Compensation call for Trojan staff

Khalid Mahmood said the authority had failed in its duty of care to teachers

A Birmingham MP has said teachers forced out of schools involved in the Trojan Horse allegations deserve to be compensated.

On Friday, Birmingham City Council revealed the key findings of its inquiry, led by Sir Ian Kershaw.

In it, Sir Ian criticised the often "improper" conduct of governors at some schools.

MP Khalid Mahmood said at least 12 senior school staff had been bullied or forced out of their posts.

The Labour MP for Perry Barr said: "This whole saga has had a huge mental effect on these people, they've had huge psychological issues to deal with.

"These are people who came in to finish their careers in education and most were cut off in their prime and what we want to do is recognise that."

Mr Mahmood said it was up to the teachers to decide if they wanted to take their own legal action.

Four investigations

The local authority inquiry was one of four official investigations into claims some Muslim groups had attempted to take over schools.

They were prompted by an anonymous letter outlining what it called "Operation Trojan Horse".

Birmingham City Council was strongly criticised by Sir Ian for being "slow to respond" to allegations and accused education chiefs in the city of "poor oversight".

Sir Ian stopped short of saying there was a conspiracy.

However, he did find evidence that "five steps" outlined in the original letter as a means of destabilising school leadership were "present in a large number of the schools considered part of the investigation".

Sir Ian's findings seemed to conflict with those of Peter Clarke, parts of whose report for the Department for Education, were leaked to the Guardian newspaper on Friday.