BLAIR SPEAKS FROM HACKNEY ACADEMY

A pioneering city academy in the heart of Hackney was the venue for Tony Blair’s speech on policy reform on Monday, writes Pamela Welsh

Mossbourne Community Academy in Hackney Downs hosted the event, which saw the Prime Minister stand shoulder to shoulder with Chancellor Gordon Brown on the future of public services in the next decade.

Blair said: "What we want is to keep these basic public service values, which are about access to quality public services irrespective of your wealth, but make sure those are truly personalised services where there's a much greater diversity of provider and the old ways of working are broken down."

The government announced plans to “empower the citizen” and said that the academy system was one of the best ways to do this.

Under the controversial model, schools are given greater freedom in return for sponsorship. Mossbourne, which cost over £25 million to build, specialises in information and technology, and has the freedom to choose pupils who are interested specifically in these areas. It was established with the backing of locally born businessman Sir Clive Bourne, a freight millionaire who died suddenly last month.

The Prime Minister has had a close relationship with the school. Blair opened Mossbourne in September 2004 and used the academy as an example of his plans to double the amount of academies in the UK, after it was called “outstanding” by an Ofsted report in November.

The school’s principal is Sir Michael Wilshaw, knighted for his services to education. He said:

"Mossbourne sits on the site of the ill-fated Hackney Downs School, named the “worst school in Britain” in the mid-1990s. The boys’ comprehensive, whose alumni include playwright Harold Pinter was closed down in 1995 after direct government intervention.

Hackney Downs councillor Michael Desmond said: “The big change in education in the ward has been the Mossbourne Academy. Over 1000 kids applied for the recent intake, and its massively oversubscribed. Just since then it has turned around the borough, after the closure of Hackney Downs School. For the first time in 20 years people are actually moving into the area for the education.”