HACKNEY COUNCIL has form when it comes to misleading claims. One of the most brazen was a pre-election endorsement by “members of the public”. Loving Dalston exposed  it as comprising the then mayor and other Labour councillors.

Now it is attaching its name to what looks like a fine achievement but in many cases has less to do with the council than its press release implies.

Under the headline, “Hackney schools are number one for GCSEs”, a council statement boasted that “Hackney is number one for GCSEs”, equal, apparently, to the London borough of Kensington and Chelsea.

No doubt to the council’s delight, local papers less questioning than this website, and the kind of bloggers that do churnalism, duly ran the handout, including quotes attributed to Anne Canning, the 2015-appointed chief of the Hackney Learning Trust that the council re-took control of four years ago.

Loving Dalston, struck by the failure to name any school whatsoever, tried to get some names, preferably in order of GCSE achievement. Extraordinarily, the council responded that it did not have the “specific information”.

The council instead referred me to a government site. And guess what? The top-performing schools happen to be academies, which means that many of these GCSE high-achievers attended one. And local authorities have nothing to do with them.

To remove them from the control of councils was the point of creating academies, a concept put into effect by Labour. They have been described as “private schools funded by the taxpayer”.

Hamish Scott 061116

* Backstory: Residents praising Labour turn out to be the mayor and  supporters; Hackney council’s Rich List; Learning Trust loses education contract; ‘Sex, drugs, privilege’ says research 

* Main pic:  Anne Canning pic © Hackney council. All other pictures on this page © DavidAltheer [at] gmail.com, and all for sale for reproduction. Most photographs are available in bigger formats. 

* Emboldened underscored words in most cases indicate a hyperlink, a reader service rare among websites. If a link does not work, it is probably because the site to which the URL refers has not been maintained. A link in no way expresses support for any site.

* Emboldened underscored words in most cases indicate a hyperlink, a reader service rare among websites. If a link does not work, it is probably because the site to which the URL refers has not been maintained. A link in no way expresses support for any site.