Blogs

"The Trojan Horse story is worrying for several reasons. There does seem to be clear evidence of malpractice at several schools, though this seems to me to relate to poor governance and poor oversight of governance more than any "plot" - I've seen governing bodies in white rural areas behave in many of these difficult ways. There does seem to be evidence of some difficult and tendentious social media traffic - though whether this was "secret" as claimed by Peter Clark is another issue as he had no difficulty getting hold of it. It's unhelpful that Clark has failed to visit any of the schools and to talk to anyone face-to-face - whatever his evidence, it would have been far better for community relations for an investigation to be more open. As Tim Brighouse said, it would be surprising if governing bodies in schools and academies serving a predominantly Muslim community did not use the freedoms that are being promoted. The notion of schools and academies as being simply there to serve the needs of the immediate community is fundamentally flawed ... which was why we have local education authorities in the first place to provide checks and balances." John Freeman on the Trojan Horse debate.