In reply to stroppygob:
A similar thing happened at a local school here over ten years ago, luckily the LEA supported the Head and disbanded the governing body.
Another Head in Woking was less lucky, around the same time, she was sacked but after a long legal battle got £400,000 compo off the council, the Judge awarding the compo said "They sought to monopolise the governors’ body to impose their own agenda... which was to convert New Monument to an Islamic faith school."
If you've been following the story, the first case reported in Birmingham was 20 years ago.
But the pressure for more muslims schools goes way back, the first government report that looked into whether the state should be providing them was the Swann Report in 1985.
But that concluded that:
we do not believe that a situation in which groups of children are taught exclusively by teachers of the same ethnic group is desirable from the point of view of the children, the minority community or society as a whole
So a mechanism has never existed whereby muslims could establish state funded Islamic faith schools and the private ones are few and under funded.
Where activists have tried to turn schools into Islamic schools has come through a Localism agenda, which was intended to empower parents but has clearly been exploited by those with an agenda to takeover the schools.
Another attempt to construct a mechanism for converting schools came from the Forum Against Islamophobia and Racism (mentioned on the BMC religion thread) jointly with the Association of Muslim Social Scientists, (which Jeremy Henzell Thomas also sat on the board of) which suggested that
"Given sufficient consensus, parents should be given the opportunity to determine a new Ethos Statement for an existing maintained school where there is a majority of pupils of another cultural/religious group."
So not full on Faith schools but a mechanism for taking state schools and making them Islam Ethos Schools (slightly different legal standing to faith schools). Similarly rejected by the government at the time.
The Academy and Free School legislation has enabled them to a certain extent but require that a local area has a need for a school, ie a lack of school places.
But then the Free School initiative was always going to enable Christian groups first.