Over the last few months, Birmingham has once again found itself in the spotlight as parents of pupils at Parkfield Community Schools have protested the teaching of the No Outsiders equality programme.
Parkfield recently announced it will teach a revised version of the programme - called No Outsiders for a Faith Community - and will cease consultation with parents.
During this period we have occasionally been asked why we haven't been more vocal about this issue.
We can now reveal it is because we were facilitating dialogue between the school, parents, and the Department for Education during this period. Given this role, it would have been inappropriate for us to comment publically.
brap were asked to facilitate communication between Parkfield school and parents at a point when communication between the school and parents had broken down.
We are uncomfortable with the way the school have chosen to end the engagement process with parents. This is a complex issue and has implications across the education system and wider society. We don’t believe that we have made as much progress as we might have - there is still more to do in exploring how different views can be discussed so that we can develop a common understanding of the rights we are entitled to.