Warning from past

• THE Tribune’s coverage of the GCSE results focused on a “warning” that too little had been done to improve results (You must do even better with GCSEs, January 15). But who was the “warning” from? I think it was just Labour Party politicians, who have made it their sole purpose to talk Islington’s young people down and be generally negative.
This year’s GCSE results were Islington’s best ever, and a credit to pupils, teachers and schools. Our schools are improving at double the national rate. In fact, only 11 places in the country are improving faster than Islington’s schools.
Islington schools used to be so bad because of the appalling way the same Labour politicians ran them when they controlled the council. When Labour councillor Phil Kelly was in charge of education in the 1990s, this is what the Government schools inspector had to say about Islington: “Overall, these are dismal findings, the worst encountered to date in any inspection.” And “The council as a whole has many problems, including a large budget deficit, from which education is not immune.” 
Of the Labour council’s school support services, the inspector said: “If the local authority were able to do some of them a little less inadequately than it does at present, that would be a major advance.”
The fact that it’s taken ten years to get to where we are now is no criticism of Lib Dems or the schools or Cambridge Education, but testament to how appalling our schools were under Labour. Parents went out of their way to send their kids to schools outside the borough. Islington’s schools still need to get even better, but the people I would least trust to do that are the Labour Party politicians who completely wrecked them last time.
CLLR TRACY ISMAIL
Lib Dem, St George’s ward