Park View Academy had prefect ‘morality squad’ snooping on pupils in secret relationships, hearing told

From The Birmingham Mail

A school linked to the so-called Trojan Horse plot had a “morality squad” of prefects who were encouraged to report pupils who were in secret relationships, a tribunal heard. The class snoops would tip-off senior teachers at Park View Academy about their fellow students – who would then be sent to an “isolation unit” for a day, it was claimed.

A former teacher at the Alum Rock school made the sensational claims as she gave evidence at a professional conduct hearing of two of her former colleagues.

Akeel Ahmed, 41, and Inamulhaq Anwar, 34, are appearing before the National College for Teaching and Leadership to answer charges about how they had allegedly tried to force extreme Muslim teaching onto the school agenda. Anwar had also been a governor at Nansen Primary School.

Giving evidence today a former teacher, who has been granted anonymity by the panel, was referred to as Witness A. She said some of the older pupils at Park View were made prefects and became known as the “morality squad”.

The teacher also told of the strict Islamic policy on sex education in operation at Park View. She said although she was meant to be in charge of these lessons, the assistant head with responsibility for pastoral care “handpicked” Ahmed and Anwar and another man to teach the boys.

“I am sure they were chosen on the basis of their strong Islamic beliefs,” she said.

Staff conducting the lessons were not allowed to tell the boys to use condoms for safe sex, boys and girls had to be taught separately, and the pupils were taught that sex could only take place within marriage.

She also became aware of a handout which had allegedly been given to boys during their sex lessons and left her “absolutely horrified”.

“It looked like it had been downloaded from the internet and although I can’t remember the exact wording, it included phrases such as ‘a woman could not refuse to obey her husband in marriage and that included that she could not say no to her husband having sex with her’,” Witness A said. “There was wording along the lines that if a woman disobeyed her husband then she would be smited [hit] and forced to an eternity in hell.”

Witness A said the rest of the handout stated that any woman who said no to her husband in matters of sex would face “hell, fire and damnation”.

She said she believed Ahmed, Anwar and the other male teacher had used the handouts during their lessons and this had resulted in boys going around the school saying to girls “you can’t say no to us”.

Other members of staff reported the matter to the head teacher who called a special assembly for all boy pupils and told them the contents of the handout were wrong and that what it was encouraging was rape, she said. But Witness A said no disciplinary action was taken against the men believed to be responsible.

Ahmed, of Aldersley Road, Tettenhall, Wolverhampton, faces allegations of unacceptable professional misconduct which brought the teaching profession into disrepute. He is said to agreed with others, on or before March 31 last year, to the inclusion of an undue amount of religious influence in the education of pupils at Park View School.

Specific instances included reforming the curriculum to exclude the proper teaching of sex and relationship education, organising assemblies of an overtly religious nature, broadcasting the call to prayer over the school’s PA system, displaying posters and separating boys from girls in some classes and assemblies.

Anwar, of Pretoria Road, Bordesley Green, was also a governor at Nansen which was incorporated into the Park View Educational Trust as an academy in 2012. He faces the same allegations as Ahmed, but with the extra charge of trying to influence the curriculum of Nansen.

Other allegations he faces are appointing members of staff to assist him with this aim, reforming Park View’s curriculum to exclude the proper teaching of sex and relationship education and organising overtly religious assemblies. He is also accused of failing to declare conflicts of interest and failing to prevent discrimination in the appointment process.

Both men deny the charges and the hearing is expected to last until October 22