By our education correspondent, GENE BRODIE
Extreme views: Sir Paul Marshall, chairs ARK academies and founded GB News
Staff at Ark Academy schools are to hold a crisis meeting with management at the chain to demand the removal as chair of Sir Paul Marshall, the multi-millionaire Tory donor who has “liked” extremist views and wacko conspiracy theories on social media.
Croydon has two Ark schools: Oval Primary in East Croydon and the Ark Blake Academy, a secondary which opened in 2020 in purpose-built buildings on Morlands Road. Both have a diverse intake of pupils, from the age of three at Oval to 18 at Blake, as reflects Croydon’s population. Many pupils at Croydon’s Ark schools are Muslim.
Marshall backed Brexit and has donated at least £500,000 to the Conservative Party. He owns 41% of right-wing nut-job TV station GB News, and is also supposed to be interested in buying The Daily Telegraph.
The News Agents podcast and Hope Not Hate last month reported that Marshall retweeted and liked content on Twitter “which is on the most extreme end of political opinion about Islam”. Among the hate-filled content liked by Marshall was a tweet that stated the “native European population is losing patience with fake refugee invaders”.
And did those feet: Ark Blake Academy is one of two Croydon schools run by the academy chain
They said he also liked another post that stated: “There has never been a country that has remained peaceful with a sizeable Islamic presence. Why do our leaders believe Britain would be an exception to that rule? Once the Muslims get to 15 to 20 per cent of the population the current cold civil war will turn hot.”
The podcast also found that Marshall had re-posted a meme shared by a far-right YouTuber which stated: “God may or may not be real, but the other side is so passionate, so committed to worshipping Satan, evil, homosexuality and corrupting children that even if God wasn’t real, believing in him to fend these demons off is preferable.”
Ark is the country’s seventh largest academy chain, and runs 39 schools through the country’s privatised state education system, under a charitable trust called Absolute Return for Kids – ARK, geddit? Marshall is a trustee of the charity.
‘No longer a fit and proper person to be associated with Ark Schools’
Marshall defended himself against the complaints, citing his “decades” of charitable work. He received a knighthood in 2016 for “services to education and philanthropy”. After he was caught out by Hope Not Hate, hedgefund manager Marshall, through a spokesperson, claimed that the social media posts he liked do “not represent his views”.
The incriminating tweets were also deleted.
In an article, GB Spews, about Marshall’s TV station, published today by Prospect Magazine, former BBC report Gavin Esler writes, “What was ‘misunderstood’ was not explained, but if the head honcho likes and retweets views like this, then the cast of eccentrics and Looney Tunes characters given airtime on his channel begins to make more sense.”
GB News’s presenters include Nigel Farridge, Lord Snooty and the woman that won The Apprentice a long time ago… The channel has been subject to a series of rebukes (but nothing stronger) from regulator Ofcom, mostly for having sitting Tory MPs as presenters of “news” programmes.
The NEU has a petition arguing that Marshall is “no longer a fit and proper person to be associated with Ark Schools in any capacity”.
The petition states: “By ‘liking’ and ‘reposting’ extremist and hateful tweets on X (formerly known as Twitter) we believe that he is no longer a fit or proper person to be associated with Ark Schools in any capacity. Sadly, the trustees at Ark Schools do not see it that way and have decided to keep Paul Marshall in post as a trustee.
“Staff at the 40 Ark Schools up and down the country work very hard to make their schools centres that celebrate diversity, reduce prejudice in all its forms and work hard for the communities they serve. Keeping Paul Marshall as a trustee is a direct insult to staff, to students and to the communities Ark works within.
“Whether you are an Ark staff member, student, parent or concerned community member, please sign and share this petition so that Ark understands that they need to make the right choice, live up to the very Ark Values the trust espouses by disassociating Ark Schools from such hate.”
The petition, “Time to stand up Ark Schools! Say No to Homophobia, NO to Islamophobia, NO to Racism”, has doubled the number of signatures in just one day this week.
An NEU official told Education Uncovered that teachers were “absolutely disgusted” with Marshall’s social media activity. “A lot of members are saying: ‘If this was a member of staff, they would be gone. So this looks like double standards from the trust.’
“They believe the content of the posts are an absolute affront to the staff at Ark who work very hard to ensure their schools celebrate diversity.”
Read more: There’s more to a good school than high-scoring SATs results
Read more: Teachers to quit Oval Primary before move to Academy
Read more: Oval parents sent round in circles over academy status
FREE ADS: Paid-up subscribers to Inside Croydon qualify for a free ad for their business, residents’ association or community group, just one of the benefits of being part of our online community. For more information about being an iC subscriber, click here for our Patreon page
PAID ADS: To advertise your services or products to our near 10,000 weekday visitors to the site, which is featured on Google News Showcase and followed by 16,000 on Twitter/X, email us inside.croydon@btinternet.com for our unbeatable ad rates
- If you have a news story about life in or around Croydon, or want to publicise your residents’ association or business, or if you have a local event to promote, please email us with full details at inside.croydon@btinternet.com
As featured on Google News Showcase
- Our comments section on every report provides all readers with an immediate “right of reply” on all our content. Our comments policy can be read by clicking here
Inside Croydon is a member of the Independent Community News Network
- Inside Croydon works together with the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, as well as BBC London News and ITV London
ROTTEN BOROUGH AWARDS: In January 2024, Croydon was named among the country’s rottenest boroughs for a SEVENTH successive year in the annual round-up of civic cock-ups in Private Eye magazine
Isn’t it amazing the little media attention this story is getting in the mainstream media.
In a previous life Marshall was a backer of the Liberal Democrats durng the Clegg era and ironically consderng the vile material he has spewed, worked closely with expenses fiddler David Laws. It just all demonstrates that with the standards of governance that now operate in this country why it is in such an almighty mess.
Pingback: The Right's war to control education - Pearls and Irritations
Pingback: The Beaver