As a group of parents in one of London’s most deprived boroughs, Hackney, we share the misgivings expressed by several contributors to your February 23 coverage of the Government’s education Green Paper.

Specialisation, selection and denominational secondary schools are precisely what we do not want. The reason families flee Hackney as their children approach secondary age is because their children have no chance of attending a decent, “bog-standard” school.

Hackney is, as the LEA wryly observed two years ago, “a net exporter of pupils aged 11-16”.

We have been promised a say in consultation on the development of secondary education in Hackney but in the light of New Labour thinking as expressed in the Green Paper, that promise looks increasingly hollow.

Rachel Hawes
Hackney Parents’ Secondary Schools Campaign