mark walters trojan horse

The Trojan Horse Affair presents a one-sided account that minimises child protection concerns, misogyny and homophobia in order to exonerate the podcasts hero, a ", "Trojan Horse row Q&A: What is the 'Muslim plot' all about and why is it so important? At the same time, The Trojan Horse Affair ultimately tells us more about the two hosts than this central mystery, as they chase leads and question each other, leading up to a Posters were found in the classrooms encouraging children to begin lessons with a Muslim prayer, one saying: "If you do not pray, you are worse than a kafir", and staff reported that loudspeakers were set up in the school to broadcast a call to prayer. She also said, "It is not just an academy problem, this was happening before we became an academy. [62], Forced segregation of the genders was observed in some classes at Golden Hillock and was mandated in some departmental policy documents. It criticised the spending of the school's budget on paying private investigators to investigate the emails of senior staff and paying for meals in restaurants. The school has a largely Muslim governing body. Responsibility for determinations for academy schools passed to the Department for Education, but they put in place no measures for renewing determinations. The Greeks were laying siege to the city of Troy, and the war had dragged on for ten years. He worked for a charity believed by the US to have links with terrorist organisations. In the podcast, the link between the Trojan Horse letter and the Headteacher of Adderley Primary School in Birmingham, Rizwana Darr, is explored and it is alleged that Darr is the real author of the Trojan Horse letter. Most of the allegations presented in the Ofsted and EFA reports were not part of the cases against the teachers because they were not believed to be credible by NCTL lawyers. It also did not report any interviews with members of Birmingham Standing Advisory Council on Religious Education (SACRE) responsible for the agreed curriculum on religious education taught in local authority schools in Birmingham, and also responsible for approving deterninations of daily acts of collective worship for other than Christian worship. [124], In January 2022, a new podcast by The New York Times, The Trojan Horse Affair, cast many doubts on the multiple investigations and the version of events that emerged. Michael and Ruth Haephrati were well-educated people with The teachers were barred from responding to the allegations due to confidentiality orders as part of their employment contracts that were binding also after the suspension. The name of the Trojan Horse is taken from a classical story of the Trojan War. However, she admitted that senior staff had warned her not to let pupils dance to pop or Bollywood music. Imprint Routledge. It was entitled Towards Greater Understanding: Meeting the Needs of Muslim Pupils in State Schools. Although the school describes itself as "multi-faith", there are claims that the Islamic call to prayer is broadcast to the entire school. Book Sport Policy and Politics in an Era of Austerity. This pre-dated by approximately .mw-parser-output .frac{white-space:nowrap}.mw-parser-output .frac .num,.mw-parser-output .frac .den{font-size:80%;line-height:0;vertical-align:super}.mw-parser-output .frac .den{vertical-align:sub}.mw-parser-output .sr-only{border:0;clip:rect(0,0,0,0);height:1px;margin:-1px;overflow:hidden;padding:0;position:absolute;width:1px}3+12 months the date on which the witness statements were signed and finalised". [4][89], The discussions contained: "Explicit homophobia, highly offensive comments about British service personnel, a stated ambition to increase segregation at the school, disparagement of Muslims in sectors other than their own, scepticism about the truth of reports of the murder of Lee Rigby and the Boston Marathon bombing and a constant undercurrent of anti-western, anti-America and anti-Israel sentiment. At paragraph 37 of his judgement, he writes that. [33], The letter also encouraged getting academy status for successfully infiltrated schools, so as to have a curriculum independent of the local education authority. [5] Its leader, Sir Albert Bore, said that the Council accepted the Ofsted findings that schools in the city were failing pupils. He said that its conclusions did not reflect the full reality in schools, and that discrepancies between this and the governmental report were "regrettable and unhelpful". Journal of Qualitative Research in Sports Studies, 13, They included:[3][4], The report found there had been changes made to the curriculum and education plans, including increasing the faith component. [4] No evidence was provided to substantiate these claims. The BBC reported on gender segregation at a state secondary school, Carlton Bolling College, during trips and after-school workshops, as well as boys-only school trips. Neither report addressed this, nor did they report any interviews with those officials and the minutes of the meetings that took place among senior leaders at the various schools. [126], The headteacher of Oldknow Academy, Bhupinder Kondal, handed in her notice in January2014. Ofsted subsequently expanded their investigation into schools in the north and south-east of England. Children were banned from playing musical instruments and drama lessons were dropped from the schedule. Under the academy schools programme, it could only be done with the active involvement of officials in the local authority (including over the transfer of assets to the new trust) and at the Department for Education and it would require an academically successful school to be the sponsor of 'failing' schools. Community cohesion and PREVENT: how have schools responded? "[127] Shabina Bano, chair of the Oldknow Academy Parents' Association, said parents would welcome Ms.Kondal back because they wanted, stability as soon as possible At the same time we want to know why she deserted parents. He announced proposals to send Ofsted to any s [81], During the tribunal it emerged that a photo of a white person was shown to students as an example of what Christians look like. [62] A former staff member said that one teacher had handed out a worksheet stating that women "must obey their husbands", and told his class that wives were forbidden from refusing their husbands sex. Information and Guidance for Schools and is available as an appendix to the Kershaw Report. [83], An Ofsted inspection found that the Islamic school, which shares its premises with a mosque, had books in its library with content that had "no place in British society". [58] Governors at the school banned any discussions regarding sexual orientation and intimacy. This evidence would come to light when the NCTL misconduct case against senior teachers at PVET collapsed because the prosecution had failed to disclose material from the Clarke Report that it had had in its possession since the start of the proceedings. The Trojans believed the horse was a peace offering and dragged it inside their city. "[4] He conducted no interviews with governors or teachers who were accused of misconduct, with the exception of Tahir Alam. [7] Pupils and teachers from Park View School denied this version of the story, saying that after this assertion had been raised by a boy during a presentation on sexual education teachers organised an assembly where they explained that "marital rape was legally and morally wrong". [25], A number of governors and the Muslim Council of Britain dubbed the reaction of authorities to the plot a "witch-hunt". [104], In May, David Blunkett announced that if in government again, the Labour Party would appoint an 'Independent Director of School Standards' with the power to monitor academies: "In April 2014, the alleged Operation Trojan Horse in Birmingham demonstrated the difficulties that have arisen from this 'absence of transparency'". [2], "Operation Trojan Horse" redirects here. [88] This showed that most schools conflated the two and did not have teachers trained in the Prevent duty. The report identified the Muslim Council of Britain and the Association of Muslim Schools as organisations "[stemming] from an international movement to increase the role of Islam in education". The Trojan Horse scandal, also known as " Operation Trojan Horse " or the Trojan Horse affair, refers to a scandal involving claims of an alleged conspiracy that there was an organised attempt by some individuals to introduce an Islamist or Salafist ethos into several schools in Birmingham, England. Children were urged to join in anti-Christian chants. [98] New clauses were added into funding agreements for academies, stating that the Secretary for Education could close schools whose governors do not comply with "fundamental British values". [70], At the tribunal held in October and November 2015, Mr Saini was accused of advising a teacher who had been arrested for having extreme pornography to throw his mobile phone into the canal to make sure there was no problem. The New York Times podcast "The Trojan Horse Affair" uncovered this secret document that disproves one of the central allegations of the Trojan Horse letter, that there was a conspiracy against the headteacher of Adderley primary school. [81], Deputy Prime Minister and leader of the Liberal Democrats Nick Clegg also backed the investigation, stating that schools should not become "silos of segregation". The choice of modern language teaching had been restricted to the study of Arabic or Urdu at several schools. [114] He later said that the Council accepted the Ofsted findings that schools in the city were failing pupils. Speaking after withdrawing her resignation, Ms.Kondal said: "The pressures outlined in the Trojan Horse letter are very real and it mustn't be allowed to happen again. [2], In January 2022, The New York Times released an investigative podcast about the Trojan Horse scandal which characterized it as an "Islamophobic hoax" and compared it to The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a historical antisemitic hoax. The school had spent 50,000 on three subsidised trips to Saudi Arabia so that pupils could visit the cities of Mecca and Medina in what the EFA described as "an extravagant use of public funds". While this kit can be The teacher also used school facilities to copy Osama bin Laden DVDs. [18] The council's Chief Executive, Mark Rogers, said that there was no plot, but that "new communities" had raised "legitimate questions and challenges" to the "liberal education system". From Serial Productions and The New York Times, The Trojan Horse [29] The letter was alleged to have been written from Birmingham and sent to a contact in Bradford to expand the operation into that city. The educational advisers to the Clarke Report did not set out the guidelines applying to religious education and collective worship in schools and no information was provided about the locally agreed SACRE curriculum which continued to be taught in the schools. [29] Its author described the plan as "totally invisible to the naked eye and [allowing] us to operate under the radar". [5] The inspections found that head teachers have been "marginalised or forced out of their jobs". At the Oldknow academy, children were asked whether they believed in Christmas and encouraged to chant "no we don't" in response. [2], The report found evidence of intolerance at several schools toward gay, lesbian, bisexual and transsexual people, and said that governors and staff exhibited openly homophobic behaviour. Now the audio game-changer has made a divisive UK story the focus of a new eight-part series, its first overseas outing. Senior leaders did not ensure "balanced views of the world" were taught and that "contact with different cultures, faiths and traditions is too limited to promote tolerance and respect for the views, lifestyles and customs of other people". [5][80] Inspectors found that no humanities, arts or music was taught in Year 6 and only "limited" teaching of these subjects in Year 5. Three cases against junior teachers were heard separately from that against the senior leadership team at PVET. [25] This would be so despite the fact that the previous duty on schools to promote community cohesion had included an emphasis on 'shared values' which were exactly the same values espoused in the new duty. [28] This included a special concern with the achievement of pupils of Asian heritage, as set out in its "Asian heritage achievement action plan" of 19 December 2003. Mark Panton and Geoff Walters (2019) Tottenhams Trojan Horse? [113], Sir Albert Bore, the leader of Birmingham City Council, called the original Trojan Horse letter "defamatory" and "hugely difficult to investigate" and offered protection to the whistleblower if they would come forward to help in the investigation. [5], Ofsted expressed concerns about an exclusively Muslim culture in non-faith schools and children not being taught to "develop tolerant attitudes towards other faiths". The Department for Education inspection found the seating arrangements "often with boys sitting towards the front of the class and girls at the back or around the sides". [3][4][5] The name, based on the Greek legend, comes from an anonymous letter sent to Birmingham City Council in late 2013, alleged to be from Birmingham "Islamists" detailing how to wrest control of a school, and speculating about expanding the scheme to other cities. [61], Subjects such as Personal, Social and Health Education, Biology and Sex and Relationships Education were bowdlerised to conform with a conservative Islamic teaching. [85] The governors of the school were sacked in April because of inappropriate interference in the running of the school. There are several things that a trojan can do, and one of its important features is, it remains in the users system secretly and does not let them find it. Prime Minister David Cameron, on a visit to Birmingham, praised his government's swift action in investigating the conspiracy. [53] Birmingham City Council was already under investigation by Sir Bob Kerslake over problems of governance associated with financial management, looked after children, waste services and issues of equal pay for work of equal value. Mr Kershaw stated that the council had been "slow to respond" to allegations in the letter and said there was "culture within of not wanting to address difficult issues and problems with school governance" for risk of incurring accusations of racism or Islamophobia. [110][111], The National Union of Teachers (NUT) demanded a full review of academies after the letter was revealed, expressing that political and religious groups had exploited the status at thousands of schools to indoctrinate children. Around a month later, Birmingham City Council revealed that following the letter release it had received hundreds of allegations of plots similar to those described in the letter, some claims dating back over 20 years. [29] It encouraged parents to complain about the school's leadership with false accusations of sex education, forced Christian prayer and mixed physical education, with the aim of obtaining a new leadership of Islamists. [95], Prime Minister David Cameron, on a visit to Birmingham, praised his government's swift action in investigating the conspiracy. A mysterious letter detailing a supposed Islamist plot to take over schools shocked Britain in 2014. Agent: Mark Walters - (772)-201-5650. [123] The Guardian also revealed that West Midlands Police was investigating whether the alleged plot was a hoax concocted to support one of the schools named in the plot, Adderley primary school, in an industrial dispute. It said that "manipulative" governors had been determined to introduce "unacceptable" practices and to deny students a broad and balanced education. [12], On 14 April, the City Council confirmed that it had received over 200 reports from parents and staff at 25 schools in Birmingham. The first opportunity for teachers to challenge the claims came when hearings against them for professional misconduct brought by the NCTL were begun in September 2015 over a year after the story about the affair first broke. The Kershaw and Clarke Reports provided no data on school performance in Birmingham or of the schools improvement programme which had shaken up schools following Sir Tim Brighouse's appointment. Based on drawings and written records, this Trojan Horse model allows you to recreate one of the most epic tales of ancient Troyalthough on a much smaller scale. [78][80] Christmas events were cancelled and raffles and tombolas were banned at a recent school fete because they were considered un-Islamic. "[49], In Bradford, teachers reported instances of governors imposing an Islamic ethos. [19], In an incident that was referred to counter-terrorism police, a teacher told the pupils at the Golden Hillock school "not to listen to Christians as they were all liars". Jaimie Martin, former special adviser at the Department for Education, wrote that "it is important to note as [the teachers] were not tried for the charges, they were therefore not cleared of them", and that "people who downplay the seriousness of Trojan Horse, claiming those involved exhibited 'mainstream' Islamic views, are guilty not only of stunning naivety, but of a dangerous error". The investigation found that "terms such as condom, the pill and so forth have been banned" and that governors had insisted on an Islamic approach to subjects, such as Personal, Social and Health Education, science, religious education, and sex and relationships education. The study of French was replaced by Arabic. This showed Birmingham to be performing badly on most indicators, but outperforming other cities and the national average for its school results and the proportion of schools graded outstanding. [125], An undercover reporter working for the Daily Mirror posed as a wealthy businessman and potential client of the training firm Exquisitus, a firm owned by Shahid Akmal, the chairman of governors at Nansen Primary School. [47], Reverend John Ray, OBE, and ex-head teacher of a school in Pakistan, resigned as a governor of Golden Hillock School after 25 years. Click here to navigate to parent product. A sixth school was labelled inadequate for its poor educational standards and twelve schools were found needing of improvements. Akmal criticised female politicians, saying: "She has to sacrifice her family, she has to sacrifice her children, she has to sacrifice her husband, all in the name of equality." Her credibility was called into question by the NCTL Panel when discontinuing the case. For the ufology book, see, Saltley School and Specialist Science College, Laisterdyke Business and Enterprise College, Political row between Home Office and Department for Education, National College of Teaching and Leadership (NCTL) hearings, Office for Security and Counter-Terrorism, "Trojan horse: the real story behind the fake 'Islamic plot' to take over schools", Report into allegations concerning Birmingham schools arising from the 'Trojan Horse' letter, "Trojan horse inquiry: 'A coordinated agenda to impose hardline Sunni Islam', "Trojan Horse: Ofsted says schools were targeted", "Birmingham City Council receives 'hundreds' of allegations after Trojan Horse claims", "Guide to school Islamisation, by 'ringleader' of Trojan Horse plot", "Investigation Report: Trojan Horse Letter (The Kershaw Report)", "Banned school governor Tahir Alam fights gay equality lessons", "High court overturns lifetime bans for Trojan horse teachers", https://policyexchange.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/The-Trojan-Horse-Affair.pdf, "Michael Gove calls New York Times 'useful idiots' for Trojan horse podcast", "Islamist plot: six schools face Ofsted special measures", "Police arrest four former teaching assistants from 'Trojan Horse' school", "Trojan Horse: Ofsted probe widens to Luton and London", "Trojan Horse: Birmingham council 'accepts' Ofsted reports", "Christians lie and wives must have sex or go to hell, Trojan Horse pupils told", "Birmingham council freezes appointment of school governors following Trojan Horse probe", "Guidance on promoting British values in schools published", "PM threatens snap Ofsted inspections over 'Trojan Horse' affair", "Trojan Horse: Three schools to lose funding", "Trojan horse report: All schoolchildren to be taught British values from September, says Michael Gove", "Education and Muslims: End this Witch-Hunt of British Muslims", "Education experts voice fury over Ofsted's 'Trojan Horse' schools inquiry", "Jihadist plot to take over Birmingham schools", "Shamed head and deputy banned from teaching over SATs tests cheating", "Alleged Islamic plot to take over Birmingham schools may be hoax", "Trojan Horse affair: Midlands student behind controversial podcast", "Is the Trojan horse row just a witch hunt triggered by a hoax? 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