Learning Trust has "disgusting" attitude says Mayor

Mayor Jules Pipe said that the Learning Trust's treatment of Hackney nurseries, parents and elected politicians was "disgusting" at a hustings organised by the North London Muslim Centre (on Sunday).

The Learning Trust delivers education for more than 27,000 pupils in Hackney.

The Mayor made the criticism despite denying claims that the Learning Trust will cut funding for nurseries in the borough. Pipe said that he had very recently been told that funding had actually increased but that it was now being re-allocated to where it was needed.

It was, he said, the Learning Trust's failure to communicate this with parents and elected officials like himself that he found "disgusting".

However the 're-allocation' claims sound similar to those that sparked a class war over sure-start centres in March.

The newer concerns over nurseries were reported here by NurseryWorld and apparently there was a hustings on this issue on Thursday last week - does anyone know what happened there?

Is this open hostility between the Learning Trust and the Labour administration something new?

According to other audience members it is. After the hustings Andrew Boff, Conservative Mayoral candidate, told Blood and Property that he'd not heard Mayor Pipe being so rude about the Learning Trust before and said: "You've got to realise that that the majority of improvements to schools in the borough are down to educational institutions outside of the council's control."

I spoke briefly to all three mayoral candidates, the briefest of all was Jules Pipe who refused to talk to me once he knew I wrote this blog. All he said was "no", and "Pale, male, stale" probably in relation to this story: Jules Pipe: pale, male, stale apparatchik of New Labour? back on February 12 (The words were George Galloway's).

It was an odd grudge to hold considering he managed to answer an extensive list of Blood and Property questions in March: Jules Pipe answers Blood and Property questions. I was hoping to ask him if he approved of moves made by the Labour Party in Haringey to allow large families to build extensions on their properties: Will Jules Pipe back-track on ultra orthodox planning rules?

I lost my notes and can't remember the details of the rest of the hustings. But the event was filmed for the Islam Channel. Candidates: Andrew Boff, Mischa Borris, Jules Pipe - Diane Abbott, Keith Angus, Matt Sellwood and Darren Caplan said pretty much what you'd expect. All were impressive in their various ways. (For a proper report on the event try Hackney Citizen's report which covers pretty much everything.)

Caplan stood his ground on Iraq and Afghanistan. The hustings organisers were spotted coaxing a couple of angry men away from him after the meeting. The audience heard that Diane Abbott had actually been to Afghanistan

Hackney class war declared by Times and Mail

A Hackney Sure Start play group has become the battle ground for a media-driven class war.

On Tuesday 16 March Rachel Sylvester wrote this piece for the Times: "It takes more than play doh to plug a deficit" about the group attended by her kids.

She wrote: "The group will be closed down because the Learning Trust, which is responsible for education in Hackney, has decided that it is too middle class."

Back in 2008 she wrote a similar piece: "The brilliant art club where my two-year-old learns to make spider's webs out of dried spaghetti and elephants from milk cartons (in the middle of one of Hackney's grimmest council estates) has had its funding cut because its clientele is not diverse enough."

Last night the Daily Mail joined in: "Paint potty! Council zealots close down under fives' art club because children are too middle- class"

In 2008, writing for the Times, Rachel Sylvester, said: "Of course it's important that Sure Start reaches the people it was originally designed to help. But it would be ironic if the policy designed to reduce social exclusion ended up building up class barriers in another way. It was, after all, social segregation that in part led to the fate of Baby P and Shannon Matthews. Middle-class parents send their children to Sure Start activities because they are good. It would be a tragedy if they were turned into ghettos for the poor."

In 2010 she wrote: "If you want to raise a generation in which the middle-class children are as socially excluded as the poorest children, then this is the way to do it."

In the Daily Mail's: "Paint potty! Council zealots close down under fives' art club because children are too middle- class", the play group's director, Ella Ritches discovered that the Learning Trust had scanned all the post codes of the parents using the school and decided the users were not sufficiently vulnerable.

She said: "Sure Start services are supposed to be available to everyone. Middle-class mothers struggle with work, sleep deprivation and post-natal depression just like any other mother.

She told the Mail: "The Learning Trust officials concluded that 68 per cent of all users were white. I told them that just because they are white does not mean they are middle-class. But they said you could work out their properties’ value from the postcodes."

Rachel Sylvester on Hackney:

Telegraph 2006: "Where I live in Hackney, the biggest problem with noise comes not from "neighbours from hell" but from the police helicopters that hover overhead, lights blazing, for hours on end at night. I presume they are looking for drug dealers, although we have never been told. Whatever the explanation, my two-year-old son learnt to say "copter" long before he could identify a "cow".

Telegraph 2005: "What about drugs? This week, Sir Ian attacked middle-class people who took cocaine at dinner parties. Is he about to raid the Georgian terraces of Islington as well as the council estates of Hackney?"

Telegraph 2004: Shortly before I went on maternity leave at the end of last year, I had lunch with a minister who has impeccably Blairite credentials. The conversation turned, naturally, to schools in my area of London - Hackney. Diane Abbott, the local MP, had just said that the secondary schools there were so bad that she felt obliged, despite all her Left-wing principles, to educate her son privately.

What would the minister advise me to do, I asked, if my soon-to-be-born child were about to reach his 11th birthday? 'Oh,' he replied without a second thought, 'you'd have to move.'

Later in the same article, she wrote: "Of course, politicians have every right to do what they believe to be best for their sons and daughters. The problem is that most people cannot afford to do the same. In Hackney, 17 per cent of parents send their children to private schools, but what about the rest, many of whom live on council estates and are struggling to make ends meet?

"And not everyone has the money to move house to be near a good state school when, according to the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors, property prices are 12 per cent higher in the catchment areas of the best. 'Let them move house' is rather like Marie Antoinette declaring 'let them eat cake."