What Faith in Our Schools? A Midlands Today Special

Few things matter more to families and communities than how our

children our taught at school. So when serious allegations emerged

about hardline Muslims trying to impose their beliefs in schools,

sparks flew. We have a trust issue here.

It's not just with the parents, it with the community.

Two reports have placed the blame on ideologically driven parents,

People have dealt to challenge extremist views.

The reports also raise worrying concerns about

It's important we give children a broad and diverse education because

the society we are bringing them into is also broad and diverse.

The educational authorities and accused of failing to do their jobs

Could this sort of thing be going on undetected in other schools across

Schools once rated outstanding art now deemed

Some in the Muslim community say it is a permit inspired witch`hunt.

Its aim is to alienate the Muslim community.

In the week that children return to school, governors, children,

faith leaders and academics have gathered together for a

Tonight we are asking what faith can we have in our schools?

It follows those revelations that certain Muslim governors have been

attempting to impose a strict Islamic ethos

on schools that are supposed to be secular state schools.

According to Ofsted, the schools watchdog, it's meant

that children in some schools in Birmingham have been badly prepared

Those children at the heart of this debate is where I want to start.

Let's speak to Sarah Hewitt Clarkson.

I know you have had some issues in your school, but why does it

matter so much to the children across the city and the Midlands?

Without sounding cliched, the children we teach

They will look after our political well`being, our emotional and

economic well`being when they are young adults, including my children

Anything that seeks to narrow their education is a categoric

mistake because education is about broadening everybody's horizon.

Opening doors to knowledge and skills, not just in Birmingham

What kinds of things have happened in your school?

We have had complaints from one or two people, it's not many at all.

Complaints about certain things we do.

We had a Shakespeare Festival last year and we had a complaint

from one of our governors that it was inappropriate because the comedy

was about falling in love and he thought it was inappropriate.

We have had racist comments from one of our parents who said we

should get rid of all the white children in our school.

Let's speak to Mohammed Ashraf who is a former governor are

of a school that is part of the Park View Educational Trust.

The allegation is that you and other governors let

down your children and you did not open them to a world of tolerance.

The only thing we let them down over was the standard

This is something that schools have not been delivering very well

The irony is that these schools have finally started to produce results

and we have an issue like the Trojan Horse come to light.

The focus has been moved away from education.

Peter Clark investigated schools under the Trojan Horse

allegation said there was not enough emphasis on differences.

If they're not prepared for modern life, but it's not stopping them.

What did we do different to what any other school is doing?

If you look at the education act, it a daily collective act of worship.

Religion is already embedded in schools which is one aspect.

The tragedy is that children are being put second.

The teachers and their careers are being put first.

You deliberately chose to send your children to a non`faith school.

The school had, up until last year, been seen

as a broad`based educational school in terms of different religions.

Since this last academic year, that seemed to narrow

and I just felt it went against the grain of what we believe

our daughter should be receiving in terms of a broad education.

And you are Muslims, but you wanted your daughter to have

She was upset that Christmas was cancelled?

We live in a large multicultural society and it is important to us as

a family that she is exposed to as many of those and learns about many

of those so that when she grows older, she knows where she fits in

I disagree fundamentally with your statement that our school was

That school was teaching art, politics, citizenship skills.

How our school was any different to any other school and why these

statements have been made about our in particular, I don't understand.

I can fundamentally say to you both statements are untrue and they are

probably based on a political agenda by a former Education Secretary.

What I have seen of the debate so far...

Often the voice of young people has been absent, especially

when we talk about the role of faith in public life generally,

Often it is the voice of parents, those with power

in the system that we hear from, we do not often hear about

the potential rights that might be being infringed of young people.

We really need to engage much more with that analysis like that and

talk to more young people about what they feel they are losing out on.

I agree with the point that we need to provide young people with an

education that will allow them to navigate our very diverse society.

They were not sharing the information that they had. None of

us put the jigsaw together until far too late. Your own report suggested

that one of the underlying reasons why no action was taken was a fear

of being labelled racist or Islamophobic, do you accept that was

a valid criticism? Where that culture has come from, I think it

predates even my time on the council and it has grown over time. What is

important to remember is that here at the Seoul we fully access to the

reports and criticisms and we are trying to put it right and we are

working hard with our partners to put right those things that let us

down in the past and allowed it to happen. Surely we cannot live in a

culture where people are afraid to say things are wrong for fear of

being labelled Islamophobic. If we do not exercise our judgement based

on our confidence it begs the question as to whether the people

are fit for purpose. One way this issue was dealt with was that when

your members, planes to Birmingham City Council instead of being

listened to they were issued with gagging orders and paid off. Yes, we

have seen evidence in the last five years that 28 Headteachers have been

moved on by the use of compromise agreements and ultimately what the

Trojan horse allegations have exposed is almost a systemic failure

of the agencies and the local authority and the DFA and Ofsted to

actually join up their intelligence and move more swiftly. How can you

justify people bringing, planes that seem legitimate by giving them money

and banning them from talking in public? The important thing to

remember about compromise agreements is we have reviewed every one of

those that we have talked about and we are doing that in conjunction

with the unions at the moment but the important thing to realise is

that those people are not blocked from coming forward with their

concerns. There are causes in every single agreement that so people can

make a protected disclosure if they need to and we would certainly

expect people to bring forward issues of misconduct and we have

written to the Headteachers and asked them to take part in this

enquiry where possible as well. One of the issues has been raised is

that of academy schools. You believe that one of these issues is not

about radicals but about academy schools, tell me why. What we are

seeing is the outcome of the changes of legislation that we have been

brought in to push through the academies and free schools

movement. My union have been saying it would drive a coach and another

lot of horses right through education because it would take

through a lot of the ways in which local authorities in the past have

been able to monitor what goes on in the schools. Liam Ramsay number of

academies and he is saying that the academy system is mired in failure

but you have proved it can be successful for children in deprived

inner`city areas. Let us remember that none of the schools in this

affair were free schools. That is the first thing to say. Secondly for

a number of years now education has been a broad church, particularly in

our city, we have grammar schools, independent schools,

grant`maintained schools local authority schools, academies for a

very long time. This is about children and about what is best for

children and their education. Do you access that the power you have as a

head and you have been a great success in your academy, can also be

a potential flaw when you have people with other less honourable

motives in other schools. I would love it to be purely me but it is

not. I am part of a bigger team. I have members bought I have been, and

there are not many heads in the country who have been the head of a

maintained local authority school, and free school and an academy like

I do. Let me tell you that academies and free schools are judged more

than any other type of school I have ever been in. For me we should be

looking at what lessons we have learned and when are we going to say

that these issues show that something needs to be looked at far

more widely across our schools in this country otherwise it becomes

something that would be characterised. Let us be clear that

the Trojan horse agenda did not distinguish whether schools were

academies or whether they were local authority schools. They were all

types of schools and it is something about governance and the way schools

are run and the organisation of schools. Let me talk to properly

monitor what is going on in schools where heads have greater power than

they traditionally did? I will answer that in one second. I want to

comment on the point about how risky the system we have setup is. Without

a doubt trustee boards which we have in academies have more autonomy and

therefore there is more risk attached. The way the legal system

is set up... It is more risky to have the academy system in your

view? If you have a fantastic Board of Trustees it can be brilliant but

we must acknowledge there needs to be a system of oversight that

ensures where we do not have a fantastic Board of Trustees it can

be risky. To answer your question about training and support, there is

an awful lot of information out there if boards and trustees and

governors look for it. You are a former governor, where you properly

trained and equipped to be a governor of a school?

We had training once a month. If these Trojan Horse matters had been

in the curriculum, it is what the law or act allowed them to do so

they were doing nothing wrong within the confines of the lawful. What

about that? There was some malpractice and covered in the

report. Although I take the point about some of the differences, the

picture across the piece shows some governments malpractice. Whether it

was because they weren't trained or whether they were wilful, they were

not acting as we expect trustees and governments `` governors to act in

my organisation has accepted that. We put the call out to governors to

say we need to make sure we follow the proper principles of public

life. The key question is, how can we make

sure that this doesn't happen again? That is what we all want to address

in this debate. The new chair of the Parkview Education Trust Is Here And

Gives His First Interview Since Being Appointed. What can you do to

assure you parents that your schools that these sort of things won't

happen again? Since we've taken over as trustees,

we've done an immense amount of work over the summer holidays which is

all voluntary for those schools. Our focus is on educating those young

children and we've make sure the correct governance arrangements are

in place. We've written to parents to date about putting nominations

forward to make sure we appoint people with the right skills in

future. I want to still `` talk to parents.

I reassured these problems won't re`occurred? Not really. I am more

concerned than I was before the summer break. The discussion is that

governors are to blame. The leadership needs to be held to

account as well. A lot of failures I `` that took place were under the

leadership. Saudi Arabia was funded by plug `` public money. 60% of the

funds came from parents and when you mentioned Christmas was cancelled,

it was never arranged but was cancelled by the principal.

Festivities still took place and I helped in them. Tristan `` Christmas

dinner was given to them. Until the leadership is not held to account,

they cannot be confident in the future. There was a rate down in

communication. This is why, as parents, collectively we got

together and thought enough is enough. We couldn't see the

principal and the government `` governors hadn't communicated. We

realised there was concern is not just within the governors but the

leadership. The leadership failed the children. We don't feel ours

children are safe. What we have learned about accountability is that

there is no transparency. Picking up on the issue of

communication that you raised. I want to talk to cancel a Bridget

Jones because one of the issues was the lack of joined up ownership over

the authority of the schools. Birmingham City Council, Ofsted, the

funding agency, the Department of education, nobody was talking to

each other. That made it hard to spot the

patterns but it is a problem. The king to the future, we've identified

the problem, what's the solution? We're trying to build a better

working relationship with the Department of education and Ofsted.

Might `` Mr Wilshaw has let his views on Birmingham be well`known.

We are trying to work around that. We are working to try to appoint a

joint education Commissioner for the city who will report to the chief

executive of the Council and the new Secretary of State who will look at

issues across the board, the academies in the city for which the

Secretary of State is responsible and bring everything together to try

and fix the systems. As a headteacher, do you believe the

new education Commissioner will make any difference? I do. There has been

a lot of fog around this issue for the last couple of years. For me as

a head in Birmingham, to have somebody new who has an

oversight... There were many reports here. Not just one report, but many.

There are many different unions from many sets of people. What is

important is that things improve. Birmingham is a fantastic city. I

was born here and it really is very hurtful as a Birmingham citizen to

see Birmingham constantly put down in the media. It gives an image that

it is a terrible place to be and who would want to be any head here. You

have Bridget here from Birmingham City Council, Ofsted, the funding

agency and now you have the new education Commissioner, how do you

have time to do your job without answering to these bosses? Sarah is

absolutely right. Birmingham has the largest concentration of national

leaders in education in our city. In 2013, the last time we analysed

statistics around GCSE results, Birmingham, out of did the very best

for children on free school meals, more than anybody London. Let me

also say, in 2012, the number one school in the UK out of 36,000

schools in Britain, primary and secondary was here in Birmingham.

That is the number one school in the UK.

Let us take a few more comments. What we have two understand is a lot

of the statements made to Ian Kershaw and Peter Clark were not

sworn statements, they were allegations and a lot of them

haven't been substantiated. As a parent of a child attending our

local academy, I find it quite insulted that we have been branded

as Islamist 's and there has been right `` white prostitution or

Christmas has been cancelled. Parents have proved it was not the

case. Do you feel it has stigmatised you, your community and your

children and fairly? It has, at the heart of our communities is our

schools. We were very happy. A lot of the problems are to do with

leadership. If you are a Muslim, a governor or a headteacher and your

slim, you're out and if you're not your back in again. You mentioned

something, are people going to come back? Will you get Muslims wanting

to be government `` governors now? Mohammed? One of the things I found

difficult to handle was the fact that, going to our academy and

raising eight and so and the type of response you get was, we an academy,

we can do this and I had nowhere else to raise it. Academies as side,

to have a helpline was some way for parents who have concerns to raise

those concerns. Be it a free school, grant`maintained or an Academy and

Birmingham city council to take the appropriate action then at least you

know what's on in the schools. We are coming to the end, but I want

to get a couple of pledges from key people in the room. First from the

lead on education for Birmingham city council. If you can give me one

pledge for the future to take away from this programme what would it

be? What F Dan was that we weren't listening to people and joining

things up. In the future, we will listen to heads, governors and

parents when they raise their concerns and we will make sure they

are taken seriously and acted upon. And the new chair of the Parkview

Edging A Sheet `` Educational Trust. Our purpose is education and

we will make sure every child is educated to the best standard in our

schools. That is the end of the debate for

now. But it is not the end of the story. We will make sure those who

have made pledges here will be held to account over the coming months.

You can catch up on this programme on the BBC I player full stop I

would like to thank everybody who has come to see us here in The Drum

and Aston, Birmingham. Goodbye. It is only when you communicate you

can move forward so it was so important here. Regardless of your

opinions, we need to use this. What happened to the children in

Birmingham, we need to learn from those mistakes. Is that pledge is we

will go on in Birmingham working together on our differences,

learning to enjoy each other's religious differences or none and

for everyone to have an excellent all`round education. What happens

now that is more important than what has happened up to now, because I

have children in school and these kids are too precious to mess about

with. Therefore, sometimes this can be a bit like messing about and I

don't want to mess about. Good evening. In mixed bag across

the unique to kingdom. Dash`mac United