London: Tristram Hunt, the shadow education secretary, was to warn on Saturday that “the pursuit of a divisive religious extremism” as shown in an alleged conspiracy to take over schools in Birmingham threatens to undermine Britain’s modern multicultural society.
Hunt’s remarks to the annual conference of the Nasuwt (National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers) in Birmingham follow the uncovering of a dossier named Operation Trojan Horse, claiming to reveal a plot to overthrow teachers and governors insecular state schools in the city and run them on strict Islamic principles.
“Across the country, we can all point to many successful, collaborative, pluralist faith schools working with children of particular denominations and of no faith at all,” Hunt is to say.
“But we also need to be clear about the duties which a state-funded school is expected to fulfil. We cannot have narrow, religious motives which seek to divide and isolate dictating state schooling.
“We cannot have head teachers forced out; teachers undermined; curricula rewritten; and cultural or gender-based segregation. ”Hunt is to say that schools should unite “a modern, multicultural city like this one”.
“Anything that undermines that mission needs to be dealt with thoroughly. And so I welcome Birmingham city council’s investigation of the so-called Trojan Horse conspiracy.”
The episode also illustrated “the inability of the Department for Education to manage 5,000 schools from a desk in Whitehall,” Hunt claimed.
Although some have claimed the Trojan Horse document is fake, Birmingham council has launched an investigation into 25 schools, while separate probes are being conducted by Ofsted (Office for Standards in Education) and the DFE (Department for Education.
