These are testing times here in Birmingham.
The city is presently the focus for a highly charged debate about the meaning and prevalence of extremism.
Prompted by the alleged "Trojan Horse plot", what started with a relatively straight-forward need to investigate concerns about suspected abuses of school governance by religious conservatives has since metamorphosed into a contentious war of words about where the threshold of extremism should be drawn - crudely caricatured as lying somewhere between the crocodiles and the whole swamp - and whether or not some schools have crossed an, at best, I'll-defined red line.
But, most challengingly of all, the ensuing and ongoing furore has spotlighted Islam and, with only the odd exception, Islam alone.
As someone who holds a politically restricted post what I truly think about these deeply politicised issues will have to wait for my memoirs (working title "The Graveyard Is Full Of Irreplaceable Town Clerks"). But what I believe I am entitled to talk about is the moral imperative we all share to remember the children in all this.
There are occasions when it seems that dome of those who are pursuing agendas can end up appearing detached from those who are actually caught up in them.
Regulators can be distracted by the (futile) pursuit of the infallible inspection; legislators, similarly, can drive up the cul-de-sac named Perfect Policy Place. And, meanwhile, on the ground the presumed beneficiaries of all these efforts can get more and more overlooked and, if we're not careful, seriously distressed.
Which is where the very best of local government leadership can - and must - come into its own. So, here in Birmingham, on the back of the city council's commitment to deliver a unified, credible and sustained leadership that is putting children and young people back at the centre of the efforts to improve safeguarding, so that same leadership (endorsed by Lord Warner) has also vowed to tackle these further challenges - not for their own sake, but for the sake of those for whom we are either elected or appointed to serve.
And, as a highly visible demonstration of that commitment, now that we have the mass inspection phase out of the way (and, by the way, what is the correct collective noun for multiple Ofsteds? No, don't tell me), we are preparing to conduct a city-wide initiative that takes the revolutionary step of asking pupils themselves what they think an excellent, inclusive and truly contemporary British education looks like.
Child-centred, values-based leadership. Novel, eh?
Mark Rogers is chief executive of Birmingham City Council
