Michael Barber, a member of the association, defended the Hackney Downs closure decision in an article (TES, November 17) attacking those who had campaigned to keep the school open, as being influenced by “rent-a-mob activists” and “semi-professional fanatics”.

Hackney Downs may have closed but the debates surrounding its closure must continue, and must become part of a wider debate on the most appropriate ways of dealing with schools offering unacceptably low standards. The procedures of education associations have now become part of that debate.

Education associations are intended as a last-resort measure for failing schools. They are a corporate body of at least five members appointed by the Secretary of State, empowered to take over the running of a school, displacing the governing body and becoming a holder of the property and employer of the staff. The powers of such an association argue for great care in appointing members. The association has specified duties, but no rules of conduct for its members.

Such rules are needed. It is important to know, for example, whether it will be standard practice for members of an association to publish articles justifying closure decisions while the association is still running the school.

The 42-page report of the North-East London Education Association was presented after it had been two-and-a-half months in the school, including the August holiday. The report contained no detailed evidence of the “extensive consultation” noted on page 11.

The association members detailed their 106 days in the school; lessons observed, meetings and gatherings attended and independent inspectors’ observations before arriving at their negative judgments on the low standards, under-performance, poor management and unsafe environment of the school. In contrast, other Hackney secondary schools were praised after just one visit to each school. The school the education association recommended that Hackney Downs boys attend after closure, Homerton House, was noted as an improving school and one which the EA was confident would progress. Three weeks later, published performance tables of GCSE results showed that Homerton House results for five A-Cs had plummeted from 20 per cent in 1994 to 11 per cent in 1995, while Hackney Downs had stayed steady at 11 per cent.

The report’s introductory letter to the Secretary of State for Education tells her that the school has a pupil:teacher ratio of 8:1 and an expenditure per pupil in l995-96 of Pounds 6,486. Michael Barber used these figures in his article to assert that this amounts to “daylight robbery from other Hackney pupils”.

The impression of outsiders is that Hackney Downs School has long functioned in favourable conditions without improvement. The truth is that Hackney Downs has functioned in unfavourable conditions for a long period and has been the subject of a good deal of political and ideological interference.

The low pupil:teacher ratio came about because the school was denied a Year 7 intake for two years. An Office for Standards in Education report of May 1994 recorded a teaching group size of 18.5 pupils and a per pupil expenditure of Pounds 2,900 in 1993, rising to Pounds 3,200 in 1994 after denial of an intake. The figure of Pounds 6,489 has applied only for the time the EA has been in the school.

Less forgivable than selective presentation of evidence is the criticism of the teachers, especially the comment that “they have forgotten what is possible in terms of standards in inner-city education”. As two-thirds of the teachers have only around three years’ teaching experience they have scarcely had time to learn, let alone forget.

This first report by an educational association is not auspicious. If EAs are to become a feature of the drive to raise educational standards their own standards of conduct and reporting must be beyond criticism. It has never been part of the school improvement movement to pillory schools in difficulties.

Sally Tomlinson is professor of educational policy at Goldsmiths’ College, University of London. Hackney Downs was one of 20 schools in which research on school effectiveness was carried out in the 198Os, reported in The School Effect by Sally Tomlinson and DJ Smith, 1989.