Vince Cable

General disappointment has been expressed over the Borough's secondary school results with the Borough halfway down the list of London Boroughs on GCSE results - below Ealing, Hammersmith, Hounslow and Brent - let alone Kingston and Sutton; with the second highest truancy in London (2.5%); and with school 'value added' the sixth worst in London even behind Lambeth, Hackney, Tower Hamlets, Southwark and Wandsworth.

Vincent Cable MP said: "The Borough's secondary school performance is clearly distorted by the effect of the three top independent schools - St Paul's, Hampton and LEH who take some of the high performing pupils and by the high percentage of out-of-borough pupils in HCC, Whitton and Sheen. But, even allowing for this, the results are worrying. What the figures show is that the value added figures are poor, with exceptions like Waldegrave.

"I know that some of the schools at the bottom of the tables, like Whitton and HCC, have been trying very hard with good leadership, committed governors and teachers. The problems are complex but my impression is that a key problem is that less successful schools need a lot more help from the Council with support staff to attend to the children with behavioural and disciplinary problems. A small number of these can bee highly disruptive and affect the morale and motivation of everyone else."