The schools tsar appointed after the “Trojan Horse” scandal is warning that academisation means the government lacks powers to deal with a repeat of the affair, or to intervene in failing schools.

Sir Mike Tomlinson has used an exclusive TES interview to spell out his concerns about how difficult it was to remove teachers and governors from schools in Birmingham affected by the Trojan Horse affair - in which strict Islamic regimes were found to be operating in secular state schools.

The former Ofsted chief inspector, who has just finished two years as Birmingham’s education commissioner, said that ministers had no formal powers to remove staff in such circumstances.

Sir Mike said the government also needed new powers over England’s academies because a “significant proportion” of the schools were consistently underperforming and ministers could not adequately intervene.

“The Department [for Education] may well argue that it does have powers,” he said. “But my view is that, whatever powers it has, I don’t think they’re sufficient to deal with the sort of situation that happened in Birmingham, nor with the situation where we have a significant proportion of academies which are described by Ofsted as ‘inadequate’ or ‘requiring improvement’.”

He also said that a significant increase in the number of children being homeschooled in Birmingham over the last two years raised concerns that they could be exposed to extremism and other safeguarding risks, and urged the government to review its powers to intervene. 

The Trojan Horse scandal emerged in late 2013, when Birmingham City Council received an anonymous letter referring to “Operation Trojan Horse”: an alleged plot by some Muslim groups to take over schools in the city and run them on strict Islamic principles. In September 2014, Sir Mike was appointed by then education secretary Nicky Morgan to oversee the council’s work to address the situation.

Speaking in his first interview since his appointment ended in July, Sir Mike said it had been difficult to take action against schools implicated in Trojan Horse because ministers lacked the power to intervene in academies unless it was over financial management.

Colin Diamond - seconded from the DfE to work as the city’s deputy schools commissioner - had no other option but to “persuade” individuals at the schools to resign, Sir Mike said. This was because “there were no formal powers” to get rid of them.

Sir Mike said that the lack of power over academies had much wider implications and was a “significant weakness” in the schools system because of consistent underperformance by some multi-academy trusts (MATs).

A DfE spokesperson said: “Academy trusts operate under a strict system of oversight and accountability - more robust than in local authority schools.”

This is an edited article from the 9 December edition of TES. Subscribers can read the full article here. This week’s TES magazine is available in all good newsagents. To download the digital edition, Android users can click here and iOS users can click here

Want to keep up with the latest education news and opinion? Follow TES on Twitter and like TES on Facebook