trojan horse | Schools Week

New ‘witness charter’ to protect teachers in misconduct hearings

The Teaching Regulation Agency has drawn up a “witness charter” to protect teachers who give evidence in misconduct hearings. The agency has produced “standards of care” for witnesses and beefed-up guidance for staff on how to engage and handle issues arising from such hearings, Schools Week can reveal. It follows an independent internal review of […]

Trojan Horse hearings were an abuse of justice

Five of Lee Donaghy’s former colleagues have had their names muddied and their careers ruined, he argues, through politically-motivated negligence As headteacher from 2001, Lindsey Clark transformed Park View School in Birmingham from a byword for low standards in the city into a school feted by a prime minister, with David Cameron citing it in […]

Schools must be more vigilant on Islamism than ever

We must not downplay the seriousness of Trojan Horse, claims Jamie Martin, even if the case collapsed Barely a week after the Manchester Arena attack – which was carried out by someone educated in the English state school system – a procedural failure led to the collapse of misconduct hearings against three teachers suspended after […]

Long read: The inside story of the Trojan Horse trial collapse

One of Michael Gove’s first decisions as education secretary was to abolish the General Teaching Council for England (GTCE) in 2010. He was “deeply sceptical” of the body, which was responsible for maintaining a register of teachers and investigating alleged cases of misconduct, claiming that it did “little to raise the teaching standards of professionalism”. […]

Identifying Trojan Horse witnesses would put off future whistleblowers, warns union

Teachers would be discouraged from coming forward to blow the whistle on wrongdoing in schools if the government breaks a promise to give Trojan Horse witnesses anonymity, a union has warned. The National College for Teaching and Leadership (NCTL) has asked the government to release the names of whistleblowers who gave evidence as part of […]