DfE handling of Trojan horse scandal was farcical, headteacher says
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Version 0 of 1. A headteacher who warned the government about potential extremism in schools before the so-called Trojan horse scandal has described the Department for Education’s (DfE) handling of the issue as “farcical”. A review of how the Department for Education counters potential extremism in schools found that over the past 20 years the department had lacked inquisitiveness and failed to develop any formal procedures to handle warnings from pupils, teachers or parents. Tim Boyes, head of Queensbridge school in Birmingham, said he met a minister and officials twice in 2010 to discuss Muslim hardliners infiltrating schools but no action was taken. He told the BBC: “It’s farcical that central government can dodge responsibility when it wants to, that ministers feel that such stark warnings could be ignored and neither immediate action nor policy change needs to take place. “Because I didn’t say: ‘You must intervene in this way’, they are letting themselves off the hook. As a headteacher without jurisdiction to make decisions about what to do next, I don’t know what more I can do than lay out a clearly evidenced picture. “I went into a room [where] people acknowledged something needs to happen. The assumption it didn’t because I didn’t tell them what to do, is unreasonable.” The review was established in the wake of claims that the department was slow to respond to warnings of extremism in state-run schools in Birmingham. The Trojan horse controversy in Birmingham has led to revision of governance in a raft of Birmingham schools as well as at Birmingham city council. The review going back 20 years and conducted by the permanent secretary, Chris Wormald, found no instance of a specific warning being missed or ignored. But the report says the department did not see the issue as a priority. The review was prompted by a December 2013 letter – now widely believed to be a hoax – referring to an alleged Trojan Horse plot by hardline Muslims to seize control of a number of school governing boards in Birmingham. The report says: “In future the department needs to be more vigilant, more inquisitive and have more robust systems in place than it has had in the past if in future it is to play its part in preventing and countering the issues.” Wormald adds: “My review has found that in the context of these issues the department has historically shown less willingness to follow up specific allegations relating to individual schools than I would expect to be the case now.” The review found six instances of the department being given specific written warnings about extremism in schools. In 2010 following a specific warning of extremism in Birmingham, Boyes went to the department for a meeting, but the minister left before the meeting was over and a proposed second meeting with a bigger group of headteachers never took place. Wormald announced he was strengthening the size of the already expanded due diligence and counter-extremism division (DDCEG) to 36 staff and establishing it as a standalone group with a director with sole responsibility for this area of work. A formal system is being introduced for staff across the DfE to refer concerns about extremism to DDCEG. The unit’s remit is to include a proactive role identifying potential future trouble. In addition the DfE is establishing a counter-extremism steering group. The review searched through 820,000 pieces of departmental correspondence received since 2003, as well as 250,000 historic paper files and 454 consultations on the department’s consultation database, and interviewed current and former ministers, civil servants, advisers and relevant third parties. • This article was amended on 19 January 2015. An earlier version misnamed Tim Boyes’s school. He is head of Queensbridge school, not Queensfield. |