Trojan Horse affair: key lessons on safeguarding and attainment

In 2014, the Trojan Horse affair rocked Birmingham. It cast a long shadow over the city’s schools which reverberates in 2022. Earlier this year, a podcast about Trojan Horse produced by two journalists for the New York Times attracted global audiences. It was a whodunnit seeking to nail the source of the original letter which was the catalyst leading to 21 Ofsted inspections, Department for Education intervention, wholesale changes at Birmingham City Council and the introduction of national legislation on safeguarding in 2015 (see timeline, below).

The anonymous Trojan Horse letter described how schools in Birmingham with Muslim majority populations could be infiltrated by governors sympathetic to an Islamic, socially conservative form of education. Once installed, they would target the head teacher and bombard Ofsted with complaints about the performance of the school. The letter stated that such tactics had been successful in the east end of Birmingham and could be used in other English cities with large Muslim populations.