Oral evidence: Extremism in schools, HC 473Tuesday 2 September 2014
Oral evidence, 2 September 2014.
Witnesses
Councillor Brigid Jones, Cabinet Member for Children and Family Services, Birmingham City Council, and Mr Mark Rogers, Chief Executive for Birmingham City Council, gave evidence.
Chair
Good morning and welcome. Thank you for appearing before us today. Councillor Jones, you offered to resign as a result of the investigations into the Trojan horse allegations, but you did not go. It appears that no‑one else has left the Council either. Should heads roll at Birmingham City Council, given the extent of the criticisms?
Cllr Jones
I did offer my resignation to the leader of the Council after reading the Kershaw and Clarke reports. I have been a Cabinet member for two years now in Birmingham, with responsibility for children and family services. The reason I offered that resignation is that I discovered the narrative of the last two years that was being presented to me by those reports was a different one to that which I believed I had been operating in. The leader of the Council rejected my resignation. He told me that he believed the issues had been ongoing beyond this administration, going back a long number of years. He saw me as part of the solution, rather than part of the problem. He asked me to stay on and play my part in fixing the problems that had been identified. I agreed to do so.
Chair
You were here for the last session and you know I began that session by asking about the extent to which there had been combination of fear of being seen as Islamophobic, but on the other hand also a political self‑interest in not offending Muslim voters who might be voting for you. What is your take on that, Councillor Jones? It is difficult to unearth people’s inner motivations. However, if fear, a refusal to do the right thing for a complex of reasons, and the leadership that is provided to officers—who are often made to look as if they are the fall guys—is at the heart of some of the problems, how do we ensure that we have a political culture that is democratic, yet is prepared to do the right thing?
Cllr Jones
The culture you refer to is something that has been identified by both reports as existing in the City Council for a number of years. Looking at the City Council as one homogenous thing is perhaps an unhelpful way to look at it. If we look at the individuals who exist in the Council and are responsible for these areas over the period of time, there has been an ever‑changing cast of both politicians and of officers at all levels of the organisation. The idea that we should not offend communities and should shy away from certain issues for that reason has certainly never been an explicit instruction given by politicians, certainly in this administration, because that would be a bizarre thing to do. Issues need looking into whatever the community is that is behind them. Obviously, when you are operating in an environment such as Birmingham with many communities living side by side, you have to be aware of things that may cause social cohesion issues. We are a city that has had social tensions before. We have had race riots in the not too distant past. We have to be aware of how those things will play out. That should be an issue as to how we handle them in the public domain, rather than what we actually do about those issues. That should be how they are being treated, but it seems to me from the reports presented that a culture has built up over a number of years amongst a huge number of individuals who have dealt with schools—an ever‑changing cast of people rolling in and out of the local authority—to the contrary of that.
Chair
In terms of the political messages, ultimately the politicians set the tone. They create the culture, and the people at the top have to take responsibility. Has there been a problem in the political leadership of the Council? I know that that has not entirely been Labour; there was a Conservative‑Lib Dem administration. Do you have any thoughts? Do you think it is right to say that there must have been a problem at the political level? If so, is there anything that can be done about it to ensure that we have more appropriate leadership in future?
Cllr Jones
That is a question for the different parties to address individually. In Birmingham, there was a Conservative/Liberal administration, as you alluded to, up until 2012. The Conservative party, at that time, was exclusively white, the Liberal Democrat party not so in Birmingham. We have been a Labour administration since 2012. Certainly, I can only speak for the culture within the Labour administration at that time, because I was not part of previous administrations. Certainly, within the Labour group, we have councillors from all different backgrounds within the city represented. We would never shy away from issues as a political administration because of fears of community cohesion. It is how we deal with the issues in the public domain as a political administration that matters to us.
Chair
You just said, “We would never shy away”, so are you telling me that, as far as the Labour administration are concerned, there are no issues around political leadership; it is not down to the councillors having created this sustained culture that has allowed this to happen?
Cllr Jones
A culture exists that predated this administration.
Chair
Yes, but has it been challenged by it? I am just trying to say; I am not trying to make a party‑political point. In a diverse community and a large area such as Birmingham, how do we get that balance right? Have you got any thoughts on that? Is there anything we need to do; is there anything we can do to provide the political leadership that will help sort this out? Otherwise, the danger is we are going to move the furniture around, but we are not changing the fundamental culture that comes from the top. It would appear that that culture has been sustained through various administrations of all the main political parties, which would suggest that something is not going right.
Cllr Jones
A recurring theme that has come back in my job is I feel I can only fix things if I know they are broken. The issues of sensitivity around race that you are talking about were not things that became an issue or were brought to my attention until this Trojan horse episode happened. It is not something that was on my radar as something that needed fixing, to be quite honest, until a lot of the issues were brought to the fore by some of these reports.
Chair
Did any of the local councillors in the area concerned take up these issues on one side or another? What role did the local representative have?
Cllr Jones
Our local councillors at ward level have been incredibly helpful in helping manage some of the issues around Trojan horse. Obviously, a lot of the children in the schools affected have had a very difficult time, and a lot of the communities in those areas have had a very difficult time. There has been relentless negative media coverage of them, their communities, their religion, their schools, in the press, day in and day out. They have had a very, very difficult time with that, and I have to pay tribute to the ward councillors in Birmingham of all political parties, not just Labour, who have done a stellar job in helping to reassure communities as to the extent of the problem, helping communicate with them what we have been doing about Trojan horse, helping them to find ways to make their voices heard where they have concerns about what has been happening.
Chair
So the councillors have all been marvellous, and yet somehow the Council’s overall performance has been woeful. Are those two statements compatible?
Cllr Jones
As I said, we have all missed things. I missed things, and that is why I offered my resignation to the leader of the Council.
Chair
I am not just getting to what we are going to do about it. What might make things better?
Cllr Jones
The overarching message from this is that everybody had a piece of the jigsaw—councillors, council officers, head teachers and beyond—and nobody put that jigsaw together to see the big picture until far too late.
Bill Esterson
Rather than this just being about politicians, is it about the relationship between the politicians and the officers? I think you said, right at the start of your answers there, that you thought you were working in one environment, and it turned out to be a very different one. Are you and your colleagues in the administration taking steps to change the relationship with officers to address some of these issues?
Cllr Jones
Yes. When it comes to our ability—and it was alluded to in the last session by the two witnesses—to pick up on issues with schools, that has been greatly diminished over the last few years, due to budget cutbacks in the main, and also due to the changing legislation around the relationship between local authorities and schools and the introduction of academies. However, again, if I return to the core message from these reports, the core message is that everyone had a piece of the jigsaw and nobody put it together. Several of our systems within the Council were broken when it came to picking up on the signs of things going wrong, figuring out that it was part of a bigger picture and then taking action about it. What has been important to me in the wake of the two reports is to go back and look at those systems. We have overhauled our governor‑appointment process. We are in the process of overhauling our complaints process and our whistleblowing procedure for heads, making sure that we have a clear line of governance and tracking when it comes to complaints about schools that goes right up to the appropriate level—me, if it has to—and that these things get picked up at an earlier stage.
Mr Raab
I know you were there, listening to the evidence given by Mr Kershaw and Mr Clarke. Turning to you first, Mr Rogers, you made this distinction, I think, in your evidence to the Home Affairs Committee between a narrow faith‑based ideology and extremism, with the link to radical and violent extremism. We have heard from the reports, but also from the evidence from Mr Clarke and Mr Kershaw today, that there was clear practice of non-violent extremism in terms of segregation of boys and girls, anti‑Christian chanting, videos of jihadists in one instance and the Park View Brotherhood WhatsApp group. Do you now accept that that is evidence of non‑violent extremism in the schools, and therefore that your initial concern about the distinction has perhaps been resolved?
Mark Rogers
I certainly hold by the initial distinction. I think what the two reviews have done is provide really quite an amount of evidence to better understand that distinction.
Mr Raab
Sorry, I want to ask a very simple question. Do you accept that the very concrete acts I have just given you are examples of extremism going on in the relevant schools?
Mark Rogers
What those acts actually indicate, according to the two reports, is that they could make children vulnerable, and more vulnerable than they should be, to extremist influences. I am really clear from the Clarke report—Peter Clarke says unequivocally—that some of the people who have had the finger pointed at them have themselves held or espoused, or are linked to people who hold and espouse, extremist views.
Mr Raab
What I am trying to get to—and we have talked a lot about accountability and righting wrongs—is whether you actually accept now that this is extremist activity. You seem to be bending over backwards not to.
Mark Rogers
If somebody is going to redefine “extremist”, as in the Prevent definition of “extremism”, then I will incorporate non-violent extremism in that definition but, presently, it is not the definition that I have been working to.
Mr Raab
I accept this is not violent extremism, but do you accept that these are extreme views that have no place in schools?
Mark Rogers
They are extreme views and they have no place in schools, absolutely.
Mr Raab
Do you agree, Councillor Jones?
Cllr Jones
Absolutely.
Mr Raab
The second element that we heard in terms of the evidence from Mr Kershaw and Mr Clarke was on the whole issue of whether there was a plot, and Mr Clarke gave quite a detailed explanation of why he did not feel he had enough evidence to say it was a plot in criminal legislative terms. Mr Kershaw used the word “coalescing”—people had been coalescing with a common aim—and Mr Clarke used the word “coordination”. Do you accept that it was systematic in the way that both of those described it? I did not, by the end of their evidence, think there was that much between them.
Mark Rogers
As a Council, we accepted both reports, so we accept all the words that you have used. Peter Clarke is probably a little stronger than Ian Kershaw on this. He actually talks about “coordinated, deliberate and sustained”, and we are happy to use all of those words and accept they do describe what has been going on. Like Peter Clarke’s answer to you earlier, the emotiveness of language of “plots” and “conspiracies” is not the way I would like to go, because the emotiveness itself is a distraction from the issues.
Mr Raab
That is not what he said. He said that he did not have evidence to satisfy the criminal definition, but that is useful. Councillor Jones, do you also accept that this was a systematic practice, rather than isolated incidences, in the ways that Mr Clarke and Mr Kershaw have defined here today?
Cllr Jones
As Mark, yes.
Mr Raab
Do you also agree or accept that what is interesting is that both indicated that, if not checked, if not unearthed and remedied, these systemic practices—my words, but trying to draw together what they said—would have got worse in the future; this was not something that was going to go away; this problem would have swelled?
Cllr Jones
Yes, left unchecked, it had the potential to carry on going.
Mr Raab
Mr Rogers, is that your view as well?
Mark Rogers
Yes, I think that is a reasonable conjecture. We have seen a little of evidence of these connected people intending to be more widely active, have we not? So, as the councillor said, unchecked, there may well have been more schools in which these people were interested in bringing their influence.
Mr Raab
What worries me a little bit, looking at this, Councillor Jones, is that it was systematic behaviour; it was coalescing and coordinating; it was clearly going to get worse, and yet, in your words, it was not even on your radar. If you are, from whatever faith or whatever part of the community, a member of the public listening to that, how much faith do you think they can have in your ability to change this, put it right, in your words?
Cllr Jones
The same amount of faith they can have in my ability to change most things about schools. We work in a fragmented system. As lead member for children, I have responsibility, as was stated earlier, for all the children in the local authority. My powers to do things about that in certain schools—academies, free schools, independent schools—are greatly limited. My ability to know the whole picture about what is going on in all our schools is greatly limited, because of the lack of information‑sharing that has been identified and talked about in the last session between Ofsted, the DfE and the local authority. I have powers to do things in certain schools, to a limited extent, and, where I have tried to use those in the past, I have been overruled by the DfE. I think the public can have as much confidence in this matter as they have in all others.
Mr Raab
Are there any instances of you being overruled by the DfE in the parameters or remit of the kind of malpractice we are talking about here, or are you talking about something else?
Cllr Jones
That particular one relates to a Trojan horse‑related school, yes.
Mr Raab
And extremist‑related activity going on?
Cllr Jones
We attempted to put in an interim executive board in a school linked to the Trojan horse allegations several months ago, and our request to do so was turned down by the Department for Education. There is now an interim executive board in there, some months later, after we appealed that.
Chair
Which school was that?
Cllr Jones
Al-Hijrah School.
Alex Cunningham
What was the reason given for refusing your request to put in an interim board?
Cllr Jones
The school had exceptionally good results. I think that was seen as in the school’s favour, and they did not think our case was strong enough to warrant the removal of the governing body. They have clearly changed their position, because they have subsequently granted us an IEB.
Mr Raab
Councillor, I am now confused. You have said that one of the reasons the average constituent in Birmingham can have faith in your ability to put things right is because of your wider track record, and you have given an example of where you have been stopped from doing something by the DfE, but, earlier, you said that these practices were not even on your radar.
Cllr Jones
The big Trojan horse picture that is presented to us by the Clarke report and the Kershaw report is not the picture that I had over the last two years I have been in this job.
Mr Raab
So why did you want to change the board in that particular case?
Cllr Jones
Elements of the Trojan horse issues have been on my radar, but the bigger picture that they were part of was not something I had appreciated was there.
Mr Raab
Can you tell this Committee, in summary form obviously, for illustrative purposes, what elements you were aware of? For example, in this case, you applied for an interim board. What sparked your concerns?
Cllr Jones
In the particular case of Al-Hijrah School, we applied for an interim executive board because we were very concerned about the actions of the governing body; we were concerned about the severe deficit the school had got itself into—
Mr Raab
Those are financial things, but what about on the extremist or the—
Cllr Jones
—and where that money might be going. I cannot comment further on that, because we have an investigation ongoing.
Mr Raab
Right.
Cllr Jones
When it comes to Al-Hijrah School, we have serious concerns over the conduct of governors, because many of the behaviours that have been criticised by the two reports have been exemplified by those governors. We have severe concerns about the way they were running the school, the way they were completely overstepping the acceptable mark of what a governor should be doing, and some financial irregularities within the school as well.
Chair
Do you have any suspicion that the misuse of monies could have led to those monies being used for—we will use the Prevent definition of “extremism”—the purposes of supporting extremism?
Cllr Jones
The school has a rent agreement with a trust, and we know that money goes to that trust. As to what the trust does with the money, that is subject to investigation.
Chair
Do you have suspicions that it could be being used for that purpose?
Cllr Jones
I think it would be inappropriate for me to comment further on that matter until the investigation is complete.
Chair
So you will not rule that out today either.
Cllr Jones
I think it would be inappropriate for me to comment on that further, I am afraid, while it is being investigated.
Alex Cunningham
Is it a criminal investigation? Is it a police investigation?
Cllr Jones
At this point in time, it is an investigation the local authority is carrying out. We now have an interim executive board in the school, and of course more access to financial records. We are carrying out a retrospective investigation to find out what had been happening with finances in the time before we entered the school.
Alex Cunningham
There is a potential for the police to be involved.
Cllr Jones
If we find anything criminal, it will be referred to the police.
Mr Ward
Ofsted and the Chief Inspector were critical of the authority for the support given to schools for the delivery of the Prevent strategy. His own comment says, “A number of school leaders said that they had not been supported by the local authority in their efforts to keep pupils safe from the potential risks of radicalisation and extremism.” Do you think that is fair, and, if it is fair, what is being done in terms of the support for the Prevent strategy now?
Mark Rogers
I do not think it is the only analysis. Some of the issues that we have seen in the schools meant that Prevent would have been ineffectual. It does not mean that Prevent itself is ineffectual. What I mean by that is, effectively, we have a small number of people who have sought to do things very deliberately and over a sustained period of time in a very calculated way. Prevent is not designed to ameliorate or mitigate that, so my view about Prevent is, generally, Birmingham has delivered the education elements of that programme reasonably well; schools have participated in it, according to our records, systematically, but its impact is not designed to tackle these issues of governance that have arisen. Its impact is to literally raise awareness of what Prevent is about and to ensure that those issues that can lead to radicalisation and violent extremism are nipped in the bud, so it is not a governance tool.
Mr Ward
You refer to the designated senior practitioner—DSP—training and the fact that all 21 schools that were inspected had DSPs and that training had taken place. Are you saying that that training in itself would not have been able to prevent some of the things happening that took place?
Mark Rogers
I want to make a very clear distinction. I think that the Prevent training will have helped, although we do not have either a quantitative or a qualitative analysis of this, in its primary function of raising the issues associated with radicalisation by extremism, so I think it will have fulfilled its purpose. As I have just said, it is not a tool for looking into and gaining insight about governance of schools. It is absolutely not for that. It is something that is delivered to pupils and staff in order to improve their understanding of violent extremism.
Mr Ward
I come back, Councillor, to your radar. You also referred to one of the problems being people having different pieces of the jigsaw. What was quite disturbing from the first session was what appeared to be, though there was no evidence of threatening behaviour or intimidation, clear evidence of many people having lots of pieces of the jigsaw, but who were fearful of bringing these out into the open to enable it to all be assembled. Do you recognise this is a climate or culture within the authority?
Cllr Jones
I do recognise some of the concerns that head teachers have, because they have expressed those to me as well. I know that people were afraid of coming to the reviews, the Clarke review in particular, because, as was alluded to earlier, they were afraid that Ofsted would turn up on their doorstep the moment that they spoke out.
Mr Ward
Certainly, and the fear of prompting an Ofsted inspection was mentioned earlier by Mr Kershaw I believe. Is that the fear we are talking about? We are not talking about others within the community, actions that may be taken and bricks through windows. What are we talking about?
Cllr Jones
There are some head teachers who had a very difficult personal time in dealing with governors; they live near or in the communities that they work in, and there are people that have had a very, very difficult personal time in dealing with some of the issues here, and they have been afraid to speak out. I have encouraged them to do so, and we had a long debate with the NAHT about the difference between people coming forward anonymously and the report being anonymised. Whilst I gave every reassurance that certainly the Kershaw report would be anonymised and that no traceable details would go into the public domain, we of course needed people to give their names so we could verify it was good evidence. Head teachers are afraid. A lot of them have been through a lot. They are still in contact with people that they have had difficult experiences with in the past.
Chair
Such as? Can you bring that alive for us?
Cllr Jones
The reports outline some of the ongoing relationships between chairs of governors and the harassment and bullying that they have given to head teachers. For some head teachers, this has intruded into their personal lives. It has meant evenings, weekends, being spent with governors, with communities, going through some of these issues, way above and beyond what we would expect them to do. Some of them live locally.
Chair
How widespread is that? How many people are in that kind of pressured situation?
Cllr Jones
The reports give an outline of the schools where they perceived there to be issues or where they have found evidence of those issues.
Chair
I know that. I wondered, as you have the overriding responsibility for all the schools in Birmingham, do you have any sense—?
Cllr Jones
I have 439 schools in Birmingham.
Chair
How widespread do you believe this problem is? I know we only have the narrow picture we get from these reports.
Cllr Jones
21 of those were investigated as part of the Ofsted Trojan horse allegations. We are talking about five that were found to have serious issues that are current in time. Of those, it is a handful. We are talking three or four, to my knowledge, that have come to me with that. If there are more out there, they have not brought that to me.
Mr Ward
Can I ask you whether, in your experience—and this really comes from my experience of Bradford—the justification for what was taking place, although it seems to have been deemed to be religious, was often stated as being for educational purposes, the view being that only by doing what was attempted to be done could educational attainment of the children within those schools be enhanced and supported?
Mark Rogers
It is not a binary agenda, is it? I think both things were happening. It is really important to recognise that some of these schools, in the past, in the mid‑1990s in particular, were failing schools, frankly—failing the children, failing the community—and, by any definition, including Ofsted’s, inadequate. It is absolutely appropriate that improvements were made to the quality of teaching and learning and that children started to get better results, but also how that was achieved in some of the schools in east Birmingham has absolutely now been evidenced as wrong. The way they went about that was just utterly inappropriate and cannot be condoned. It is really important that we do not make this that you either have improvement or you have something else. It is really clear that you can have both things going on at the same time. One of the dilemmas for our communities now is that one of these schools in particular has been lauded as the most effective school in its category, frankly, and now it has a label of special measures against it because of other issues. What it tells us very clearly is at your peril do you have a one‑dimensional view of the success of schools.
Alex Cunningham
Have the Council’s objections to the appointment of Peter Clarke actually been borne out by the conduct of his inquiry or his report?
Cllr Jones
No. What has been borne out is our concern as to how that would play out in the community. We have never had concerns about the manner in which Peter Clarke might undertake his report, his personal integrity or his professional experience. We have never had concerns about that. What concerned us was the message it sent to communities that somebody with a strong counterterrorism background was being sent in, and also the message it gave to head teachers that we were not having a joint inquiry with the local authority.
Alex Cunningham
And that is something that you would subscribe to.
Mark Rogers
Absolutely. Not on the record, but I have said on many occasions that the experience that Peter Clarke has is invaluable to us. As you heard earlier, I was asked about defining “extremism”. Well, we actually had somebody on site with important real‑life experience of that. It was the presentational side of things that we were most concerned with, rather than the fact of that experience, which, frankly, as an officer of the Council, I found invaluable, knowing that we had somebody we could rely on to understand the distinctions.
Alex Cunningham
That’s fine; we can leave that there. Was there a real value in having so many investigations? There were four investigations, all running in parallel, some of them having very different witnesses with very different remits, in some ways.
Cllr Jones
No. The local authority had hoped to conduct an inquiry that was joint between us, the Department for Education and Ofsted, and DCLG were also involved in those discussions. The reason we had hoped to do so is obviously everyone has a different piece of the jigsaw, to keep returning to that analogy.
Alex Cunningham
Why were you not content that, with Ofsted and the Clarke investigations, the necessary ground would be covered?
Cllr Jones
The necessary ground has probably been covered between them. We had hoped to have a joint inquiry, and we were on the cards to agree a chair for the joint inquiry, right up to the last minute. At the 11th hour, the former Secretary of State decided it would not be a joint inquiry, and announced the appointment of Peter Clarke to conduct a separate inquiry. He then decided to instruct Ofsted to inspect the schools separately. They then decided themselves to write an advice note to the Secretary of State with their findings in it, and that is what led to the three separate ones. Up until the last minute, we had been working with them to hold a joint one, but the former Secretary of State disagreed.
Alex Cunningham
It must have cost quite a lot of money. How much did it cost, and was it really worth the amount of money the Council spent on the inquiry?
Cllr Jones
It cost around £500,000 to conduct the Kershaw inquiry.
Alex Cunningham
Was that proportionate to the scale of the problems that covered a small number of schools?
Cllr Jones
We had to get to the bottom of what the issue was. We could have achieved a cheaper and more streamlined inquiry had we had one inquiry rather than the three disparate ones, certainly, so it is very disappointing we did not end up with that.
Alex Cunningham
A final one from me for the moment: what efforts is the Council now making to improve its relations with all the communities in Birmingham?
Cllr Jones
Communities have had a very tough time in Birmingham throughout Trojan horse. There is no doubt about that. We have had schoolchildren going into school in parts of the city and having TV cameras shoved in their face, literally, as they cross the gate, morning after morning, and that has taken its toll on young people and with our communities. The Putting Birmingham School Kids First initiative, after the two reports were published, brought together a number of key people across the city, was held in the east of Birmingham and was a great line in the sand for communities to accept what had happened and start looking to the future, about what we can do. Ultimately, they have to have confidence in the local authority and other bodies that this kind of thing will not happen again.
Alex Cunningham
Is it working?
Cllr Jones
Well, we have fully accepted the recommendations from all the reports, and we are looking to put those in place. We have already overhauled our governor‑appointment system, we have overhauled our whistleblowing processes and we are working to rebuild the relationship with schools across the city.
Siobhain McDonagh
To follow up on that question, Mr Rogers, you are the chief officer of the second biggest city in the UK, and there are many diverse communities in your city. Given your experience, do you think that you should now allow the Ahmadiyya Muslim community to join your Standing Advisory Council on Religious Education, a religious grouping of approximately 2,000 people who are currently being refused a representative on that committee because they have the audacity to define themselves as Muslim?
Mark Rogers
That is not a question for me to answer, is it? I think SACRE needs to respond as to its position on that. I have not been privy to its decision-making, and I am not a member of SACRE, so I note your concern and will take that back with me. In general terms, we are and wish to continue to be a city that is inclusive. As long as individuals and groups are clear that that requires tolerance of the views of others to allow respect for their own, then I would seek to promote that line. I have not been directly involved in the specific issue that you raise.
Siobhain McDonagh
Councillor Jones, I know that we have had a conversation in the past, and I hold my hat up to you for taking on the role and job you do. I can only imagine how tough it must be and to be a young woman in that environment. I have no desire to be anything but supportive, but this is a longstanding issue; it does not just relate to Labour; it relates to the previous Conservative administration as well. I suspect from your name you might share my religious background. I will have nobody tell me whether I can call myself a Roman Catholic or not, and I think other religious groups should be able to call themselves what they wish as well, and that should not exclude them from a committee.
Cllr Jones
I think you are entirely right. SACRE itself has done a bit of soul‑searching in the wake of the Trojan horse issues, because they themselves have some recommendations and implications from this. We will be working with the chair of SACRE in the wake of this to relook at the role of SACRE, whether it has the right composition for Birmingham, whether we have the right religious composition. Are we actually getting true representatives from those communities? Something I have been very keen to push on SACRE in the past is gender balance from different religious communities represented on SACRE. We will be having a look at the composition and operation of it in the wake of this, to make sure it is fit for modern Birmingham.
Siobhain McDonagh
Do you think out of this whole terrible experience some good things might happen?
Cllr Jones
I certainly hope so, because otherwise what was the point?
Siobhain McDonagh
In the light of the Kershaw and Clarke reports, do you now accept Ofsted’s criticism as fair?
Mark Rogers
Could you be more specific? Which bit of their criticism?
Siobhain McDonagh
Their general criticism of the way you deal with complaints and concerns.
Mark Rogers
I thought you were going to refer to the fact that they see us as a useless council. My concerns about Ofsted remain, for a number of reasons. We touched on one of them earlier, which is that they do not play in partnership, so one of the things that we are lacking is information exchange and collaboration across these issues, which would have added value not only to our own thinking and work but to that of the two investigations as well. I am concerned that there appears to be a misunderstanding about their independence of judgment also meaning that they cannot play nicely with other partners, or, in our case, at all. As a result, their findings are somewhat the poorer, because they are not as deeply informed as they might be. Secondly, I have not received an answer to the question about their mobilisation around this issue and the extent to which they were able to draw on the depth and breadth of expertise to inspect the issues that they then went and looked specifically into at the 21 schools. That is not because I claim to have that expertise, strength and depth, or necessarily others, but the speed at which those inspections were commissioned implies strongly that there must have been some really rapid mobilisation, and hopefully some rapid training, but I never received reassurance about either, and nor have our schools. Therefore, I am not entirely sure just how much insight could be brought at such speed through those inspections, which is why I am much more comfortable with both Mr Kershaw’s and Mr Clarke’s reports, which, while still conducted at speed, were not conducted at haste.
Cllr Jones
If I might elaborate on that, it is hard for us to know exactly what the full extent of Ofsted’s concerns about Birmingham is. The reason I say that is that Ofsted have provided 21 inspection reports on 21 schools and an overarching advice note to the former Secretary of State about those concerns. In an effort to put together an action plan for correcting the concerns about the local authority and some of the concerns about schools, we cross‑referenced all of the things raised in the overarching note with the 21 to understand where they sat. For some of those concerns, we could find evidence maybe only in one school that was mentioned explicitly in that school’s corresponding Ofsted report, and, for some, we could not find evidence mentioned at all in the Ofsted report. We have requested the information that led to those concerns being put into the advice note, and are still waiting to hear that. We are ignorant at this point in time as to their full extent, because, as Mark said, the information‑sharing between them and us is still poor. It is very hard to have a partnership relationship with them when their behaviour towards Birmingham is so extraordinary. My officers have attempted to have meetings with Ofsted throughout the Trojan horse episode, and they have attempted to have sit‑down meetings with local HMIs to talk about the issues. On two occasions, those have been gate‑crashed by Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector turning up unannounced at those meetings, putting his own agenda in place and using them as opportunities to question the local authority rather than have the partnership meetings we had hoped to have with them to move this agenda forward. It is very difficult to have true partnership‑working when HMCI is operating in that way with the city. I regret that, because that has a knock‑on effect for the children of Birmingham. I am very much hoping that is a relationship we can mend in the future.
Siobhain McDonagh
Why did the Council not listen to its own head teachers? How can you ensure that this does not happen again?
Mark Rogers
It is a complex set of issues, isn’t it, that the reports set out? Remarkable though it is, to me even, we had people who did not see patterns where patterns should have been seen. They just did not see them. I think some of what they were coming across, therefore, was outwith their experiences.
Siobhain McDonagh
Is it because your authority is too big?
Mark Rogers
If you ask anyone from Birmingham City Council the size question, we will always say to you it is the wrong question. Size is not where you start; you start with: do you have the right people to do the right things every single day of the week? Size does not seem to matter so much in Essex; they sorted themselves out. Size does not matter that much in Chicago, it seems to me, our twin city. The issue is: have you got the capability in the leadership to make the right things happen, frankly?
Bill Esterson
Have you?
Mark Rogers
We are getting there, actually. We are getting there, but, again, let’s be frank; that is what you want us to be, I am sure. We have not had all the strength and depth we have needed; otherwise, we would not be sitting here today, would we? That is coming into play, and one of the most important things for me, as I am now only a relative newcomer to the city so am becoming part of its solution as opposed to an interested newcomer, is that this whole episode—let’s called it an episode—has done one really important thing: it has starting to deliver the understanding that I do not think anybody really had. We were discussing this on the way up this morning. In many ways, there have been lots of pieces of the jigsaw, some of them around for quite a number of years. Sorry to package it up in this way, but we described the Trojan horse document as almost the complete picture on the box. We found that the value of that document, of itself, was that it started the assembly of all those things that people, within both the Council and the community, had not previously put together. Now that we have that insight, now we understand why some of these things have been happening—although I still do not think we all fully understand why all of them have happened; we have some of the symptoms sorted out, but we have not necessarily got all of the causes sorted out—at least we have that added insight, and now this is not outwith our experience. I do not think Birmingham will ever again misunderstand the serial bullying, intimidation or harassment of heads and other senior staff in the future, because of what has happened over a number of years but has now been revealed to us in the last three or four months. That is actually really important, about, again, having some confidence in Councillor Jones, I guess in me, and in others in the City Council to move this forward. In a sense, some scales have fallen off our eyes during this process and we can see much more clearly than we had previously about what has been going on and therefore what you do about it.
Chair
But, even after these reports, the oversight of schools in Birmingham looks positively stellar compared to the management of your child protection system. In the light of Rotherham and conversations about not putting pieces of the jigsaw together, and in the light of Keira Ishaq and innumerable, sadly, other cases, what confidence can the public have that you will be able to improve your child protection system and not struggle with the same issues of fear of causing offence affecting social cohesion? It is one thing to allow political calculation and moral cowardice to get in the way of the effective education of small children in schools; it is an even worse thing to allow the abuse of children. Can you comment briefly on that, Mr Rogers?
Mark Rogers
Yes, of course. You will know that Lord Norman Warner has been appointed as a safeguarding commissioner to the city. What he has reported, both to the previous and present Secretary of State, is that the conditions are now present to give the public a qualified confidence that the city has the leadership to change the situation in safeguarding. The reason it is a qualified confidence is that we now have to deliver those changes, but an important step has been taken with Lord Norman Warner’s challenge, by bringing together the leader and the lead member, the director and myself, as the team that is responsible for the single improvement plan and its delivery. At this stage, I am really clear that what Norman Warner is saying is preconditions have now been established. The programme we have ahead of us is to deliver and sustain the change, hence the qualified confidence in us. The public and others will only have full confidence in us when that three‑year improvement programme is delivered and we do not go backwards at the end of it. I would suggest—and you will judge, won’t you?—that you should therefore come to have the same qualified confidence in the same four people around the education agenda, because we have also agreed that it is that quartet, as it is slightly oddly called, that will lead and oversee the change in education as well.
Chair
If this three‑year programme of improvement fails, would the political forces in Birmingham see then the need for a change, or would we get the same rehearsal of the fact that, if they can do it in Essex and Chicago, we should just carry on with a structure that has failed, failed and failed again?
Mark Rogers
I think we are clear that it will not take three years to know whether or not we are succeeding or failing, actually, so I think the signals will be conveyed by Norman Warner much, much earlier than that.
Alex Cunningham
Ian Kershaw recommended that Birmingham City Council, with its partners, could consider leading a debate in the world about the requirements for secular schools to provide a daily act of collective worship in schools, and the fact that it should be wholly or mainly of a broadly Christian character. Is Birmingham City Council willing to take this on? This is not about Birmingham; this is about the nation as a whole. Is Birmingham prepared to lead on a debate on the place of religion in schools, or is it too hot to handle?
Cllr Jones
Personally, I think it is a debate we ought to be having nationally, because it is a national piece of legislation. It has been recommended for Birmingham to do it. Birmingham would be an incredibly appropriate place to do it, in some respects, because we are the most diverse city in the UK.
Alex Cunningham
Should it be on our agenda rather than yours, then? Is that what you suggest?
Cllr Jones
You will have the full spectrum of views represented in Birmingham. It is certainly not a debate I want to shy away from, but it is one we really ought to have nationally in 2014 in modern Britain.
Alex Cunningham
Is the Government right to focus on the promotion of British values in schools?
Cllr Jones
We have to get right what British values are. The British values that have been put forward by the Prime Minister at present for consultation are very good values—I cannot argue with that—but, to me, there is nothing inherently particularly British about them. They are values shared by an awful lot of countries around the globe, and it would be arrogant of Britain to suggest that they are specific to us. There is a difference between values and culture, and what is part of values and what is part of culture. The values debate seems to be one we have had very quickly in the wake of Trojan horse, and one that, if it is a route we are going to go down, requires a much longer piece of national thought.
Mark Rogers
Sorry, Chair, can I be almost impertinent, if you don’t mind? On values and culture, one of the things we are thinking about in Birmingham, which relates to both, but is also different, is the extent to which schools themselves should reflect their communities. We think that one of the really important questions is that one. We respect that Ian Kershaw has made his suggestion about the role of faith in schools, but that is a single dimension. What we have seen, albeit inappropriately conducted, is an attempt to reflect elements of communities, at least, in schools, in a way that we now say is inappropriate. That seems to be a much more important question, which is the extent to which schools are a national systems, or whether they have a degree of flex in respect of the communities they serve. Again, I do not have the answers, but we think that is a tremendously important question, because then it is a citywide question, and then it is a national question; it is not about Pakistani Muslim communities and the schools that serve them.
Cllr Jones
There is also the extent to which faith schools are able to do certain things. Some behaviours and some things have been referenced as happening in secular state schools that are inappropriate because of their secular nature. I would argue some of those things would be inappropriate in any school, whatever its nature, if it is state funded, so there is a wider debate to be had about that as well.
Alex Cunningham
The final question is related to what you have already said, but also the curriculum. Do you agree that a new graded Ofsted judgment on the wider curriculum would be helpful? If so, what criteria would you recommend?
Cllr Jones
It would be useful for Ofsted to look at the curriculum, because one of the reasons I believe Ofsted missed some of the signs of things going wrong in these schools is that they do not do an in‑depth inspection in that area.
Chair
Point of agreement with Sir Michael.
Bill Esterson
You both talked about the fragmented nature of the system, but, Councillor Jones, you mentioned your responsibility for all the children within the city, yet the difficulty in putting that into practice. What changes would you like to see to the oversight of schools to enable you to deliver on that responsibility?
Cllr Jones
The big question that the former Secretary of State left unanswered when he left office was the question of the middle tier, and that is a question we have got to sort out. We have a wildly inequitable system at the moment, whereby I have certain responsibilities for all schools; I have powers to do things about some of them, and no powers to do things about others. The new role of the regional schools commissioner and its interaction with local authorities needs to be better defined. In essence, we need one coherent middle tier to exist for schools at a local level. I am not calling for a return to the old days of the LEA, because that was not right, but we need a modern middle tier for all schools that works, with clear democratic accountability for that.
Bill Esterson
Mr Rogers?
Mark Rogers
I concur. I think you like illustration, so, just to illustrate, the Department is entitled to send a representative to attend every governing body meeting that an academy holds, but it is clearly unable to do so for capacity reasons. If you then contrast that with other schools, where, at least in theory and often in practice, it is possible for a whole range of other kinds of governors, including local authority ones, to attend every single governing body, you can see that, in terms of the checks and balances, there is a discrepancy there that just needs to be reconsidered, frankly. That is just one small example of a system where roles and responsibilities are different; they are not well understood, and, frankly, in those situations, as you have seen, things can fall apart. We do not want to make any distinction around governance, because we are more concerned with children, but it is the case that the EFA found, in respect of Oldknow School, that, latterly, during its academisation, some of the issues deteriorated more rapidly than they had previously been deteriorating. I am being fair about this, but they deteriorated more rapidly, and the inference was that the less frequent opportunities to scrutinise the governance of that school were a contributory factor, so we need to open the system back up and have that understanding about how the middle tier is going to operate; otherwise, we will simply have gaps in it. In those places that are not very good—and we intend not to be in that category anymore—sometimes those gaps will be seen as opportunities to blame other bodies, rather than opportunities to close the gap.
Bill Esterson
So the speed of academisation, as we talked about in the previous session, is a concern that comes out of some of what we—
Mark Rogers
I know you were just nodding your head there. I do not disagree with the speed of academisation. It is that all the things that need to be attended to when academisation is being executed at speed have not been attended to. I am talking as an officer here, not politically. If I am responsible for ensuring that national policy is done in Birmingham, and that schools that wish to do academise, fine, but, if that is conducted at such a pace that some of the issues—and I have just described a couple of them to you—are not properly considered, then that is the problem, not the speed. If you can tackle everything at speed, then we will carry on going at speed, but it seems to me that some things have been, probably unintendedly, neglected during this accelerated period of academisation.
Mr Ward
It takes a long time, often, to put a school right, but it can deteriorate very quickly. You must have been surprised, though, at the difference between the Ofsted inspections within a short space of time.
Cllr Jones
Very surprised.
Mr Ward
Without wishing to put words in your mouth, do you think Ofsted came in with an agenda?
Cllr Jones
There are only three things that can explain the rapid deterioration in those results: there has been actual deterioration in schools that quickly, which, I have to be honest, I think is unlikely; the goalposts have changed—and Ofsted have stuck to the same framework throughout this; or the inspectors either have missed things or are, as individuals, looking for different things. I do not know which of the two it is. Did they miss things that they should have seen before, or were they actively looking for different things when they went into those schools?
Mr Ward
The response from Sir Michael was that, “If we had known certain things before we came in, then we would have looked at different things.”
Cllr Jones
It is very clear that preventing extremism has not been mentioned in any Ofsted reports in Birmingham prior to the 21 inspections on Trojan horse. That is not something that has been mentioned. As such, I infer that that is not something they were looking for previously, or I presume they would have taken the time to mention it in their reports. I can only infer that, yes, there has been a clear agenda from Ofsted to look for those things in schools. I think they must have been looking for different things; that is the only way to explain the rapid deterioration.
Mr Ward
We have covered the issue of governors, really, but my background is training, and there were some people that I attempted to train who were not trainable. Was this thing capable of being dealt with by either different forms of composition of the governing body, different people brought in, or through training?
Mark Rogers
I do not believe in single solutions, actually. There are a number of things that have to happen to keep the system safe. That is probably why we literally refer to “checks and balances” in the plural. Training is clearly important. I have my sights firmly reset on the importance of the role of the clerk and the chair. I see the clerk almost as the equivalent of the local authority monitoring officer. I see the chair as a role that should be professionalised, and there is a debate to be had about remuneration. The clerk should be paid, by the way, in my view, which they almost always are. So there is training; there is then the professionalisation of the running of the governance system, but there are all the other things we have been talking about too. There is just the need to understand how things can go wrong. We are not here about Rotherham; at least, I am grateful I am not here about Rotherham, but we have just had, in recent days, a controversy, a significant characteristic of which is a lack of understanding about why things go wrong. In Birmingham, we are really keen to understand not just, as I say, the symptoms, but the causes of some of these things, which is why I am back to questions like: are we going to take account of communities in the way schools look and feel or not? These are the sorts of other issues that we need to get to. Again, I have a view, which you may just not like, but we can deal with the technical side of things quite quickly. We can change our governor‑recruitment procedures; we can have new forms of training and that kind of stuff.
Chair
You are doing that this month, aren’t you?
Mark Rogers
We are, and we need to do that, because it is not either/or, but we need to get to the deeper cultural things. We need to understand why people feel the need to do these things in these ways, and, clearly, create different ways of effectively changing schools and people feeling they need to subvert and go around the back door, frankly. That is a cultural piece. That is where civic leadership from local authorities and others come in for me, so let’s not just do training.
Bill Esterson
You have started talking about culture, and I think this is really crucial. In local authorities around the country, where I talk to people, there is often—not always—a lack of trust or belief that people will be taken seriously, at lower levels, particularly, in an organisation or people working with an organisation, say in schools. It touches on the child protection point about Rotherham as well as this inquiry. You are the President of SOLACE. Is this a very much wider issue around the culture in local authorities where there needs to be an improvement in trust so that people want to come forward and we do not have the situation we described at the start where politicians have one understanding of what is happening, and the reality is very, very different? That is about communication, trust and culture.
Mark Rogers
The short answer is “yes”. Clearly, it is a very challenging issue to start to shift cultural values. You have clearly done your homework on me. You might therefore have seen that I have been quite clear recently that, just as we have tackled domestic violence in the last 15 years in a way that, before that, we did not even want to think about, so, with some of these other issues that are now coming about—child sexual exploitation, potentially the subversion of governance in schools—they all require what I would consider to be cultural solutions as well as technical solutions. We are clear in Birmingham, particularly from Ian Kershaw, that a factor—not a sole factor—in people’s behaviour was a fear of allegations of racism or Islamophobia. That is in the culture. That must be in the culture. If people are to behave in a way that stops them doing the right thing through those fears, that is cultural. We have to tackle cultural stuff, and, whilst we have argued strongly for some re-examination of the middle tier, which I consider will be helpful, frankly, the longer‑term underpinnings of change, and therefore trust and confidence, come from those cultural pieces, not from those technical pieces.
Chair
Just on the issue of governance, what is the percentage of vacancies for governors in Birmingham at the moment?
Cllr Jones
It is around about a fifth.
Chair
20%, okay. Do you think new framework you are using as of this month will increase take-up? One of the issues is that we say there is a failing of governance; we raise the hurdles for governance; if we do not get it right, we may end up with even fewer governors, which has its own problems.
Cllr Jones
There is no doubt we are raising the bar, and I make no apology for that. It certainly had to be done. We are hoping what we will do by raising the bar is attract a higher calibre of governor and widen the field of people that think about becoming a governor. The information we are now giving people about the expectations on them and the training when they sign up are now going to be comparable to other charities and trusts, and we have worked with the National Governance Association to make sure they are of a proper standard. We are just trying to bring the role and status of governors up to what it really ought to be. We are hoping that, by doing so, we will attract people that perhaps have not thought it was for them.
Chair
In terms of further exploring perverse outcomes, one of the things that has been identified in the various reports is inappropriate behaviour by governors, bullying head teachers. A head teacher who is underperforming will typically think he is being bullied when he is challenged effectively by a governing body doing exactly what they are there to do. How do we get that balance right and not end up with a perverse outcome where, across the waste swathe of schools in Birmingham, where there is no such current problem, we have chairs of governors walking on eggshells for fear that the head teacher goes rushing off to some newly appointed helpline, which acts with amazing speed and seriousness, and thus actually makes governors fail to do what they are there to do, which is challenge head teachers, in often maybe an uncomfortable way?
Cllr Jones
That is actually something that was not made explicit in the two reports, but I do think has been happening culturally. Quite often, authority officers have sided with the governors, and believed it to be poor performance of head teachers in some instances.
Chair
Generally, they are probably right. I don’t know if I should generalise like that.
Cllr Jones
You are completely right. There are some cases that are one and some cases that are the other. It comes down to having high calibre people in the job, with the experience and intelligence to understand which is which.
Mark Rogers
There is something really important here about the way that we have that collaboration between the inspectorate, the Department and its EFA and ourselves, so that you can get some sense of 360. I recognise exactly what you have described. The way to mitigate that or even just get it right is: you cannot just take a single view, can you? You need enough intelligence to tell you whether there is a performance issue and you are being smoke‑screened by bluster to get away with it, or whether genuinely there is something going on.
Chair
These are volunteers. They are not professionals, and therefore they might not dot every ‘i’ and cross every ‘t’ of the complex frameworks that are set in place, but it does not mean that they should be dismissed, removed and stopped from challenging. I am glad you are aware of that. I have a couple of quick final questions. What progress has been made in reviewing the use of compromise agreements?
Mark Rogers
We have reviewed all of them—I think it is five years back. I can confirm to the Committee if I have my timescale right. Our review of those suggests—and we are doing some more benchmarking—that there is not a higher level of incidence of compromise agreements than you might expect as a ratio with the number of schools we have. More recently, because of the concerns that have been raised, we are making a real effort to examine the more recent compromise agreements, and, where necessary, through professional associations or occasionally directly, we are prepared to revisit. What I do need to say at this time is we actually have no legal action in train against us as a local authority around any of these arrangements, but we still want to be proactive.
Chair
Our worry is not about that. Our worry is that people do not come forward, do not whistle‑blow, do not feel they can talk without risking their career and being subject to legal action; that that has a chilling effect, when, in fact, the great thing we need is for the evidence to come forward; and that senior professionals are genuinely fearful and have that further compounded by having signed a legal agreement that specifically bars them from talking. Can I put it to you that you should not allow agreements like that to occur in Birmingham? There must be some absolutely explicit, clear expression, in any such agreement, that, if there has been inappropriate behaviour, it is their duty to come forward. I would rather the compromise agreement, rather than silencing them, had the opposite effect: it meant that they were obliged to come forward, if you were to get the balance right.
Mark Rogers
The judicious use of compromise agreements needs to be matched with a really effective whistleblowing system, which, again, is another recommendation to us. People need to feel confident that they can actually raise the issues and be heard and taken seriously about them. Again, it is about those two things working hand in hand rather than simply resorting to a relatively simple course of action.
Chair
When will the new education commissioner start work? I think you have probably answered the second question as to whether it should be adopted more widely.
Mark Rogers
Chairman, I now do not know. I had thought this week, but the Department has been unsuccessful so far in making an appointment.
Chair
The NAHT refused to sign up to the Kershaw report. Why was that—any idea?
Cllr Jones
Running alongside the Kershaw investigation, we had a panel of community representatives, religious representatives from different backgrounds, professional associations and teachers. The NAHT were represented on that. We tasked that panel with coming up with a response to the Kershaw report and its thoughts on the recommendations, and submitting that to the leader of the Council, as well as anything else that arose from it. The publication of the Kershaw report was brought forward because somebody leaked the Clarke report to The Guardian newspaper. The terms of the debate were that we felt the people of Birmingham ought to have the full picture at the right time. We gave the review group ample opportunity to review the Kershaw report before publication. The NAHT felt that we should not publish the Kershaw report that day, and we should hold it back to the next week, when the Clarke report was published. We disagreed, because it was already in the public domain, and they felt that they had not been given ample opportunity to review the contents of it and give it their endorsement. They also took issue with the idea that we asked people who came forward as witnesses to tell us who they were, on the condition, of course, that they would be anonymised in the final report. Those are the reasons I am aware of. If they have others, they have not communicated those to me, and, of course, you would have to seek their view on it.
Chair
On the review group, they said, “The most important constraint within the process we have overseen […] has been the level of engagement with communities, parents and children and young people to date […] The Group cannot overstate the importance of the Council and a much wider range of credible and independent civic leaders now engaging directly with communities across Birmingham”. What do they mean by that? What were they getting at?
Mark Rogers
A number of things. Going forward, it is really important that the improvements that we come up with, let alone then deliver, are—sorry to use jargon—coproduced as best as possible, with a very clear strand around making sure that children and young people are central to our thinking about what a good education in Birmingham looks like in the next five, 10, 15, 20 years. I think that is what they were getting at.
Chair
How will that be different? They said the single biggest thing was this level of engagement with the communities. I just was not quite clear.
Mark Rogers
The reason it was a big deal, and particularly the chair himself, Stephen Rimmer, thought it was a very big deal, is because of what we would say is the damage that has been done by the way this has often been portrayed for our communities. It is a big deal that has a civil leadership piece that does some more listening to those communities, understands what they think it will take to put things back on the right tracks and then make progress. That is why the emphasis of that group is so strong on that point.
Chair
Thank you very much indeed for giving evidence to us today. If you have any further points you would like to make on reflection after today’s session, please do be in touch. Oral evidence: Extremism in schools HC 473 19