Trojan Horse scandal

Ofsted inspections were undertaken into 21 schools in Birmingham, with the Education Funding Agency (responsible for academy schools) also investigating Park View Education Trust and Oldknow Academy. Ofsted said it had found evidence of an organised campaign to target certain schools by Islamists and that head teachers had been "marginalised or forced out of their jobs". Golden Hillock School, Nansen Primary School, Park View School – all run by the Park View Educational Trust – Oldknow Academy and Saltley School were placed in special measures after inspectors found systemic failings including the schools having failed to take adequate steps to safeguard pupils against extremism. Another school investigated, Alston Primary, was already in special measures. A sixth school was labelled inadequate for its poor educational standards and twelve schools were found needing of improvements. Three schools were commended. Ofsted chief Sir Michael Wilshaw accused Birmingham City Council of a "serious failure" in supporting schools in protecting children from extremism. Birmingham City Council commissioned Ian Kershaw of Northern Education Trust in Newcastle to review the evidence. However, because some of the schools were academies under the responsibility of the Department for Education, the then Secretary of State, Michael Gove, commissioned a separate report by Peter Clarke, the former head of the Metropolitan police's counterterrorism command. The two inquiries shared evidence, with the Kershaw inquiry deferring matters of extremism to the Clarke inquiry. The latter found that there is "no evidence to suggest that there is a problem with governance generally" nor any "evidence of terrorism, radicalisation or violent extremism in the schools of concern in Birmingham", but said that there was "evidence that there are a number of people, associated with each other and in positions of influence in schools and governing bodies, who espouse, sympathise with or fail to challenge extremist views", and that there had been "co-ordinated, deliberate and sustained" attempts "by a number of associated individuals, to introduce an intolerant and aggressive Islamic ethos" into "a few schools in Birmingham". after the Trojan Horse affair, this was replaced by a new duty to promote "fundamental British values". The British Prime Minister, David Cameron, said that "protecting our children [was] one of the first duties of government" and convened an emergency meeting of the Extremism Taskforce and a ministerial meeting to discuss the affair. He announced proposals to send Ofsted to any school without warning, saying that the schools in question had been able to stage a "cover-up" previously. The government terminated its funding arrangement with three of the schools. In the wake of the findings, Michael Gove, the Education Secretary, announced that all schools in the country will have to promote British values of tolerance and fairness and said that teachers will be banned from the profession if they allow extremists into schools. A number of governors and the Muslim Council of Britain dubbed the reaction of authorities to the plot a "witch-hunt". In protest of the investigations, Tahir Alam and several governors of affected schools resigned. 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. ==Letter==

The leaked letter on the alleged plot was reported by media including the BBC on 7 March 2014. The letter was alleged to have been written from Birmingham and sent to a contact in Bradford to expand the operation into that city. Of the schools mentioned by the letter, the account of Adderley Primary School was the more detailed, alleging that an employment dispute at Adderley was part of the Islamic plot's attempt to unseat the head teacher and install a conspirator with the same radical Islamification goals as the letter writers. This audit report was later reportedly retracted by the council following the Trojan Horse letter, and has never been published. 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. The letter also encouraged getting academy status for successfully infiltrated schools, so as to have a curriculum independent of the local education authority. The Times described the letter as "a crude forgery", noting that "The document appears to show that the conspirators were working to remove a primary school headmistress who was actually dismissed 20 years ago". The Guardian and The Independent both stated that the letter is "widely regarded as a fake". However, both the Kershaw Report and the Clarke Report organised their inquiries in terms of the 5-step plan described in the letter and following the publication of their reports, Birmingham City's education commissioner Sir Mike Tomlinson stated his belief that what the letter described was happening "without a shadow of doubt". The controversy started with a disclosure by a former teacher from Park View School, who was later named as Michael White. His complaints were published on 24 February 2014, whereas the 'trojan horse' letter was not sent to the press until 2 March 2014. Authorship Based on interview and research in The New York Times podcast Serial, the producers argue that most levels of government did not prioritise the identification of the letter's author. They say that the letter had disproportionate emphasis on events at Adderley Primary School and the letter's timing proved a boon to Adderley's head teacher, Rizwana Darr, in Adderley's contemporaneous employment dispute immediately after an internal audit report had referred the dispute at Adderley to the police, specifically recommending Darr be investigated. ==Original allegations==

On 14 April, the City Council confirmed that it had received over 200 reports from parents and staff at 25 schools in Birmingham. Council leader Sir Albert Bore stated that his council had spoken to authorities in Bradford and Manchester, and said that there are "certainly issues in Bradford which have similarities with the issues being spoken about in Birmingham". Concerns have also been raised by the National Association of Head Teachers about schools in parts of East London and other "large cities around the country". Senior Department for Education sources have also been reported as claiming that coordinated attempts to undermine and supplant head teachers have occurred in Bradford, Manchester, and the London boroughs of Waltham Forest and Tower Hamlets. Two anonymous members of staff at Park View School told BBC Radio 4 that school assemblies had praised Anwar al-Awlaki. Although the school describes itself as "multi-faith", there are claims that the Islamic call to prayer is broadcast to the entire school. A senior teacher told inspectors that the solution to all problems would be a global Caliphate under Sharia law. Michael White, a former teacher at Park View School which was mentioned in the letter, told the BBC that the school's governing board had been "taken over by a Muslim sect" in 1993. He claims he was pressured to ban sex education and the teaching of non-Muslim religions, and was dismissed in 2003 after he told prospective teachers to question the governors. In May 2014, the BBC reported that Tim Boyes, the former headteacher of Queensbridge School, had written anonymously to Birmingham City Council in 2010 to try to expose Operation Trojan Horse, and in June a former prospective school governor said that he had informed authorities of the conspiracy in 2008. Reverend John Ray, OBE, and ex-head teacher of a school in Pakistan, resigned as a governor of Golden Hillock School after 25 years. He raised concerns about the governance of Golden Hillock 20 years ago stating that the Trojan horse plot "reveals something, something that is true". Reverend Ray claimed that in the 1990s, when John Major was Prime Minister, he made the government aware of Islamists from Hizb ut-Tahrir becoming involved at his school. Bhupinder Kondal, principal at Oldknow Academy, stated in July 2014 after the publishing of the reports that she recognised the steps illustrated in the letter and that governors had been trying to undermine her since 2009, although the Local Education Authority would not support her. She also said, "It is not just an academy problem, this was happening before we became an academy." in Bradford In Bradford, teachers reported instances of governors imposing an Islamic ethos. 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. The school has a largely Muslim governing body. In 2012, head teacher Chris Robinson resigned, having felt that her reputation, integrity and leadership were being questioned by governors. ==Investigation==

The Educational Funding Authority, Ofsted, and Birmingham City Council agreed to investigate the letter, although West Midlands Police decided that it was not a matter for them. Ofsted investigated in 21 schools in Birmingham in March 2014. The Education Funding Authority conducted a parallel investigation. Ofsted subsequently expanded their investigation into schools in the north and south-east of England. They investigated schools in East London, Bradford and Luton over concerns regarding a limited curriculum and pupils' detachment from the wider community. In May, Mark Rogers, Birmingham City Council's Chief Executive, had a meeting with head teachers of affected schools. Despite calling for secrecy, a hidden recording was sent to The Daily Telegraph, in which Rogers criticised the approach to the conspiracy by Education Secretary Michael Gove and Chief Schools Inspector Sir Michael Wilshaw. He said that the overview report on the matter could trigger "some kind of bloody firestorm" and "may well lead to significant structural proposals" for the city council. 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. Kerslake deferred issues of education to the Clarke and Kershaw Reports, but an appendix to his Report provided contextual data on poverty, adult education attainment, unemployment and school performance across comparator cities and for England as a whole. 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. 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. ==Allegations and investigation findings==

As noted above, governors and teachers accused in the various investigations were given no opportunity to respond to the allegations and the claims made in the various reports were not subject to independent scrutiny until misconduct charges were brought by the NCTL against teachers associated with Park View Education Trust. Of 21 schools investigated by Ofsted, and 14 schools investigated by the Clarke Report, charges were brought against teachers at just 4 schools. Richard Kerbaj and Sian Griffiths, writing in The Sunday Times, reported that over 100 teachers would be charged with professional misconduct. In the event, just 12 teachers were subject to NCTL hearings, in which they were accused of "undue religious influence", not Islamist extremism. 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. Others were challenged in court before the case against the senior teachers was discontinued. One EFA inspector went on to become educational adviser to Peter Clarke. Her credibility was called into question by the NCTL Panel when discontinuing the case. A detailed discussion of the evidence presented in the NCTL case is provided in chapter 9 of John Holmwood and Therese O'Toole's book on the Trojan Horse affair. Park View academy had been identified as outstanding in a 2012 Ofsted report, the first school to be inspected under a tougher new inspection regime introduced by then Secretary of State Michael Gove. Sir Michael Wilshaw, Chief Inspector at Ofsted, had commented at a national conference that "All schools should be like this and there's no reason why they shouldn't be." Park View School At Park View School, Ofsted reported that "students are not taught citizenship well enough or prepared properly for life in a multi-cultural and diverse society". The school staff defended the measures stating that the loudspeakers were put up to make announcements in general, not only the Islamic prayer call and that every school in Britain is legally required to provide a collective act of worship, which is usually Christian in nature but in their case was Islamic for which they applied for and received permission. It was alleged that the sexes were segregated in the classrooms and boys and girls suspected of being too friendly towards each other were disciplined. 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". The annual sports event for boys and girls was scheduled in different days. Subjects such as Personal, Social and Health Education, Biology and Sex and Relationships Education were bowdlerised to conform with a conservative Islamic teaching. Pupils studying biology were not taught the section of the syllabus about reproduction and the teacher stated when briefly outlining evolution that "this is not what we believe". 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. A teacher from Park View School was reported to the police after he broke into a female pupil's mobile telephone to prove she was having a "forbidden" relationship with a boy. The 16-year-old girl's phone was confiscated by the teacher during a Sunday event and then taken to a shop for its passcode to be broken, and its contents were then examined by the school. Texts and images of the girl with a boy, a fellow Year 11 pupil at Park View, were used to justify the girl's suspension weeks before her GCSE exams. The Ofsted report stated that "students' understanding of other religions is scant as the religious education curriculum focuses primarily on the study of Islam" and said there was a "perceived unfairness and lack of transparency" over appointments to the school and that female members of staff had felt intimidated. On 9 June 2014, Lord Nash, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for schools, wrote to Tahir Alam concerning the OFSTED and EFA reports and outlined the actions required by the school. In August 2014, the Principal Hardeep Saini was replaced by an interim principal. Two other senior teachers were also suspended. In July 2015, Ofsted stated that Golden Hillock was still inadequate. 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. As of September 2015, Golden Hillock School was rebranded Ark Boulton Academy after being taken over by the Ark Academy Chain. Oldknow Academy Ofsted found that a small group of governors were "endeavouring to promote a particular and narrow faith-based ideology in what is a maintained and non-faith academy". Staff were afraid to speak out about the significant changes. The school's curriculum was deemed inadequate because it did not promote tolerance and harmony between different cultural traditions. Exchange visits with nearby churches had been curtailed. The EFA team concluded: "We saw evidence that Oldknow academy is acting as a faith school and is not making active efforts to make the academy attractive to all faith denominations including pupils of no faith." For three years running non-Muslim pupils and staff were excluded from these trips. Christmas events were cancelled and raffles and tombolas were banned at a recent school fete because they were considered un-Islamic. Nansen Primary School Pupils had limited knowledge of any religion apart from Islam. 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". The books contained fundamentalist views and promoted executions, stoning and lashing as appropriate punishments. Books available to the children included one which advocated parents hitting children if they did not pray by the age of 10 and another which praised individuals who "loved death more than life in their pursuit of righteous and true religion". Additionally, the inspection stated that "there are too few books about the world's major religions other than Islam". 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". The school was rated "inadequate". Laisterdyke Business and Enterprise College During the inspection at Laisterdyke Business and Enterprise College in Bradford, a mainly Muslim secondary school, pupils were forced to revise for their GCSE exams outside in the street as staff did not want them to have an opportunity to speak to inspectors. After resisting attempts by governors to impose an Islamic ethos, teachers were suspended and its principal, Jennifer McIntosh, and her deputy, faced attempts to oust them. The investigation found there to be "no evidence to suggest that there is a problem with governance generally" nor any "evidence of terrorism, radicalisation or violent extremism in the schools of concern in Birmingham", but said there was "evidence that there are a number of people, associated with each other and in positions of influence in schools and governing bodies, who espouse, sympathise with or fail to challenge extremist views". Detailed allegations The report outlined instances of Islamism or Salafism found in the schools. They included: This showed that most schools conflated the two and did not have teachers trained in the Prevent duty. Park View was more compliant than would be the case for other schools. In addition, Park View had been designated a National Healthy School for its approach to Personal, Social and Health Education. 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." Nasim Awan, a governor at Springfield, said that the "first agenda item" should be to apply for Islamic assemblies at the secular school. Faraz replied by saying that the new head "has to establish herself with minimum controversy for first six months", also referring to starting an eventual "Islamising agenda", but at the same time ensuring that the new head does not become a "coconut" in the process. Another participant in the discussion said that "JEWS" (emphasis in original) were making websites with false information on the Quran, while Abdul Malik, Deputy Head of Golden Hillock in Bradford wrote "Al-Islam will prevail over all other ways of life. Look at how [the] Muslim population is increasing in the UK." Criticism of Birmingham City Council The report concluded that based on the examination of emails and correspondence: "There is incontrovertible evidence that both senior officials and elected members of Birmingham council were aware of activities that bear a striking resemblance to those described in the Trojan horse letter many months before it surfaced." It said that the council had been aware of the extremist activities as early as the end of 2012, and that discussions had taken place between officials as early as July 2013, half a year before the emergence of the Trojan Horse letter. Yet, "eight weeks after the letter was received there was no systematic attempt to deal with the issue". Instead, the report concluded, the council was focused on community cohesion. It said that there was never a serious effort to ascertain what was happening in school governing bodies, and that council's approach had been described as one of "appeasement and a failure in their duty of care towards their employees". The investigation, however, did not find evidence of a "conspiracy" to promote "violent extremism or radicalisation" values. Extremism The report found that attempts were made to introduce Sharia law in schools. There were posters in schools warning the children that if they did not pray, they would "go to hell". Girls were taught they could not refuse sex with their husbands, and would be "punished" by angels "from dusk to dawn" if they did. Teachers taught the children at Park View Academy that "good" Muslim women must wear a hijab and tie up their hair. In fact, this film was a BBC Panorama programme, a copy of which had been made at the request of West Midlands Police, to show at a session they were providing for the school on the dangers of radicalisation. ==Response==

Political declared that refusing to accept British laws and way of life was "not an option" Prime Minister David Cameron, on a visit to Birmingham, praised his government's swift action in investigating the conspiracy. He said that "protecting our children" was "one of the first duties of government" and convened an emergency meeting of the Extremism Taskforce and a ministerial meeting to discuss the affair. , Secretary of State for Education, announced after the investigation that schools must promote "British values" Michael Gove, the Education secretary, announced that all of England's schools would have to promote "British values" of tolerance and fairness and that teachers would be banned from the profession if they allowed extremists into schools. 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". Deputy Prime Minister and leader of the Liberal Democrats Nick Clegg also backed the investigation, stating that schools should not become "silos of segregation". Later, he was critical of the Conservatives' plan to teach "British values", claiming that it would alienate moderate Muslims. In a letter to Park View Trust chairman Tahir Alam, Education Minister Lord Nash criticised its running of the schools, saying he was "deeply mindful of the need to eliminate discrimination, advance equality of opportunity and foster good relations". He said the government would be terminating its funding arrangement with three of the schools. Khalid Mahmood, the Labour MP for Perry Barr, said that the City Council may have known of previous plots, but not acted due to fears of being seen as anti-Islamic. Mahmood, said that he felt that it was certain that "Salafists" were attempting to change the school's secular nature and "split young people away from their parents". 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. The Labour MP for Poplar and Limehouse, Jim Fitzpatrick, warned of a 'Trojan Horse'-style Islamist plot to infiltrate councils in London. He said that "the Trojan Horse in east London was a political one rather than an educational one" and spoke of racial politics taking hold. He noted that in Tower Hamlets, a borough in which 32 per cent of the population is Bangladeshi, the Tower Hamlets First Party, of which the Mayor was a member, had 18 councillors who were all Bangladeshi, and 17 of them were men. Salma Yaqoob, a former Birmingham City Councillor and prominent Muslim spokesperson, began a group named "Hands Off Birmingham Schools" in the aftermath of the inspections, saying that they were influenced by "a climate of political and media hysteria". Political row between Home Office and Department for Education In June 2014, there was a highly public argument between the Home Office and Department for Education ministers about the responsibility for the alleged extremism. The Prime Minister, David Cameron, intervened, requiring that Secretary for Education Michael Gove apologise to the Office for Security and Counter-Terrorism head Charles Farr for briefings critical of him appearing in The Times, and Home Secretary Theresa May to sack a close adviser, Fiona Cunningham, known to be in a relationship with Farr, Unions 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. The National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT) has also expressed concerns about the scope of the problem in other major cities, whilst advising that there was no "cause for panic". Birmingham City Council 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. He later said that the Council accepted the Ofsted findings that schools in the city were failing pupils. Schools David Hughes, a trustee at Park View School, claimed that Ofsted's investigation of the school was biased, and dubbed the inspection a "witch hunt". Tahir Alam, a governor at Park View School since 1997, and former chair of the education committee of the Muslim Council of Britain, said that the accusations had been "motivated by anti-Muslim, anti-Islam sentiment". The Muslim Council of Britain also described the investigation as a 'witch hunt'. Helena Rosewell, a music teacher at Park View for 15 years, stated that her "blood [was] boiling" when investigations started at the school. However, she admitted that senior staff had warned her not to let pupils dance to pop or Bollywood music. Assistant principal Lee Donaghy, a self-declared agnostic, said that the school was achieving more by "accommodating" Muslim practices, but called it "pernicious" the idea "that people running the school are trying to force more religion on these kids than the parents want". On reaction to Gove's call for British values in schools, the Muslim Council of Britain expressed fear that it would effectively bar conservative Muslims from becoming school trustees or governors. Governors resigned from Saltley School in protest after the Ofsted findings were released, stating that they doubted the inspectors' impartiality. Tahir Alam, chair of governors at Park View and labelled by some newspapers as the "ringleader" of Operation Trojan Horse, resigned alongside all of his board of trustees on 15 July. He denied all allegations against him. Media Media coverage of Operation Trojan Horse was varied. Andrew Gilligan of The Daily Telegraph wrote extensively on the episode. He criticised the approaches to the story by the BBC and The Guardian, which he claimed were unduly biased in favour of the schools. and demands that all state schools be made secular. The latter piece concluded that in the present system, the schools investigated could have registered themselves as faith schools and been allowed to teach Islamic values with permission from the state. The Guardian also analysed Michael Gove's book on combatting Islamist terror, Celsius 7/7, pointing out that a chapter is titled "The Trojan Horse". 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. A play about the Trojan Horse affair and the injustices at its heart by LUNG Theatre (Helen Monks, co-writer; Matt Woodhead, co-writer and director) won the Amnesty International Freedom of Expression Award at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in August 2018 and began a national tour in October 2019. 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. Across eight episodes, journalists Brian Reed and Hamza Syed sought to discover the author of the anonymous letter that triggered the scandal. Adderley primary school is at the centre of the podcast's investigations. Daily Mirror exposé 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. The reporter recorded a series of meetings with him which the Mirror alleged exposed Akmal as a "sexist, racist bigot". Reinstatement of headteachers The headteacher of Oldknow Academy, Bhupinder Kondal, handed in her notice in January 2014. Ms. Kondal alleged she had been the victim of undue and unlawful pressure to resign her position by both parents and governors. The previous trustees of the academy having been replaced, she withdrew her resignation and returned to her post on 19 August 2014. 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." Shabina Bano, chair of the Oldknow Academy Parents' Association, said parents would welcome Ms. Kondal back because they wanted Ms. Bano had previously been highly critical of the terms of the inspections of the school, claiming that "[My children] never knew words like radicalisation, but have now been exposed to them." Bhupinder Kondal left the school again shortly after. Other In 2017, the academic scholars Therese O'Toole and John Holmwood, who served as an expert witness in the professional misconduct cases, described the Trojan Horse affair as a "false narrative" spread by a hostile British press which led to "a serious miscarriage of justice" against the teachers, drawing comparisons to the Hillsborough affair. ==Aftermath==

In May 2015, the National Association of Head Teachers' annual conference heard that the problems associated with Operation Trojan Horse persisted, and there were claims that teachers had received death threats for attempting to dissuade students away from homophobia. Responding to those claims, Education Secretary Nicky Morgan said that there was no place for extremism in education, and there was still more work to be done to eradicate it. "This is a reminder that this is a serious issue and something that is not going to be solved overnight. We have taken action to remove and continue to take action to remove people from being in schools who don't follow British values." ==National College of Teaching and Leadership (NCTL) hearings==

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. Case hearings in July and August 2015 took place to establish the nature of the charges to be put and evidence to be submitted (in the case of the senior teachers at PVET, the evidence file expanded from around 1,000 pages to 6,000 pages between the two meetings). No charges of extremism were put forward, only charges associated with 'undue religious influence'. This was after the government had cited the Trojan Horse affair as justification for its new plans to counter extremism. The hearings were expected to be concluded quickly, but continued through until May 2017. The rush to set up the hearings in July and August 2015 (prior to the Conservative Party conference in September) provided little time for the preparation of the case for the defence prior to the start of the hearings in contrast to the long-drawn-out nature of the proceedings once they had started. Arrangements for the hearings were deeply unsatisfactory, with four separate cases brought against different groups of teachers associated with PVET and one other school, Oldknow Academy (which it transpired had a Memorandum of Understanding with PVET, signed at the behest of the Department for Education). Three cases against junior teachers were heard separately from that against the senior leadership team at PVET. The drawn out nature of the cases meant that there were no journalists present to report the detailed rebuttal of claims indicated above, for example of banning Christmas celebrations, or teacher handouts promoting the obligations on wives to consent to sex with their husbands. A further comment by Mr Justice Phillips is noteworthy. At paragraph 37 of his judgement, he writes that The charge of failure to disclose documents from the main hearing against senior teachers in other hearings, however, indicated a possibility of a similar failure on the part of NCTL to fulfil its obligations of disclosure in the hearing against senior leaders. The Panel had been ready to announce its decision in the case on 23 December 2016, but an urgent application for disclosure, relating, in part, to transcripts associated with the Clarke Report, was made by defence lawyers on 24 November 2016. Media reporting expressed alarm that the transcripts were those of 'whistleblowers' who had provided statements under terms of confidentiality. However, what was at issue also included other documents outside the Clarke Report that had potentially been relevant to the case. Altogether the documents that were deemed to be relevant amounted to about 1600 pages. As set out in the Panel Report, this included evidence an inspector from the EFA Report who had acted as adviser to the Clarke Report about the circumstances of the EFA inspections where the Panel proposed that "no doubt it would be argued that this further undermined her credibility and the reliability of her evidence" (see paragraphs 124/125 of the Panel's justification of discontinuing). There was evidence from officials at the Department for Education responsible for managing the incorporation of schools into PVET, as well as initiating a memorandum of agreement between PVET and Oldknow (paragraph 123). It also included evidence from then secretary to Birmingham SACRE, given to the Clarke inquiry but not reported by him, which "conflicts with the evidence of NCTL witnesses who had been saying that it was wrong for collective worship to be solely about Islam when a school had a determination but [the secretary] who had been with SACRE for 9 years, said it was acceptable" (paragraph 125). Initially, the failure to disclose the transcripts was explained as a "departmental misunderstanding", albeit one, according to the Panel, where, "even on that basis such failure was simply unacceptable". However, it transpired that, just before the Panel was due to rule on 3 May 2017 on an application by the defence lawyers to discontinue, the NCTL presented a note from their solicitors. This stated that, on 14 October 2014, they had received "25 of the Clarke transcripts to include transcripts of 10 interviewees who went on to be witnesses for the NCTL in these proceedings. This pre-dated by approximately months the date on which the witness statements were signed and finalised". This led the Panel to conclude that the matter had not been a misunderstanding, but that the transcripts were "deliberately withheld from disclosure". In consequence, the Panel judged that the matter was "an abuse of the process which is of such seriousness that it offends the Panel's sense of justice and propriety. What has happened has brought the integrity of the process into disrepute". The case against the senior leaders was discontinued, as were the remaining two cases in July 2017. Unlike the teachers, the lawyers involved in serious impropriety were not subject to professional misconduct charges despite the cost of the hearings. Teachers lost their livelihoods and a community had its reputation besmirched, yet their defence was neither fully heard nor reported . Government officials and policy advisers, as well as journalists previously involved in the case, rushed to announce that the cases had collapsed on a 'technicality' . For example, the co-head of the security and extremism unit at Policy Exchange (the conservative think tank that had advised Michael Gove's schools programme), Hannah Stuart, and its head of education, John David Blake, proposed that, "non-disclosure of anonymous witness statements from the Clarke inquiry was described as an 'abuse of process', and that is deeply unfortunate, but this falls short of an exoneration. The decision to discontinue disciplinary proceedings was based on procedural grounds – not on a shortage of evidence". No mention was made of the fact that allegations of extremism had not been any part of the charges against teachers. 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 academic scholar John Holmwood, who served as an expert witness in the professional misconduct case brought against the senior teachers at Park View Educational Trust, wrote a book with scholar Therese O'Toole about the Trojan Horse affair, Countering Extremism in British Schools? The Truth about the Birmingham Trojan Horse Affair (2017). They described the Trojan Horse affair as a "false narrative" spread by a hostile British press which led to "a serious miscarriage of justice" against the teachers, drawing comparisons to the Hillsborough affair. ==See also==