The government’s handling of the Trojan horse affair involving schools in Birmingham was marred by fear and incompetence, creating a febrile atmosphere in which innocent explanations were rejected in order to blame “bad Muslims”, a tribunal has been told.
Andrew Faux, representing two former principals of Park View academy, the school at the centre of an alleged takeover by conservative Islamists in 2014, told the National College of Teaching and Leadership tribunal that the case against his clients rested on “snippets of misinformation”.
“It will take courage to set out what really happened in this case. But in time your efforts will be appreciated by everyone,” Faux told the three members of the NCTL disciplinary panel in Coventry.
Likening the affair to the Hillsborough disaster, Faux said the government had allowed a situation to develop where “facts were perceived and reported in way to fit the narrative that had already been established”.
Faux’s comments were made during the final summaries of the hearing involving five former senior staff and headteachers at Park View, the longest and most complex case to be heard by the NCTL’s tribunal.
During the case, which began in October last year, the tribunal has heard evidence from scores of witnesses including former staff and pupils at the school as well as experts and Department for Education investigators.
Former principals Lindsey Clark, Hardeep Saini and Monzor Hussain and teachers Raswan Faraz and Arshad Hussain face being banned from the profession if the panel rules that they were guilty of serious professional misconduct. The panel will consider whether the five allowed the school to be unduly influenced by conservative Islamists.
Faux, representing Saini and Hussain, said the government’s investigators had made basic errors and failed to understand the extent to which existing legislation required all state schools to include a daily act of worship.
“Fear, a cockup and a degree of incompetence” led the NCTL to bungle its approach, Faux said, offering as one example a discussion on a private Whatsapp message group operated by Hussain among Muslim members of staff.
The government’s lawyers asked Hussain why he had not challenged a message for staff to “vote Asif Zardari” in an upcoming election for a parent governor.
“That’s a reference to the then president of Pakistan, that’s a joke,” Faux told the tribunal. “But it’s proffered up by the NCTL because it fits a narrative of ‘bad Muslims’ taking over a school.”
The allegations came to light in early 2014 through the publication of a letter containing lurid claims of a plot to subvert state schools in areas with high Muslim populations.
Although regarded as a hoax, the letter led to a series of investigations and the expulsion of the management of six schools in east Birmingham.
Andrew Colman, representing the NCTL, earlier told the panel that transcripts of the Whatsapp group, named the “Park View Brotherhood”, showed religious bigotry by a core group intent on transforming the school, including a reference by Faraz to an “Islamising agenda”.
“There are passages that are naturally suggestive, for example, of enthusiasm for the teaching of prayer, of irregular recruitment procedures, of consideration of gender segregation and of deep-seated homophobia,” Colman told the panel.
He said the school’s leadership, including Clark before her retirement, colluded to block the appointment of gay teachers, which Colman described as “capitulation to religious homophobia”.
“This was a misguided attempt to direct the education of the many towards the religious practices of the few,” he said, arguing that the effort was “deliberate and disguised”.
Although neither Clark nor Saini are Muslim, Colman said they “must have realised that the combined effect of all the changes in the school was to encourage the pupils to be more observant Muslims. Although they may not have chosen the direction, they were not unwilling passengers. They were, after all, supposed to occupy the driving seats.”
In her summation, Claire Darwin, representing Faraz, said the NCTL’s allegations against her client were largely hearsay or inaccurate, including events that occurred before Faraz worked at the school.
In one example, an anonymous witness called by the NCTL claimed to have heard Faraz use the derogatory term “kuffar” but failed to offer either a date or context, other than it may have happened in 2009.
Darwin said the NCTL’s case had been “reckless and irresponsible” and had offered allegations resting on “unreliable and weak evidence, in particular evidence that was tarnished by religious and racial prejudice”.
The hearings are due to conclude on Friday, and an initial finding from the panel is expected next week. A final decision on a ban will rest with the education secretary, Nicky Morgan.