Faith and unreason: The headteacher hounded from her job

On a Friday afternoon in September 2005, just two weeks into the new school year, Erica Connor walked away from the job she loved. The head of the once-thriving New Monument school in Woking, Surrey, Connor had borne the brunt of an unpleasant and unrelenting three-year campaign, conducted by a handful of local activists, to turn her non-denominational state primary into an Islamic faith school.

She had been attacked in the small print of a widely circulated petition demanding her removal; insulted in a rare graffiti scrawl across the front of the school; verbally abused by two of the school governors; and advised, for her own safety, to carry a personal police alarm at all times. Connor, who had always regarded herself as an optimist, was suffering from loss of sleep, loss of memory, loss of weight, loss of confidence. She was later diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and prescribed anti-depressants.

Yet her repeated attempts to enlist the aid of her local education authority were in vain; it had decided instead to take up her opponents' cause. Despite support from her staff, parents and the community, Connor and her school were investigated – twice – by the LEA following accusations of racism and Islamophobia. Last month, at the High Court, she finally won £407,781 damages for negligence from Surrey County Council.

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But this isn't really a story of racial or religious strife. Throughout her ordeal, Connor remains convinced that the vast majority of the local community stood firmly in her corner, regardless of religious affiliations. Instead, it's the story of how a tiny minority used the fear of such conflict, and the terror inspired by phrases like "institutional racism" or "Commission for Racial Equality", to paralyse local government – and persuade the education system to abandon a gifted headteacher and her dedicated staff in their hour of need.

"It's changed me for good," says Connor, who is 57. "I hung on in, trusting the natural justice of the system – and that trust was totally knocked out of me. I can still hardly believe it could happen, that nobody at the LEA would stand by me. The court case has brought back some of my confidence, but I'll never be quite the same again."

New Monument's neighbourhood is not your average Surrey suburb. In a county full of white, middle-class commuters, more than a third of Maybury and Sheerwater's population is black and ethnic minority. Around 90 per cent of New Monument's pupils, including children of Pakistani, Saudi and Omani descent, speak English as a second language. Around 80 per cent are Muslim. "We were never full," says Connor, "because in Surrey it's not an attractive proposition for many white, middle-class parents. The size of the school fluctuated around 300, including the nursery."

When Connor became head in 1998, she inherited a faltering school, whose SAT scores for maths were as low as 4 per cent. "We had the TV and press camped outside," she recalls. "I said to them then that I hoped they'd come back when the results improved." Sure enough, two years later New Monument was named the second most improved school in the country, and in 2001 Connor and her pupils were invited to 10 Downing St in recognition of its success. The school won Government achievement awards two years in a row, and eventually averaged more than 90 per cent in all three core SAT subjects.

"The whole ethos of the school changed," says Connor. "Parents and children really began to feel they could achieve more. It was lovely to take the children to meet Tony Blair, but the moments we really celebrated were within the school. It was an incredible thing that the staff had done as a team – you can never do that as just one person."

Connor had even greater ambitions for New Monument, and began to work towards creating a three-school federation with two other Woking primaries. She took proposals to the LEA for a family learning centre and an internet café, in the hope of encouraging yet further participation, she says, from parents and the local community. "My philosophy was always that the child was a child in the community, not just an isolated unit in the school. Anything that could contribute to that was positive."

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New Monument sits almost in the shadow of the Shah Jahan Mosque, Britain's first purpose-built mosque, constructed in 1889. Though the splendid Shah Jahan is the best known, there are several mosques in the immediate area, and not even the local Muslim community could be described as a single, cohesive whole.

Connor and her staff embraced this diversity and celebrated it. "We had very good relationships with the faith communities," she says. "We applied for a determination so that we didn't have to have mainly Christian-based worship at assemblies, as most state schools do. That allowed us to celebrate the faiths within the school proportionately. There was no formal Islamic worship, but the local imam would come in to take assemblies. We had links with the local church as well. I had no sense of growing tension between communities. Quite the opposite. We really built bridges."

Connor's small staff included two Muslim teachers. "It was an uphill struggle, but I endeavoured at all times to increase the numbers of Muslim staff," she says. It was a struggle, too, to attract governors. "It's a nightmare that's common to all schools. Who would want to be a governor? It's unpaid, it's pretty thankless, it's hard work, and nowadays it involves a great amount of legal accountability."

Many of New Monument's mothers were ill-educated, even illiterate, and few parents had the confidence, says Connor, to nominate themselves as governors, or to take part in the formal meetings the role entailed. So it was that in February 2003, Paul Martin, a wealthy, fiftysomething local businessman and Muslim convert, joined the board as a parent-governor, despite having no children of his own at New Monument. "It was unusual for a non-parent to become a parent-governor," Connor explains, "and it shows some desperation on our part, but it wasn't a situation unique to New Monument."

By that October, three more Muslim governors had been recruited, including 41-year-old Mumtaz Saleem, who was nominated by the LEA. "Paul Martin came to my office for a meeting just after he'd been elected," remembers Connor, "and we chatted for about two hours. He was charming and sympathetic. I really liked him, and I was delighted that four Muslim governors were joining the board. That's just what I'd been trying to achieve."

Soon, though, Martin and Saleem voiced concerns over perceived "tensions" between the school and the community. When Martin continued to reiterate these suggestions without any apparent evidence, says Connor, she began to feel uneasy. "The staff were more wary than I was. I believed that once they saw how the school really worked, they'd change their minds and we'd be able to build a constructive relationship."

It wasn't to be. In February 2004, Martin produced the evidence to substantiate his "concerns": two troubling conversations that he claimed to have had with staff members at an event the previous year. Muslim teacher Rosie Mir had, claimed Martin, told him that she advised children to "throw the Koran away". Another staff member had supposedly said of her students, "Why do they have to go to the mosque? They can't even read English. It's so pointless."

Connor, who was "flabbergasted" by the claims, wrote to Martin telling him not only that the staff members denied them, but that the local imam was "astonished" by the notion that there were tensions between the school and the faith community. Connor and Martin both contacted the LEA about the situation, she to warn of her difficulties, and he to complain of being "bullied" by his fellow governors.

While the tensions in the community may have been imagined, those in the boardroom were very real. At a governors' meeting in July 2004, Connor fled the room after aggressive questioning from Martin and Saleem. Martin, meanwhile, emailed the board's chairman, Mark Tackley-Goodman, asserting that in his 25 years as a Muslim, he had "never had any personal experience of Islamophobia. I am sorry to say that has changed since I have become a governor."

Tackley-Goodman contacted the LEA to demand an investigation into Martin and Saleem's behaviour. The authority demurred until Sofia Syed, another of the new governors, conducted a training session in "cultural awareness" for staff members, in which she contrasted Islamic values with the "English pastimes" of drinking, drug-taking and adultery. Finally, in autumn 2004, Surrey County Council was persuaded to conduct a review.

The results, published in November, "came down completely in our favour," says Connor. "They said they found wonderful practices [at the school] in terms of inclusion, no evidence of racism or Islamophobia, and good links with the community. Fifty-eight people were interviewed, including the imam, other head teachers and doctors. They did class observations, everything. But afterwards Paul Martin complained, saying the remit wasn't what he wanted, that I had picked the interviewees, that the whole thing was flawed. He challenged the entire process."

Throughout 2004, Connor says she felt increasingly "distressed and upset." By the start of the following year, she and many of her fellow governors were convinced that Martin and Saleem had a "hidden agenda": to turn New Monument into a single faith Islamic school.

"To me, the non-denominational state school is the ideal model," says Connor. "I'd never teach in a faith school, because my belief is that you should celebrate all faiths. New Monument was a non-denominational state school, and so the requests [Martin and Saleem] made in that context – for an adapted national curriculum, separate washing facilities and so on – were completely unreasonable."

Though it was denied throughout, it now seems obvious that Martin and Saleem's aim was indeed to create a faith school at New Monument. "During the court case this year," says Connor, "it became clear that Paul Martin and members of the LEA had discussed the idea. Back in the early days, before I cottoned on to the extent of their aims, the governors were having an amiable discussion about the school, when Saleem suddenly asked, 'If this was a Muslim school would you be happy to lead it?' It was out of the blue, and I simply said, 'Well, it isn't.' If I thought that's what the community wanted, and that's what they believed was best for their children, then I'd have supported them."

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The head's secretary had also been acting as the clerk to the governors, but quit her role in protest at Martin and Saleem's monopolisation of the meetings. The LEA stepped in to mediate and, in May 2005, Martin was voted off the board. Afterwards, says Connor, Saleem told her ominously that she was "going to be sorry".

Tackley-Goodman stood down as chairman and was replaced by a moderate Muslim governor who would later testify in court on Connor's behalf. He, like her, resisted the idea of a faith school on the basis that it was not the wish of the community. But by the time he took over, the board had long been utterly dysfunctional.

At a governors' meeting on 14 June, Saleem allegedly threatened Tackley-Goodman before openly accusing Connor of racism. The same day, unbeknown to Connor, Martin had complained to the LEA that the school – to which he no longer had any official connection – was "institutionally racist". His evidence? A single school document containing a photograph of seven children, only one of whom had brown skin.

"It was a draft policy document that had gone out only to the governors for their comments," Connor explains. "My secretary had put a clip-art image on top to pretty it up a bit. Not to abdicate responsibility, but I hadn't even seen it."

Connor started to hear whispers about meetings being held in the community to discuss her removal. Graffiti was daubed on the front of the school, including one offensive message directed at the head personally. She maintains that these activities were all conducted by a tiny handful of agitators, but on 15 June a three-page petition appeared, apparently signed by parents, which called for her sacking on the grounds that she was a racist and Islamophobe.

"The petition said that I didn't respect their language, their values, their culture, that I was out for myself and I just wanted to make money. It said I was Jewish, that I had missionaries coming into the school, that I was Catholic. It attacked the staff's dress and mine. It was just endless. It's so ludicrous it's almost laughable, although at the time it wasn't at all."

Many parents had been intimidated into signing the document, which was then distributed outside the gates of New Monument and other local schools. Few wanted to name those responsible on the record, for fear of reprisals. "Some parents had signed it because they couldn't read, so they didn't know what they were signing. They came to me once they found out and apologised. One mother told me she'd tried to get her name taken off it, but they refused."

At the school's annual prize-giving ceremony, Connor stood and read a short statement that, at the urging of her staff (and against the wishes of Surrey County Council), made brief reference to the petition. She told the assembled staff and parents how affectionate she truly felt for the school, its pupils and the community. She received a standing ovation.

Though the judge in Connor's case later called the petition "itself racist", the police were reluctant to investigate who was responsible for the document, because its contents failed to meet the statutory criteria for inciting racial hatred. Nevertheless, they handed out police alarms to staff and advised them all to go home immediately at the end of each school day.

But, says Connor, "I couldn't possibly do the job if I was only there from nine until half-past-three. So one evening I was there on my own until about six o'clock. We have a games area and, as I was leaving, there were some 17- or 18-year-olds mucking about on it. I stopped and told them to get off, and a gang of them surrounded me.

"It would never have happened before, but by then clearly there was unrest among the community, particularly the older teenage lads. It was my feeling that they'd been stirred up. Luckily, one of them was an ex-pupil and had been in my class; he told them to back off, and they did."

Surrey County Council had, by this time, agreed to hold a second investigation. Anna Wright, director of schools at Surrey County Council, was advised that the authority faced referral to the Commission of Racial Equality if it failed to investigate Martin's claims. Though New Monument had already been exonerated of any charge of racism or Islamophobia, a small minority of activists had managed – deliberately or not – to encourage the council to side against the school.

Mark Tackley-Goodman, still Connor's ally, wrote to the LEA, "The school has time and time again been held up as a model of racial and cultural integration and I would like to believe the LEA will now take positive action to reinforce these messages in the community... Unfortunately I fear that so-called political correctness will prevent a fair-minded and balanced approach."

"The LEA jumped at anything that came from [Martin and Saleem]," says Connor, "whereas they had all sorts of correspondence from my staff, to which we got almost no response."

The second investigation was conducted by two people, one with race relations experience from his work in the housing sector, the other an ex-head of an all-white infant school. Many of the 32 interviewees were unidentified, though their views were reprinted verbatim in the review. The investigators once again found no evidence of racism on the part of the school but, crucially, wrote that they "[believed] the headmistress, along with some other governors, indirectly displayed Islamophobia through ignorance and fear of losing control."

Connor was horrified. Her challenges to the findings fell on deaf ears. "It was nonsensical," she says. "The investigation was so flawed; I thought someone would fight for me against the findings." Twenty-eight of her staff signed a letter of complaint to the local authority, but to no avail.

"When the findings were reported back to Anna Wright, she didn't challenge anything. She said 'excellent investigation' and accepted the findings. I was reassured that the results would sit in a drawer and no one would really see it, but I didn't care. That wasn't the point. This was my career, my life, and it was unjust.

"I staggered on for about two-and-a-half weeks at the beginning of the new term, had another meeting with the LEA, and again felt that I wasn't getting any support. I was on my own. It was a Friday, and I just walked out."

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Connor was born in Guildford in 1951 and brought up in Surrey. Teaching, she says, was not a childhood ambition. "But in that era, if you were from an academic school, you became a librarian or a teacher. I drifted into education and loved it; I found my vocation by practice rather than intent."

At 22, after two years teaching English and music in a secondary school in Lewisham, south London, she travelled to South Africa, where she hoped to find short-term work in a community school. "But I didn't speak Afrikaans, I was single and couldn't exist on a teacher's salary, so I ended up doing all sorts of things other than teaching. Apartheid was in full swing and South Africa was a shocking place to be, but I tried to work, in a very small way, to counteract some of the things that I saw going on there."

After returning to London, Connor worked in multicultural schools in Hackney and Tower Hamlets, finally ending up at Osmani Primary School in Whitechapel. "It was where the Kray twins went to school," she says, "but by the time I arrived Osmani was 100 per cent Bangladeshi. I'd always taught – deliberately – in multicultural schools, even before I went to South Africa. And I always preferred to work in more disadvantaged areas. I only worked, and would only ever work, in the state system."

In London, Connor married, and when her son was born, she started to look for a teaching post beyond the M25. "I knew the Woking area from my childhood," she says. "The job advert for New Monument was the first in Surrey that I'd ever seen which read 'multicultural experience an advantage'. I jumped at it." The young family moved back to Godalming, Connor's childhood home, and she joined New Monument as deputy head in 1994. "I absolutely loved working there," she says now. "I genuinely felt happy to wake up in the morning and go to work."

In 2000, soon after she became head, Connor separated from her husband. During her ordeal at New Monument, Connor was also having to deal with the difficulties of being a single mother to her son, who is now studying at Bournemouth University. She had no faith of her own to help her through the challenges of those years, despite what the petition alleged. "I'm an atheist, really," she admits. "I had great friends – and my staff were, without exception, totally supportive throughout, be they kitchen staff or cleaners or teachers. But my main support at home was my son, who was absolutely extraordinary."

Connor wasn't sleeping properly. Her weight had dropped to about six-and-a-half stone. But until she walked out of her office on that Friday afternoon in September, 2005, she had never thought to seek medical advice. "It was so alien to me," she says. "I'd never suffered from any sort of depression. I just thought I was coping. But I wasn't."

In January 2006, Connor checked into the Priory, where she was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. She'll never teach again. Five more of her fellow staff, including her deputy, retired from teaching on grounds of ill health after the events of 2005. "If you add it up," she says, "they've lost about 150 years of teaching experience."

It didn't take Connor long to decide on legal action. "It wasn't for the money," she says. "It became about money, because my life was wrecked and I'd paid for lawyers, and I wasn't working, and I'd gone to a fifth of my salary overnight. But the driving force was the principle. I was watching the school crack apart and I couldn't hold it together any more. Within the community I had allies, but the LEA just weren't damn well there, and I felt completely on my own without their support."

Judge John Leighton Williams QC agreed with her. Awarding Connor those substantial damages on 19 March, he said that "the lack of timely intervention [by the LEA] meant that Mr Martin's and Mr Saleem's conduct had the effect of tearing apart the governing body." Anna Wright had been, the judge concluded, more concerned with "appeasing" the two dissident governors than with the welfare of Connor, her staff and her school.

Connor now lives with her new partner in a small flat in Esher, Surrey. She volunteers at St Luke's in Guildford, the hospital where she was born, and is waiting to hear whether the Council will seek, or be granted, an appeal. "If I hadn't won, or if there's a successful appeal, I'd have to go bankrupt. I'd lose my home, everything. My life has been in limbo since 2005, so I have to reassess what I'm going to do now. I'm nearly 58, so I'm stumped!"

She has never been back to New Monument. "I intended to go back," she says, "but they got an interim head and the school went into special measures. The new head stripped the walls, threw everything away. There was no way I could go back after that. And anyway, I wasn't well enough."

Her ideas for a three-school federation and a family learning centre have, inevitably, been shelved. A recent Ofsted report was far from glowing about the school's standards. A new permanent head was appointed, but only stayed for a year. Now the school is overseen by an executive head from another nearby primary. Just three members of Connor's staff remain.

Remarkably, her first reaction upon seeing the media coverage of her case was to feel sympathy for Paul Martin. Martin, now 57, still lives in Woking but has no dealings with New Monument. "He has been vilified," she says. "I felt dreadful for him. I know he has children. The person I was with when I read it said 'For God's sake! Will you remember what that man did?' But I suppose that, whatever he and Saleem did, they did from personal conviction and passion, however misguided. The LEA, on the other hand, were just cowardly."