The Sunday Times revealed last week that Park View Academy in Birmingham is being investigated by the Department for Education for allegedly sidelining non-Muslim staff and trying to teach Islamic studies, despite not being a faith-based state school.

The documents suggest that the strategy, called Operation Trojan Horse, should be used in Bradford and Manchester as well as Birmingham. “We have an obligation to our children to fulfil our roles and ensure these schools are run on Islamic principles,” they argue.

The papers say the first step is to identify poor-performing state schools in Muslim areas; then Salafist parents in each school are encouraged to complain that teachers are “corrupting children with sex education, teaching about homosexuals, making their children say Christian prayers and mixed swimming and sports”.

The next steps are to “parachute in” Muslim governors “to drip-feed our ideal for a Muslim school” and stir up staff to urge the council to investigate. The strategy stresses the importance of having an “English face among the staff group to make it more believable”.

Finally, anonymous letters are to be circulated to MPs, press and ministers. “All these things will work towards wearing the head down, removing their resolve and weakening their mindset so they eventually give up.”

Birmingham schools named as targets in the document include Regents Park, where the head teacher, Tina Ireland, was given an “outstanding” Ofsted report but resigned last year amid questions over the school’s exam results. Others are Adderley Primary School and Saltley School, a specialist science college where the head, Balwant Bains, resigned last year. Bains quit after an Ofsted report concluded that he had a “dysfunctional” relationship with the governors.

Ahson Mohammed, the interim head teacher at Saltley, was appointed in November after Bains’s resignation. Read the rest...

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