Letter to the editor: In response to your article, ‘Council insider on Mossbourne’

The following letter was sent, by email, to the Hackney Citizen at 21:00 on Friday, 7 February 2025. – Ed.

Dear Hackney Citizen.

As regular readers we would like to express our disquiet at the anonymous article you published [Thursday 6 February 2025] which made several unsupported allegations about Mossbourne Academy Schools in Hackney.

The author is (apparently) a member of staff at Hackney Council whose anonymity is protecting them from having to provide evidence and context for their very serious allegations.

We would like to express concern about whether Hackney Council can be an impartial participant in this investigation when their team are publicly voicing such a strong anti-Mossbourne position in this article.

Publishing such an opinion piece during a formal investigation is reckless and jeopardises the neutrality of the investigation. Also no data was provided for the shocking assertions made in the letter.

Apparently there is “large scale suffering for Hackney children and families”. Where are the figures to support this statement? Apparently the impact is “detailed and documented”. Why isn’t there then statistical proof of this in the article?

The statement that “local authorities have no power over academies” is simply untrue. Some of us have been governors at Hackney’s schools, some academies, some Free Schools and some LEA schools throughout the years. Regardless of the type of school the LEA has significant influence over how the school is run, including both Mossbourne Academies.

But most worrying of all, for the anonymous author to ask whether a local school might be responsible for the future suicide of a Hackney child is utterly irresponsible and completely ignores the complexity of child and teen mental health in all UK schools.

The letter also states that Mossbourne drives out “at scale” those who don’t perform well. A brief Google shows that Mossbourne has permanent exclusion rates in line with Hackney numbers. (Hackney has higher numbers as a borough than London averages.)

We have encountered many differences of opinion within our school community in the past and navigated them successfully by discussion and the recognition that everyone is working for the general good of our school community as a whole, even if we don’t always agree.

We are all for reasoned debate, and we recognise that no school is perfect and that there are certainly some pupils for whom Mossbourne has not been a positive experience. But the anonymous and irresponsible piece you have published is very far from being reasoned and balanced.

And consequently we are asking that it be removed from your website.

Yours sincerely,