Schools told no excuses by Ed Balls
POVERTY is no excuse for underachievement in secondary schools currently at risk of closure because of poor GCSE results, the Children’s Secretary said.
The tough message was delivered by Ed Balls to more than 200 school heads and leaders attending a national conference in Birmingham yesterday.
More than 630 schools, including 27 in Birmingham, are threatened with closure if they do not achieve 30 per cent good GCSE passes, including English and maths, by 2011.
Mr Balls repeated his plea, initially made when announcing his new National Challenge, for high achieving schools such as grammars to help old-style secondary moderns that might be struggling.
But he stressed in his speech to the National College for School Leadership conference at the ICC that this was a matter for local areas like Birmingham to decide.
Mr Balls added: “I don’t like selection at all.”
A child on free school meals was less than half as likely to get five good GCSEs, he pointed out.
“But we can’t use poverty and deprivation as an excuse.
“It’s definitely a factor, but it isn’t a reason to write off children.”
Mr Balls said he had no sympathy for schools who claimed that, because of local poverty, the GCSE benchmark was an “impossible task”.
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