Education
See also: List of schools in the London Borough of Tower HamletsThe London Borough of Tower Hamlets is the local education authority for state schools within the borough. As of January 2008 there are 19,890 primary-school pupils and 15,262 secondary-school pupils attending state schools in Tower Hamlets. Independent-school pupils account for 2.4 percent of schoolchildren in the borough. In 2010 51.8 percent of pupils achieved 5 A*–C GCSEs including Mathematics and English—the highest results in the borough's history—compared to the national average of 53.4 percent. Seventy-four percent achieved 5 A*–C GCSEs for all subjects (the same as the English average); the figure in 1997 was 26 percent. The percentage of pupils on free school meals in the borough is the highest in England and Wales. In 2007 the council rejected proposals to build a Goldman Sachs-sponsored academy.
Schools in the borough have high levels of racial segregation. The Times reported in 2006 that 47 percent of secondary schools were exclusively non-white, and that 33 percent had a white majority. About 60 percent of pupils entering primary and secondary school are Bangladeshi. The percentage of primary-school pupils who speak English as a second language is 78.
The council runs several Idea Stores in the borough, which combine traditional library services with other resources, and are designed to attract more diverse members. The flagship Whitechapel store was designed by David Adjaye and cost £16 million to build.
Read more about this topic: London Borough Of Tower Hamlets
Famous quotes containing the word education:
“It is not every man who can be a Christian, even in a very moderate sense, whatever education you give him. It is a matter of constitution and temperament, after all. He may have to be born again many times. I have known many a man who pretended to be a Christian, in whom it was ridiculous, for he had no genius for it. It is not every man who can be a free man, even.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“... many of the things which we deplore, the prevalence of tuberculosis, the mounting record of crime in certain sections of the country, are not due just to lack of education and to physical differences, but are due in great part to the basic fact of segregation which we have set up in this country and which warps and twists the lives not only of our Negro population, but sometimes of foreign born or even of religious groups.”
—Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962)
“In my state, on the basis of the separate but equal doctrine, we have made enormous strides over the years in the education of both races. Personally, I think it would have been sounder judgment to allow that progress to continue through the process of natural evolution. However, there is no point crying about spilt milk.”
—Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973)