A teacher at one of the Birmingham state schools allegedly taken over by Muslim radicals in the so-called “Trojan Horse” plot has been reported to police after he broke into a female pupil’s mobile telephone to prove she was having a “forbidden” relationship with a boy.
The girl, who at 16 is over the age of consent, had her telephone confiscated by the teacher during a Sunday event at Park View School last month. Two members of staff told The Telegraph the device was then taken, without her permission, to a shop for its passcode to be broken, and its contents unlocked and examined by the school.
Images of the girl with the boy, a fellow Year 11 pupil at Park View, and text messages between them, obtained from the phone, were used by the school as evidence to suspend her, weeks before her GCSE exams. The boy was also suspended, but more briefly.
The Telegraph has also been told that Year 11 pupils about to sit their GCSEs at the supposedly secular school were asked to go on an Islamic fast to put them in the right “spiritual frame of mind” for exams; that boys and girls suspected of being too friendly towards each other were disciplined; and that the sexes had to sit apart in class.
Staff at Park View said the mother of the girl whose phone was confiscated had reported the incident to the police. The interception of private text messages is illegal under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act, which was used to convict phone hackers from the closed News of the World newspaper.
The school confirmed that the police and the local authority’s child safeguarding team were involved in the incident, but refused to elaborate. The names of the pupils concerned are known to The Telegraph, but are not being published for privacy reasons. The girl’s mother declined to comment.
“This was an appalling act of bullying and invasion of privacy,” said a staff member, who described the teacher involved as part of a morality “police” enforcing conservative Islamic values on pupils.
Tahir Alam, the chairman of governors at the school and the alleged ringleader of the takeover plot, has written that “girlfriend/boyfriend relationships . . . are not acceptable practices according to Islamic teaching” and that schools should “prepare Muslim pupils to lead their personal and public lives in a manner consistent with their Islamic moral principles and values”.
An inspection report by the Department for Education, leaked to The Telegraph, found that girls and boys were made to sit apart in some classes, “often with boys sitting towards the front of the class and girls at the back or around the sides”. In some lessons, teachers “gave [students] seats in which to sit in class by gender to avoid having to mix”.
An internal school calendar leaked to this newspaper shows that separate annual sports days are being organised for girls on June 17 and boys on June 18. Some governors had objected to the arrangement, which is new, a staff member said.
Staff said pupils preparing for GCSEs were asked to go on a fast, taking neither food nor drink, on May 1. “Pupils were starving themselves all day at a stressful time and then had an iftar [meal breaking the fast] in the evening in school, with prayers for the exams,” a member of staff said. The iftar is shown on the internal school calendar.
Details of a “Ramadan competition” for students leaked to The Telegraph show that pupils are also expected to fast during the holy month that begins this year in the last week of June, even though Islam states that the practice is compulsory only for adults.
Some staff at the school fear that neither eating nor drinking during June and July’s 18 hours of daylight and high temperatures will put pupils’ health and learning at risk.
The prize in the competition, a religious quiz on “the lives of the two great prophets”, will be a “small treat to enjoy after you open your fast”. The contest describes jihad not by the conventional liberal definition – spiritual struggle – but as “fighting evil for good to prevail”.
Ofsted has carried out snap inspections at 21 schools in Birmingham, including Park View, amid mounting evidence that hardline Muslims have taken control of governing bodies and hounded or pushed out secular head teachers. Five non-Muslim heads have left schools in one area of the city since October.
This newspaper has been reporting for the past 10 weeks about a group called “Educational Activists”, which works, in the words of its leader — a deputy head at one of the 21 — to “Islamise” schools in Birmingham. At least six of the 21 are expected to be placed on special measures, with their leaders and governors removed.
Park View issued a statement last week purporting to rebut allegations made against it. In fact, it denies many claims that were never made against it or its sister schools, such as that boys and girls are prevented from talking to each other.
The rebuttal also includes untrue statements. Among these is a claim that Park View has a “part-determination”, an official dispensation allowing the school to “provide an act of worship that is Islamic in character in accordance with the faith background of the children”. In fact, the part-determination, which expired in April last year, did not allow this, according to the leaked DfE report.
The rebuttal also claims “it is not school policy to restrict students’ access to sexual health advice”. In fact, posters by the school nurse were censored, with the offer of sexual health advice blacked out with marker pen, before being put up. The Telegraph has one of the posters, with the words “sexual health” faintly visible beneath the black ink.
The Education Secretary, Michael Gove, is expected to change the leadership and governors of Park View and other schools when the DfE and Ofsted reports are published next month. He is also reported to be looking at wider changes to Birmingham’s education system, with a larger number of schools removed from the city council.
In recordings of a secret meeting last week with heads at the schools, leaked to The Telegraph, Birmingham’s chief executive, Mark Rogers, and its director of children’s services, Peter Hay, predicted a “bloody firestorm” when the reports are published, with potentially “significant structural proposals” for the council.
Mr Rogers and Mr Hay wrote to the heads concerned, saying the leak had damaged the reputation of the city. They said they had reached an impasse on communication with schools.
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