Chaos and bitter resentment still feature strongly in Birmingham’s inner-city schools over what is being seen as a major Islamophobic attack on the Muslim population of the city. In fact, the resentment is growing as quickly as Gove and Wilshaw are retreating from the issue.
Schools are now investigating what legal redress they might have against Ofsted’s bizarre volte-face in their judgements on previously outstanding schools, and highly charged and highly politicised meetings are taking place all over the city to see how schools can protect themselves against the education department, Ofsted and Birmingham City Council.
As we have said elsewhere, the whole conspiracy theory, and the extraordinarily oppressive involvement of the state and the media in the affair, now looks even more like a moral panic – one that is remarkably lacking in substance.