Star comment: Education is a delicate balance
The alleged Trojan Horse plot involving Birmingham schools has been a spectacular example of the Government taking aim at extremism and then shooting itself in the foot.
It is an affair which may be founded on a hoax highlighting a problem about which there is considerable dispute over whether it exists in the first place.
As a lot of it has to do with ideology, the plight of poor Michael Gove, the Education Secretary, verges on comic, as he is tied up by the contradictions and paradoxes of a political creed which supports giving schools greater freedoms to choose their own ethos and run their own affairs without interference and now deep in the mire over the alleged – and that is a word which crops up a lot in this whole business – plot by hardline Muslims to take over Birmingham schools.
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In the latest twist, Mr Gove is at odds with the head of the schools watchdog Ofsted, Sir Michael Wilshaw.
Sir Michael says that when he took up the post he called for unannounced inspections of schools, but Mr Gove rejected the idea. However, the Department for Education has retorted that Sir Michael is "wrong".
So that is yet another battle for Mr Gove to fight after his bruising battle with Home Secretary Theresa May in which he was comprehensively defeated.
In the Commons, he was conciliatory and went out of his way to say nice things about her. In contrast, Theresa May was haughty and withering. She had nothing nice to say about him.
No, it was worse than that. She had nothing to say about Mr Gove at all.
The impression you get from the schools which are at the centre of the matter is that there is an air of bemusement that they find themselves in that position. Five have been put in special measures after a "culture of fear and intimidation" was found to have developed in some schools.
That is worrying, although some way short of them being hotbeds of extremism which are turning out the terrorists of tomorrow.
Meanwhile, Mr Gove is saying that schools will be made actively to promote "British values", flagging up these as democracy, individual liberty, mutual respect and tolerance of those with different faiths. This sounds good, but in a multi-cultural, multi-faith society, there is a lot of scope for varying interpretation.
Labour claims Mr Gove's education policy is in disarray. Events in Birmingham should concentrate minds on the balance between state oversight and schools' freedoms.
