the damage to the reputation of Birmingham’s education system. And they all asked, ‘What took you so long to get here?’ In other words, why had the Department for Education ignored all the warning signs that we now call ‘Trojan-type behaviours’ over many years?
Ministers took some convincing that the solution to most of the problems identified were already on the doorstep in Birmingham. Their instincts were to invite national academy chains to take over this group of rudderless schools. And in the case of the Ark multi-academy trust, already established in the city, this worked out well. It adopted Golden Hillock secondary and Oldknow junior (renamed as Ark Boulton and Ark Victoria respectively). For the other schools, local solutions were found. As a result of exceptional leadership, most of these schools – whether in local or national trusts – have since thrived. It is important to state that many Birmingham City Council-maintained schools that had managed to avoid xii serious Trojan incursions into their governing bodies continued to provide high-quality education in spite of the turbulence that surrounded them.
The full weight of what had become a national education crisis was felt most acutely in Birmingham’s east end. The mood was febrile in summer 2014. Cab drivers lectured me on the calumny that Michael Gove had visited on Park View and Golden Hillock schools once they knew my destination from New Street station. It was a hot summer. The Intifada was raging in the Gaza Strip and Palestinian flags were on display along the Alum Rock Road. The sense of injustice locally and internationally towards Muslims found voice across the community.
Colleagues at the Department for Education in London were worried, needlessly, about my safety in the city. Their understanding had been shaped by the creation of a narrative with incendiary ingredients: the flagship academy programme had apparently been hijacked and become an incubator for Islamist extremist behaviour. This fed Gove’s worst imaginings. Of course, there was anger and confusion in abundance and intense curiosity about what was going to happen to the local schools that had been plummeted into special measures. There were hostile, shouty meetings. There was despair and suspicion in equal measure from everyone involved. Some school staff requested meetings in neutral venues at night and passed information containing school documents to me literally under the table. They feared that once the investigation into Trojan Horse was over and the Department for Education left town, there would be retribution and the termination of careers.
Events were chaotic, with governors locked out of one school by senior leaders as the summer term ended. One parent-governor of two secondary school-aged children caught up in Trojan Horse told me, in tears, that when he was at school in Birmingham, he was informed by the careers teacher that his future would consist of ‘driving cabs or cooking kebabs’. Now, all those years later, it looked like a new generation of the community, including his own children, was being failed by that very same school.
Yet, under the circumstances, on a personal level, the reception I received was always polite and very reasonable. Hospitality was invariably offered and accepted. Trust was at a premium. Events over summer 2014 continued to destabilise until new leadership was installed in the academy trusts and schools for the autumn term. And, always, the invitation was xiii to come and talk things through in the homes of local families, mosques and cafes, with everyone having a view on how to sort things out.
In autumn 2014, work continued at the top level of the Department for Education, with Sir Mike Tomlinson, former Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector, appointed as education commissioner by the secretary of state with the remit of getting the city’s education back on track. I was appointed as his deputy and embedded in the council’s education offices. An education improvement plan was needed to get the basic elements of the council’s duties back in good working order. They included school improvement, safeguarding and governance. Communications with schools were broken and needed to be restored. By January 2015, the improvement plan had been approved by the secretary of state for education and the journey to rebuild relationships and trust had begun.
My move from the Department for Education to the city council was seamless in that, broadly, I was working with the same people as the recovery plans gained momentum. I wasn’t ‘changing sides’, as my loyalty lay with the children and families in the city, not the infrastructure – whether in Whitehall or Birmingham. At school level, exactly as foretold by the city’s most successful education leader, Sir Tim Brighouse, the real deals were sealed in pubs or curry houses in the evening. The Birmingham education community rightly expects total commitment from its leaders and that involves 24/7 engagement far from the council building and its civic formalities.
Being director of education in Birmingham is an all-consuming job, with around 450 state schools and roughly 205,000 pupils to oversee. The post-Trojan Horse improvement plan had staunched the immediate damage found by the Clarke and Kershaw investigations (see Timeline). However, as I advised Ofsted and the Department for Education in 2015, the biggest risk sector was then to be found within the city’s independent schools, which ranged from King Edward’s School (founded in 1552 with a civic roll of honour amongst its alumni) through to start-up schools in the east end that could not pass the most basic of safeguarding tests.
At the same time, the number of families resorting to elective home education was increasing rapidly, partly as a result of displacement when Trojan Horse activities stopped in state schools. Families were persuaded that a better, more Islamic education was on offer in these backstreet operations. A number of them were educating children illegally, never having registered with the Department for Education. Ofsted created a xiv specialist team of inspectors to investigate independent schools where risk was evident, and I joined them on one visit. Everything about this ‘school’ was appalling. The thirty children sat passively in tiny classrooms receiving poor teaching and were making no progress. The premises were unsafe on every level. The lead inspector warned the proprietor that she was running a school unlawfully and it would be reported to the Department for Education. I informed her that fire safety breaches, insanitary conditions and rodent infection were all major issues that would be reported immediately to the relevant authorities. The real tragedy was that cash-poor families had been conned into paying fees for a substandard education in the name of their faith, whilst places were available in a good community school a few hundred metres away. The proprietor closed the ‘school’ a few days later.
2015 – turning the corner
By 2015, things were starting to fall into place. One feature of Trojan Horse had been the pressure to narrow the curriculum and remove or reduce subjects such as sex education, mixed physical education, citizenship, music and the humanities. In its revived leadership role, Birmingham’s cabinet member for children’s services, Brigid Jones, and for inclusion and community safety, James McKay, signed the Birmingham Curriculum Statement in September 2015. It stated unequivocally that ‘ALL children in Birmingham will experience a broad and balanced curriculum enabling them to grow and learn in an environment without prejudice or inequality’ (Birmingham City Council, 2015, p. 1). It was explicit about the place of arts, physical activities, music and social, moral, spiritual and cultural education.
This simple statement, underpinned by a raft of educational legislation, was a crucial ingredient that affirmed Birmingham City Council’s moral authority in education. It has been used extensively by head teachers and governing bodies as the touchstone for curriculum planning. It was reissued in 2019 to bring it up to date with legislation and to ensure that it was fit for purpose with the advent of compulsory relationships, health and sex education in all schools in England from 2020 (Birmingham City Council, 2019). The Birmingham Curriculum Statement was subsequently recognised as an example of good practice by the Department for xv Education. Moving from national opprobrium to approbation in a year demonstrated how well Birmingham City Council was motoring once more. In August 2016, the secretary of state for education, Nicky Morgan, stood down the commissioner because solid progress was evident in the outcomes of the improvement plan. This was the beginning of the recovery journey that continues today.
At the University of Birmingham, a number of the authors now share their experiences with master’s students in education leadership. Seminars led by Herminder Channa, Sajid Gulzar and Bev Mabey have been well received because of their authenticity and impact. These leaders know how to turn around schools in the city by dropping anchor in the community, building relational trust and then turning up the school improvement repertoire. Prior to working with the university, they had not been asked to write down their leadership journeys. It was a natural next step to bring everything together in this book. It has made me reflect on how few of our school leaders capture their contributions and pass them on to their peers and the next generation of leaders. We are doing that now constantly at the university’s Education Leadership Academy.2
References
Birmingham City Council (2015) Birmingham Curriculum Statement. Available at: https://www.stedmund.bham.sch.uk/images/Documents/birmingham-curriculum-statement.pdf
Birmingham City Council (2019) Birmingham Curriculum Statement. Available at: https://www.birmingham.gov.uk/downloads/file/1491/birmingham_curriculum_statement.
Clarke, Peter (2014) Report into Allegations Concerning Birmingham Schools Arising from the ‘Trojan Horse’ Letter (HC 576). Available at: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/340526/HC_576_accessible_-.pdf.
Kershaw, Ian (2014) Investigation Report: Trojan Horse Letter [Kershaw Report]. Available at: https://www.birmingham.gov.uk/downloads/file/1579/investigation_report_trojan_horse_letter_the_kershaw_report.
2 See https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/schools/education/ela/index.aspx.
Trojan Horse timeline
Map – key schools
Birmingham – fact check
Birmingham has a population of 1.14 million (2018) projected to grow to 1.31 million in 2039. It is the most deprived local authority area in the West Midlands and the sixth most deprived in England. 41% of the population and 50% of the children live in the most deprived decile. Over one in three children live in poverty, with Ladywood constituency having the third highest level in the UK and Sutton Coldfield the fifteenth lowest (Birmingham City Council, 2018). Birmingham is ‘super diverse’ with people from nearly 200 countries having made their homes in the city. The 2011 Census revealed that 42.1% of the population classify themselves as within an ethnic group other than White British (compared to 30% in 2001). Over 60% of the under-18 population was from a non-White British background in 2011, compared to 44% in 2001. The largest ethnic groups of young people are Asian (with British Pakistanis being the largest Asian group), White British, Black and mixed race.
There were approximately 450 state schools and approximately fifty independent schools in the city in 2018. Precise numbers cannot be provided as the number and status of state schools now changes within the school year and independent schools are opening and closing frequently. There were 205,867 pupils in schools with 82% of state schools rated good or outstanding in 2017.
References
Birmingham City Council (2011) Census 2011. Available at: https://www.birmingham.gov.uk/directory/35/population_and_census/category/447.
Birmingham City Council (2016) Life in the Most Deprived Decile [infographic]. Available at: https://www.birmingham.gov.uk/downloads/file/7921/infographic_life_in_the_most_deprived_decile.
Birmingham City Council (2018) [Infographic]. Online. No longer available.
Birmingham City Council (2019) Birmingham Health Profile 2019. Available at: https://www.birmingham.gov.uk/downloads/file/11845/birmingham_health_profile_2019.
Acknowledgements
Professors Julie Allan and Deborah Youdell, my bosses at university, for unswerving support and encouragement throughout.
The chapter authors for their wonderful writing, profound insights and infinite patience as the book came together.
Pat Smart for showing how good Birmingham’s primary education is.
Sir Mike Tomlinson – mentor and coach, and the best HMCI ever.
David McVean – my colleague from the Education Funding Agency.
Mark Rogers, former CEO at Birmingham City Council, whose watch was far too brief.
Everyone at Birmingham City Council who helped to ‘get the basics back in place’ in the education improvement plan.
Saleem Quazi, MBE – my first wing man in Birmingham from the Department for Education days.
Safi Bi – my PA at the Department for Education and former Bordesley Green Girls’ School pupil who really helped out at Alum Rock back in 2014.
Amarjot Butcher and Emma Tuck – without whose diligence and editing skills there would be no book.
And, finally, my family for their great support along the way since Birmingham loomed large in our lives.
Contents
List of contributors
Rosemary Campbell-Stephens, MBE
Rosemary Campbell-Stephens is a veteran educator who grew up, went to school and trained as a teacher of English in Birmingham. Rosemary is a visiting fellow at the Institute of Education, University College London and an associate at Leeds Beckett University. Her leadership work as part of the London Challenge (2003–2011) was in developing a programme focused on increasing the numbers of Black and Asian leaders in London schools. Investing in Diversity became the catalyst for subsequent programmes in the schools sector across the UK. Rosemary is an anti-racist practitioner who frames her work through a critical race lens. She provides bespoke leadership training and coaching internationally and is a sought-after keynote speaker in her areas of expertise and passion, namely anti-racist decolonising practice. In 2016, Rosemary was awarded an MBE for thirty-five years’ service to education in the UK. She was honoured to accept the award as recognition by peers of her activism in education. As a junior elder, she embraces the label ‘disruptor’ and is rarely in her lane. Her latest book, Educational Leadership and the Global Majority: Decolonising Narratives, was published in 2021. Rosemary lives with her husband in Jamaica.
Herminder Channa, OBE JP
Herminder Channa is currently an executive principal at Ark Schools, a lead Ofsted inspector, a local leader of education and a magistrate. Herminder chose teaching as a profession as she is driven by the idea that access to an excellent standard of education is a birth right for all. Herminder, who was born locally in Sandwell, helped to found Nishkam High School in Birmingham in 2012, one of the first Sikh multi-faith free schools. Under her headship it gained Ofsted outstanding status in just eighteen months. Herminder left Nishkam for Ark because she wanted to work with children in disadvantaged areas and where she felt she could make a difference. In 2015, she took over Golden Hillock School, one of the schools at the centre of the Trojan Horse affair, which had seen a decade of underachievement, re-brokerage to two different academy chains, high levels of supply staff and judged as an inadequate academy xxviby Ofsted, twice. In the Queen’s Birthday Honours List 2020, Herminder was awarded an OBE for her services to education. When asked how she transformed the school she replied, ‘We did it with love!’ Herminder is proud to serve her community as a magistrate.
Professor Colin Diamond, CBE
Colin Diamond has worked in education leadership roles for forty years. He started his career in inner-London secondary schools as a humanities teacher and soon began to specialise in working with pupils with additional needs. He became a local authority adviser for special educational needs and disabilities and an associate head teacher in Hackney and Tower Hamlets. His career then took him to jobs in North East England and then the South West, where he has lived for over twenty years. En route he trained as an Ofsted inspector. He became director of education in North Somerset when it was in intervention from the then Department for Education and Employment and led its improvement journey until it gained outstanding judgements from Ofsted. He then worked for the Department for Education as director for children and learners based in Bristol and Plymouth, holding seventeen local authorities to account for their value-added performance. In 2011, he returned to the Department for Education in London to head up the academies and free schools education adviser team.
In 2014, he was asked by the Department for Education to lead the team that went to Birmingham in the wake of the Trojan Horse crisis. This led, in the short term, to the re-brokerage of the academies damaged by Trojan Horse. In the longer term, it led to his appointment as deputy education commissioner for Birmingham. In 2015, he was appointed as executive director of education in Birmingham to deliver the Education Improvement Plan signed off by the secretary of state.
In September 2018, Colin took up the new post of professor of educational leadership at the University of Birmingham. His main tasks are to create greater engagement between schools and the university and to establish an Education Leadership Academy. He is driven by the power of education to transform the lives of working-class children and wants them all to have the same opportunities that he was lucky enough to get from going to brilliant schools in Liverpool.
xxvii He is a member of the Liverpool Education Improvement Board and chair of the West Somerset Opportunity Area. In 2018, he received a CBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours for services to education.
He is a lifelong supporter of Liverpool Football Club and Anfield is his spiritual home. He used to play in blues and rock and roll bands until Birmingham took over his life.
Dr Reza Gholami
Reza Gholami is a reader in sociology of education at the University of Birmingham where he is also the deputy director of the Centre for Research in Race and Education. His research interests are Islamophobia and racism in education as well as community-based forms of education. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and an honorary senior research associate at the University College London Institute of Education. He earned his Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Anthropology and Sociology at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, where he also conducted postdoctoral research funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, working with diverse youth and community organisations in London to improve educational and citizenship outcomes for young people. Currently, he is leading an Economic and Social Research Council-funded project working with non-formal educators in Birmingham to develop innovative educational materials to foster inter-communal learning. Reza is the author of numerous books and articles in his field, including co-editing the book Education and Extremisms: Re-Thinking Liberal Pedagogies in the Contemporary World (2018). He regularly appears in national and international media, including featuring in the BBC Radio 4 documentary The Corrections about the Birmingham Trojan Horse affair.
Sajid Gulzar, OBE
Sajid Gulzar is the founding CEO of the Prince Albert Community Trust. The trust currently consists of five primary schools and a new secondary free school which opened in September 2021. Sajid has led the trust in operating a ‘turn-around’ model, taking on failing schools and improving them markedly. He is passionate about improving the life chances of children, especially those raised in challenging circumstances. Sajid was born, raised and educated in Birmingham. The son of first-generation immigrants from Pakistani-administered Kashmir, he was taught the xxviii value and life-changing impact of education from a young age. He is a national leader of education, has previously inspected for Ofsted and has worked internationally on behalf of the National Association of Special Educational Needs and Cambridge Education. Sajid is a guest lecturer at the University of Birmingham’s Education Leadership Academy and has served as a regional schools commissioner on the West Midlands advisory head teacher board since 2017. In June 2019, Sajid was awarded an OBE for services to education.
Kamal Hanif, OBE
Kamal Hanif is a former CEO of the Waverley Education Foundation Trust. He has successfully engaged in various roles in education since 1992, supported the Department for Education to resolve issues around schools in the city during the Trojan Horse episode and was on the Kershaw review group. As a national leader of education, Kamal has supported a number of schools. He is also a trustee of the charity SINCE 9/11 and sits on various working groups, such as the Department for Education’s Due Diligence and Countering Extremism Group, and was on the Association of School and College Leader Council. Kamal has been involved as a Stonewall School Champion and training partner. In his spare time, Kamal enjoys restoration projects, gardening and swimming.
Dr Karamat Iqbal
Karamat Iqbal has been associated with Birmingham since his father came to the city in 1957. He himself arrived in 1970. Karamat received his upper secondary, college and university education locally. He began his public sector work (as an informal educator and then secondary school teacher) serving the diverse local communities. He spent fifteen years in Wolverhampton, first as a community relations officer, challenging racism and promoting multicultural education. This was followed by his role as deputy director of the Equal Rights and Opportunities Management Unit and later as head of the supported learning department at Bilston Community College. After this, Karamat spent ten years as a schools adviser in Birmingham. Since 2000, as a director of the Forward Partnership consultancy, he has undertaken numerous consultancies in education and diversity. His clients have included local and national organisations in the public, private and third sectors, including several government departments. He is the author of Dear Birmingham: A Conversation with My Hometown (2013), A Biography of the Word xxix‘Paki’ (2017); British Pakistani Boys, Education and the Role of Religion: In the Land of the Trojan Horse (2018) and Educating Brummies (edited with Tahir Abbas; forthcoming). He blogs on education and diversity, including for Optimus Education.
Emma Knights, OBE
Emma Knights is the chief executive of the National Governance Association (NGA), which provides guidance, advice, research and professional development for school governors, trustees and governance professionals in state schools in England. NGA’s charitable objective is to improve the educational welfare of pupils by improving governance. Emma has particular interests in vision, culture and strategy; accountability; stakeholder engagement; disadvantage; ethical leadership; diversity, inclusion and staff development. She is the author of the NGA’s The Chair’s Handbook (now in its eighth edition) and edited the association’s magazine Governing Matters for seven years. She is co-author of many other publications on welfare rights, child support, legal services, early years and, of course, most recently, governance, including MATs Moving Forward: The Power of Governance (2021). Prior to joining the NGA in 2010, Emma was joint CEO of the Daycare Trust, and before that, worked in a number of roles in the voluntary sector, including the Child Poverty Action Group and Citizens Advice, and then at the Local Government Association and the Legal Services Commission. She was a governor at a secondary school in Warwickshire for eight years, and earlier set up an after-school club at her children’s middle school in Norfolk. Emma was awarded an OBE in the New Year Honours List in 2018 for services to education.
Dr Bev Mabey
Bev Mabey has worked in education for over thirty years and as a head teacher in Birmingham for over ten years. She led the academisation of Washwood Heath Technology College in 2013. Bev has been chair of the Secondary Heads Forum for the city. She was chair of the city/police panels and vice-chair of the east local policing unit independent advisory group. She was awarded an honorary doctorate by Aston University in 2018 in recognition of her contribution to education in Birmingham. xxx
