How can a school go from being rated outstanding one year to inadequate the next? When does an investigation become a witch hunt? And who gets to decide what is appropriate to teach a child? These are some of the key questions posed in Trojan Horse, an incendiary production based on real-life events in east Birmingham.
Many of you will remember this scandal, which broke out in 2014. In neighbourhoods such as Alum Rock and Washwood Heath, some of most deprived in the country, almost 80% of residents are Muslims. Here, allegations emerged of a plot among governors and teachers to radicalise children in five schools: Park View (now renamed as Rockwood Academy), Golden Hillock and Saltley secondary schools, and primary schools Oldknow and Nansen.
The catalyst was a photocopy of a letter that was sent to Birmingham City Council outlining the takeover strategy among co-conspirators. The letter, which we can't read, has since been discredited (although the city’s education minister at the time maintained it was “no hoax”). It prompted two investigations and set in motion a troubling chain of events that stoked divisions in the community.
The Department for Education (DfE) under Michael Gove ordered Sir Peter Clarke, once head of the Metropolitan Police's counter-terrorism unit, to conduct an emergency review of 21 schools. Of these, five were judged to be inadequate. One of those was academy school Park View, which was rated “outstanding” by Ofsted in 2012 and attained 76% GCSE results at A* to C, up from 4% little more than a decade earlier). The inquiry found a "sustained action carried out by a number of associated individuals to introduce an intolerant and aggressive Islamist ethos into a few schools in Birmingham".
Inspectors claimed that these schools provided inadequate sex education, failed to teach students enough about belief systems other than Islam, segregated some classes according to gender, restricted access to musical instruments and discouraged boys and girls from socialising with each other. Anyone that disagreed with these measures was intimidated and harassed. (More thoughts here from the pupil perspective.)
The Guardian reported that were other accusations of “morality squads” of prefects at Park View, a £70,000 speaker system installed to broadcast the call to prayer (the schools said the cost was nowhere near this high, and the speakers were for general use), of extremist propaganda videos played in classrooms. (It later emerged this was a Panorama documentary that the police had asked to be played as part of the government’s Prevent programme.)
Soon after, Birmingham City Council published key findings from its independent inquiry, led by Ian Kershaw. He found that was "no evidence of a conspiracy to promote an anti-British agenda, violent extremism or radicalisation in schools".
But a few members of staff clearly overstepped the mark, judging by the other key piece of evidence in the Clarke Report – a conversation from a WhatsApp group called the Park View Brotherhood. In May 2013, Razwan Faraz (then deputy head at Nansen) shared a link to an article about gay marriage. He wrote, “These animals are going out full force. As teachers we must be aware and counter their satanic ways of influencing young people.”
Faraz was suspended and later referred to as the brother of a terrorist despite having ideological differences with his sibling Ahmed who is a Salafi (an orthodox Sunni sect that advocates a return to the practices of early Islam). In this choice of suggestive language we begin to see how all Muslims were being clumped together as one enemy, without an appreciation of different beliefs.
It is hard to consider Trojan Horse in a meaningful way without pouring over the facts of the case. But are lots of players in this complex story, several with vested interests, and many of the details are far from indisputable. So rather than delve any further, I urge you to read Samira Shackle’s excellent long read in the Guardian, which takes us through the key events and their significance in chronological order.
For Shackle, the crux of the case is this: “The central claim that remains about Park View and the other implicated schools is that they had become too Islamic, that some invisible line was crossed from the compulsory level of religion that schools must provide to the point where it was “undue”. But in an education system that is not secular, such as Britain’s, there is no unambiguous way to draw such boundaries.”
The play is a dynamic and taut production from community-focused touring company Lung, who also received acclaim for Chilcot. We see five actors playing multiple characters, moving from pupil to local councilor and teacher with real fluidity and at breakneck speed. We feel the sense of hope for a brighter future fading away as Muslim teachers feel targeted and pupils are caught in the middle.
One troubled character, a student called Farah, gives us a small insight into the life of a young Muslim teenager in Birmingham. Her father insists she wears the hijab before she leaves the house, only for her to take it off at the gates. School is an escape, a chance to imagine a life beyond Alum Rock. Her father appears to be homophobic and strict in his beliefs but Farah is attracted to a fellow female student. She also thinks “British values are Islamic values”.
The climate of fear, perpetuated by the Government and its Prevent strategy infiltrates the school gates. Muslim communities begin to feel demonised as the investigation drags on. Before long you have embittered characters such as Urdu teacher Rashid bellowing: “Big bad Muslim man – gonna huff, gonna puff, gonna blow your school … UP!” This was a man who had gone a different way to his more radical brother and tried to guide pupils down a new path through education.
In the Q&A afterwards, Professor John Holmwood, an academic advisor on the play, argued that Park View was “the model for integration”. But that model had been sabotaged by deep suspicion and the extreme actions of a handful of individuals. Those with good intentions have been made to suffer. He mentioned a teacher who was on a Britain First watch list, and others who had to get CCTV in their homes for fear of their own safety. The impact of this affair has been raw and traumatic, Holmwood likening the injustice to Hillsborough, as if to say, this is will be a long and frustrating journey.
There is an economic cost too, of course. People have lost their jobs despite developing more successful pupils. Teachers including Lindsey Clark OBE were accused of allowing “undue Islamist influence” (a phrase that has still not been clearly defined) in the running of three Birmingham state schools.
The case against them was dropped in 2017 after gross abuse of the process, according to an NCTL disciplinary committee. DfE lawyers should have disclosed that they had access to interviews conducted in relation to the Clarke report. The previous October, the high court had overturned lifetime bans on two former Park View teachers, Inamulhaq Anwar and Akeel Ahmed, because of “serious procedural impropriety”.
Tahir Alam, chairman of governors at Park View school in Alum Rock, Birmingham, from 1997 to 2014, and chairman of a trust set up to manage the school, was a key figure in the school’s transformation. He was barred from involvement in the management of schools by DfE in Sept 2015.
Some argue that the play presents a biased reading of events, particularly media commentators on the right. Director Matt Woodhead and his co-writer Helen Monks drew from more than 200 hours of interviews and material in the public domain. While the collection of so many personal testimonies does not guarantee impartiality, it is a firm foundation to work from (as long as they have a wide range of voices, of course).
They requested to interview Michael Gove and former head of the schools inspectorate Sir Michael Wilshaw for the production, but they both declined. Gove’s silence is curious. He wrote a book called Celsius 7/7 about the Islamic threat to Europe, which included a chapter called Trojan Horse. Surely he would have something to contribute on the subject?
If there is any bias to detect, then perhaps we should be looking at media coverage, and how a story about poor governance and mismanagement of academy schools was misrepresented as an Islamist extremism plot. You had Gove and then Home Secretary Theresa May blaming each other, and presumably trying to deflect attention. Then tensions mounted between local and national levels as the council used the Trojan Horse letter to prove that the issue extended beyond Birmingham and that this was the government’s responsibility in the end.
The background of the writers and their approach are problematic according to Ayesha Manazir Siddiqi, who translated Trojan Horse into Urdu. In a piece for The Theatre Times, she lamented the lack of nuance in the dialogue and called for more stories like this to be told by those who can best express the reality of the lives in question.
“The writers’ lack of lived experience in the trauma with which they deal is perhaps most obvious in the unqualified racist rhetoric that peppers the play,” she wrote. “Elaine [former head teacher and whistleblower], for instance, says at one point, ‘We can’t just say to all the Pakistani Muslims in Birmingham, here, do what you want with your education system. Because if you went to a village in Kashmir which half of the population wouldn’t even go to school in the first place? It’s the girls!’
“The reproduction of this kind of rhetoric is not providing balance or telling the whole story; it is simply providing a platform for racist views. I can’t imagine any Pakistani audience member not cringing when Elaine says these words on stage. And these views aren’t subsequently argued against or rebutted; they’re just left hanging there, a bit of poison, carelessly exposed, a result, simply, of the writers’ lack of embodied experience of that kind of speech.”
Despite the weight of her critique, Siddiqi does praise the writers’ sincere pursuit of justice and hopes the play will help to raise awareness of the less obvious facts about the case. Trojan Horse is deftly choreographed and brought to life with great conviction. More importantly, it will encourage audiences to engage more deeply with the facts of the case and key issues in society, as this ‘review’ demonstrates.
What does multiculturalism really mean in modern Britain and how do religious beliefs impact education? These are urgent questions that won’t go away. As Professor Holmwood pointed out, history could be repeating itself with the LGBT lessons controversy at Anderson Park and other schools. Many parents, mostly Muslim, want them to stop sharing same-sex equality messages in lessons (Andrew Moffat’s No Outsiders programme, for instance) and storybooks featuring LGBT characters with pupils. Anderton Park head Sarah Hewitt-Clarkson insists she is fulfilling her legal duty under the Equalities Act and only sharing 'age-appropriate' messages about diversity.
In October, a report from counter-extremism chief Sara Khan claimed that Islamist extremists had exploited tensions over equality teaching to amplify hate. (In an interview with BBC Newsnight, protest coordinator Amir Ahmed said, "Well you can condition them to accept [being gay]. This has been a normal way of life. And it makes the children more promiscuous as they grow older.")
Human rights lawyer Nazir Afzal attempted to mediate in the dispute and claimed that “malicious outsiders were spreading lies that children were being given an explicit sex education. You can see how this is becoming another binary debate: western liberalists posing a threat to Islam vs bigoted anti-LGBT Muslims.
The Department for Education says lessons about relationships will become compulsory from September 2020. Current education secretary Gavin Williamson confirmed older children will also be given inclusive sex education lessons, though parents will be able to withdraw them should they choose to. But there is no official right to veto what is taught.
It will be interesting to see how the play is received when it comes to Birmingham. Next year, MPs at the Houses of Parliament will also be able to watch it. Let’s hope they are paying attention and willing to learn lessons from the past.
Trojan Horse runs until 16 November at Battersea Arts Centre. Check the Lung website for further updates.