01 March 2017

Birmingham accused of going soft on extremism

Birmingham city council has been accused of failing to learn the lessons of the Trojan horse scandal after its equality chief challenged a school for stopping a four-year-old girl from wearing an Islamic headscarf.

Dame Louise Casey, the government’s integration tsar, has written to the leader of the Labour-run council to condemn the “grossly unfair and undue” actions of the senior councillor.

In a letter seen by The Times, Dame Louise warned of a repeat of the scandal when aggressive school governors in the city tried to impose an intolerant Islamic ethos on head teachers. She said: “I do question whether sufficient lessons have been learnt.” [The Times (£)] Read more