The second episode of The Corrections on @BBCRadio4 on the #TrojanHoax story was fascinating: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m000p8xv some thoughts follow...

It was really important to hear directly from Tahir Alam about the journey Park View took from basket case to one of the best schools in the country. It’ll always be my proudest professional achievement to have played a part in this journey.

And it was very emotional listening to that story recounted: from 4% 5 A*-C to over 75%; first grade 1 school under Ofsted 2012; children, including many, many girls, going on to uni & prestigious careers. Lives transformed, potential realised, a community proud.

There are a couple of factual inaccuracies in this episode: music was not taken off the curriculum at the school & there was never a rule against boyfriends & girlfriends. The stuff about a pupil’s phone being hacked is nonsense too.

As in all things, @reetacbbc talked a lot of sense & had a good insight. If I was to boil the whole affair down it was about two things we got wrong: a non-faith school sometimes acting like a faith school & poor governance once we became a multi-academy trust. Nothing nefarious.

The major disappointment I have, and a missed opportunity, is that the failure of governance angle is not explored more. @WirelessJo is right that the whole thing is a Rorschach Test & one other way of looking at it is as a case study on the problems caused by Michael Gove’s...

...educational Wild West of accelerated academisation. The trust got too big, too quickly because the DfE asked us to, and the governance systems failed to adapt, expand & cope.