Inspectors who visited an academy at the centre of allegations about an Islamist takeover are being accused of behaving inappropriately, asking students intrusive, personal questions and showing bias.

Park View School in Birmingham received two snap Ofsted inspections and a separate visit from a team of Department for Education (DfE) inspectors this month, after claims that it was one of four schools in the city “taken over” by radical Muslims.

But the high-achieving secondary, which rejects the allegations, is concerned about the way the inspections were conducted and fears that it is not being given a fair hearing.

Last Saturday, it was reported that Park View would be placed in special measures following an inspection conducted just four days earlier. The apparent advance briefing on a report that has still not been published prompted a furious public reaction from Lee Donaghy, an assistant head at the academy.

Mr Donaghy took to Twitter to complain to Ofsted schools director, Mike Cladingbowl, about the leaking of the verdict before it had been “quality assured” and the way his inspectors behaved when they visited the school.

Now sources at the Birmingham secondary have told TES that they were also alarmed by the behaviour of DfE inspectors who asked “very leading”, “very personal” questions that made students feel “uncomfortable”; and appeared to be selective in the evidence they gathered.

“They were taking pictures of displays on the wall relating to Islam and ignoring displays that related to other religions,” a source claimed. “There were posters about multi-cultural society – they weren’t interested in those, they were just taking the ones that had any Arabic script in them.”

Mr Donaghy told Mr Cladingbowl that a senior Ofsted HMI inspector had opened a meeting with a Muslim member of staff at the school with the question, “Are you homophobic?”.

The assistant head also complained that an HMI inspector had appeared to joke about the number of male Muslim teachers at the school. When discussing where a colleague had gone, the senior inspector had reportedly said that he had “left with a man with a beard”. “Though that’s not much help as there are so many,” the HMI said, he claimed.

According to Mr Donaghy the HMI was supposed be quality assuring the work of the three other Ofsted inspectors at the school. “How can we have faith in the fairness of the inspection after that?” the assistant head asked Mr Cladingbowl.

Continue reading →