Diane Abbott slams David Cameron for blaming gangs for riots

Diane Abbott MP, the Shadow Health Minister and MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington, has said that the summer riots have reflected ‘an unspoken crisis in the country’s efforts to raise educational standards in some of the country’s inner cities’, following the release of new Ministry of Justice figures that profile those who took part. She accepted that gangs were a problem, but rejected the government’s analysis that the riots were caused by ‘criminality, pure and simple’.

More than a third of youngsters involved in this summer's riots had been excluded from school at some point in the last year, figures showed today.

Those involved in the looting and violence which swept through English cities in August were younger, poorer, involved in more trouble and achieved lower grades than average, detailed analysis of the histories of those charged over the disturbances showed.

But gangs "generally did not play a pivotal role", officials said, and most police forces found that fewer than one in 10 of those arrested were gang members.

The figures, which were based on matching Ministry of Justice (MoJ) records with those from the national pupil database held by the Department for Education, showed 36% of young people - some 139 10 to 17-year-olds - who appeared before the courts over the riots had received one or more fixed-term exclusions in 2009/10, compared with just 5.6% of all pupils aged 15.

A total of 11, 3% of young people appearing before courts over the riots, had been permanently excluded, compared with 0.1% of all those children aged 15 at the start of the 2009/10 academic year.

Three in 10 (30%) were persistent absentees from school, compared with less than one in 20 (4%) of all pupils in secondary schools run by local authorities, the figures showed.

Overall absence rates were also higher for those young people involved in the riots, up to 18.6% compared with 8.4% for all pupils in Year 11.

And their educational achievement was down, with just one in 10 of the youngsters involved achieving five or more A* to C grades at GCSE, including English and maths, compared with more than half (53%) of all pupils in 2009/10.

Some two-fifths of youngsters were in receipt of free school meals, compared with less than a fifth on average, and two-thirds had special educational needs, compared with the average of a fifth of all pupils, the figures showed.

Diane Abbott MP, the Shadow Health Minister, and MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington, said:

‘These figures illustrate just how out of touch this government is. The fact that David Cameron blames gangs, pure and simple, shows just how little the government really knows about inner city areas. It is a series of much more complex issues that the government needs to start engaging with.

‘Gangs are a serious problem. But a third of those young people involved have been excluded in the past year, whilst two-thirds had special educational needs, so it clear that education is the key issue here. What we have seen really reflects an unspoken crisis in the country’s efforts to raise educational standards in some of the inner cities. The worrying thing is that many of these inner cities know that this government is not going to start taking us in the right direction any time soon.

For many people who were rioting, that week was a rejection of the future that was laid out for them.’

--ENDS--

1) Diane’s recent blog on the riots at the Huffington Post UK is here: http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/diane-abbott/uk-riots-we-must-confront-get-rich-culture_b_961846.html
2) A decade ago Diane Abbott began a campaign to raise the educational achievement levels of Black kids in London. She titled it London Schools and the Black Child: http://www.blackeducation.info/
3) David Cameron on the riots: 'This is criminality pure and simple' http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/video/2011/aug/09/david-cameron-riots-criminality-video
4) PM vows war on gangs after riots: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/pm-vows-war-on-gangs-after-riots-2338009.html

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