News: Ed teacher! Schools secretary Ed Balls drops in on academy and receives unexpected gift from its sponsor
Published: 29 January 2010
by JAMIE WELHAM
WILL Ed Balls be declaring the Pimlico Academy school tie he was given during his visit yesterday (Wednesday) morning?
The Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families was at the school to launch a government initiative to provide schools with energy display meters.
But the embarrassed grimace with which he received the rather dashing pink and blue neckwear probably had something to do with the man bearing the gift, the academy’s sponsor John Nash, whose political stripes are more blue than red.
Last week he was at the centre of a media storm when it was reported he made a £21,000 donation to the private office of the Tories’ health spokesman Andrew Lansley.
Mr Balls was given a tour around the school by headteacher Jerry Collins and three students, dropping into two science classes.
Asked about the state of the borough’s primary schools in light of the recent damning report from the Westminster Education Commission (WEC), Mr Balls said schools chiefs must take “responsibility” and support under-11s with emotional and behavioural difficulties. Primary school heads told the WEC they were suffering from a “critical lack of support”, reflected in a stark rise in the number of exclusions in the borough over the past five years.
Tory sources have since said that Mr Nash, the chairman of Care UK, a major contractor to the NHS, and head of Future, the charitable trust that sponsors the academy, had not been the donor, and it had in fact been his wife.