A former acting head teacher at a Birmingham school at the centre of the ‘Trojan Horse’ inquiry said Ofsted inspectors should be ‘sitting here too’ after they had seen its Muslim practices and praised the school as ‘fantastic’.
Arshad Hussain, 39, who worked at Park View School and later at Nansen Primary in Alum Rock, admitted there was an ‘Islamic ethos’ at the school, and said teachings on homosexuality were not done ‘as closely’ as in other schools.
He denied that there was an ‘Islamising agenda’ at the schools, although he conceded there was an ‘ethos’ of daily calls to Muslim prayer, prayer posters and regular Islamic assemblies at the non-faith state schools.
Giving evidence at the National College for Training & Leadership (NCTL) conduct hearing on Tuesday, Hussain – a former policeman – said that Ofsted inspectors ‘should be sitting here too’, after they had praised the school as fantastic.
The dad-of-three was a member of a Whatsapp group called ‘educational activists’, but denied seeing a message posted by colleague Razwan Faraz regarding the appointment of a new headteacher at a Small Heath school.
Mr Faraz wrote: “Please don’t pressure her to start the Islamising agenda. She has to establish herself first.”
Despite being in the group Mr Hussain claims that he did not see the message at the time and told the panel: “An Islamising agenda might refer to collective worship, but that is for Mr Faraz to explain. There was an Islamic ethos in the school, absolutely.
“But I’ve been to schools in Handsworth that are predominately Sikh that have a Sikh ethos, and Catholic schools. Ethos yes, but agenda no.”
When asked by Mr Andrew Colman, presenting officer for the NCTL, about whether he thought the call to prayer, prayer posters and Islamic assemblies were inappropriate, he said he did not.
“The Ofsted inspectors should be sitting here too,” he told the panel. “They told us that it was a fantastic school and they saw the same things I saw. They were part of the school, part of the ethos.”
The teacher, who was appointed Acting Head at Nansen Primary in October 2012 after the suspension and resignation of the previous headteacher, denied the charges that he had organised ‘overly religious’ or inappropriate assemblies.
Mr Hussain said: “I work with all pupils, whatever faith they are from or no faith. The staff who I socialised with outside of school were not of my faith background.”
When asked if he had breached professional guidelines when recruiting staff, he said that he would hire the ‘best person for the job’ and ‘faith never came into what I was doing, ever’.
He also denied that prefects had been directed to report any ‘inappropriate relationships’ between boys and girls to him, and said that when he was at the the Park View Trust this was not the role of prefects.
Mr Hussain also denied that while he was at Nansen Primary School in the role of Acting Head that he had ‘cancelled’ Christmas, and claimed instead the staff were not able to ‘doss’ for two weeks as they had allegedly done before.
Saying that Christmas didn’t take place was ‘absolutely incorrect’, he argued.
“Christmas was historically two weeks of movies – a two-week long ‘doss’,” he said. “Being in charge of behaviour, there was going to be learning taking place.
“There was a nativity, and there was a celebration in class on the last day with kids sharing food and drink. We were also looking at Christmas and its deeper meaning.”
Arshad Hussain, Lindsey Clark, Monzoor Hussain, Hardeep Saini and Razwan Faraz all face the principal allegation that on or before March 31 last year they had agreed to “the inclusion of an undue amount of religious influence in the education of pupils”.
They all deny the allegations and the hearing continues.