Schools minister comments on Learning Trust’s failures

Schools secretary Ed Balls today reiterated his call for an end to government intervention in Hackney’s schools and a return to “local, democratic accountability”.

He said that the government’s handing of control of Hackney’s schools policy to a quango, The Learning Trust, a private not-for-profit company, had been a success.

The Trust itself was created in 2002 following a damning OFSTED report concluding that education in the borough had failed.

Mr Balls told the Citizen that Hackney’s recent woeful SAT results (the borough came bottom of the league table for England for the seventh year in a row), indicated there was “still more to do”.

But he implied that it was time to call a halt to involvement in Hackney’s schools by the Learning Trust.

Mr Balls, a Hackney resident, told the Citizen,“We are in intervention in a number of local authorities around the country where the education or children’s services have not been good enough.

“I don’t apologise for that – it’s my job to make sure that where things have gone wrong, we step in. Those interventions should never be permanent.”

The Secretary of State made his remarks after touring The Ark, a new base for disabled children’s services in Hackney.

He said, “Everybody knows that Hackney faces particular challenges. This has always been a borough which had lots of people moving in, moving out; there’s deprivation and extra need. That should never be an excuse.

“I think what you’ve seen in Hackney in secondary schools is a massive transformation. But everybody knows that in primaries there’s still more to do.”