We have had two aims in this book. One has been to expose a glaring injustice in the treatment of teachers and governors associated with PVET and the Trojan Horse affair. The disciplinary proceedings undertaken by the NCTL against the senior teachers were discontinued in May 2017, some three years after the allegations first hit the headlines. The reason was ‘an abuse of the process which is of such seriousness that it offends the Panel’s sense of justice and propriety’. No doubt the teachers are relieved, but they have been denied the opportunity to clear their names.

As should be clear from the evidence we have presented throughout this book, we have no confidence that the Panel was on the way to a correct decision. In each of the different steps of the unfolding of the affair, the various investigations and how they have been reported have been stacked against those involved. As we have shown, the Ofsted reports on the school found ‘evidence’ of Islamic influence and failures of safeguarding, but they were not conducted in an independent manner and with regard to the very different findings of earlier Ofsted reports. In the latter reports, the same practices were praised by Ofsted inspectors as contributing to Park View’s success. In a similar manner, it became clear that the EFA Review of PVET was also conducted with a view to finding any evidence that might justify action against the Trust, based upon direction from the DfE’s Due Diligence and Counter Extremism Division. For their part, the Kershaw and Clarke Reports were also deeply flawed, not least because they failed to address the nature of the requirements for religious education and collective worship and the role of the DfE in supporting PVET and its incorporation of other schools as a sponsoring academy. Throughout the process the DfE has been exempt from any scrutiny and yet officials at the department and the Secretary of State did their best to exert their influence, first by influencing the EFA Review and then by setting up an investigation under Peter Clarke, former head of counterterrorism at the Metropolitan Police, and, finally, by influencing proceedings at the NCTL hearings.