Banned staff revealed to be teaching at Trojan horse school

Andrew Gilligan in the Sunday Telegraph

At least two teachers accused of involvement in the Trojan Horse plot to “Islamise” Birmingham schools have been reinstated by the academy at the heart of the scandal, despite being banned from the teaching profession.

Shakeel Akhtar, the assistant principal of Park View School, and Saqib Malik, director of student progress, have in recent weeks resumed teaching children in class, in a move that has been heavily criticised by other staff and is understood to have contributed to at least two resignations.

Both men are among more than a dozen teachers allegedly involved in the plot who are still subject to “interim prohibition orders” banning them from teaching.

They were close allies of the school’s former principal, Mozz Hussain, and were members of his “Park View Brotherhood”, a hardline private online discussion group where thousands of extremist, bigoted and anti-Western messages were exchanged.

The new chair of governors at Park View, Waheed Saleem, who approved the reinstatements, denies there were any problems in Birmingham’s schools, stating that extremism “didn’t exist”. Mr Saleem likened media coverage of the plot to The Sun’s “lies” about Liverpool fans over Hillsborough. He called for a boycott of the Telegraph, which revealed many of the developments. Mr Saleem announced his resignation yesterday after The Telegraph contacted him about the teacher reinstatements and his views.

The alleged ringleader of the plot, Tahir Alam, the former chair of governors at Park View, has re-emerged, giving a lecture justifying his actions, attempting to attend council committees and launching a new “community interest company”. He is suspected of involvement in a recent wave of parental agitation – until now unreported – against sex education at two heavily Muslim primary schools in the city. 

Two further Birmingham schools caught up in Trojan Horse, Selly Oak and Springfield, were placed into special measures this year. Police had to be called to a third school, Welford, in October after disorder by parents protesting against teaching that homosexuality is acceptable. In the last two weeks, petitions and protests over sex education have been held at two other schools, Clifton and Highfield.

At Park View, soon to be renamed Rockwood Academy, standards appear to have deteriorated since the return of the two banned teachers. In February, Ofsted found that the school was “making reasonable progress towards the removal of special measures”. By June, the inspectors said that there had been a “serious decline” and the academy was “not making enough progress” towards removal of the sanction. 

Mr Saleem said he “stood by” his speech denying the existence of a plot, but declined to make any further comment. Mr Akhtar was not available for comment. Mr Malik put down the phone when contacted and declined to respond to text messages