Labour’s love-hate lines on Hampstead School

TWO Labour parliamentary candidates, Tulip Siddiq and Rowenna Davis, look shocked as they read the Camden New Journal’s recent front page scoop about a pupil at Hampstead School being reported to the police by his headteacher for authoring a critical blog about the West Hampstead secondary.

Rowenna, who is standing in Southampton, was so agitated by the story she went onto write a piece about it for the Guardian because the “issue cuts deep with me because I’m a former student of Hampstead School”.

It meant she was able to tell us again (as she did in March) about how as a teenager she led an Iraq War protest as a teenager.

Her article isn’t the most wonderful endorsement for how the school is managed now. She says of blogger Kinnan Zaloom: “Personally, I find him less of a threat than his headteacher.”

But the Labour Party is full of different opinions: on the same day, Rowenna’s piece was published, Labour councillor Mike Katz had an op-ed piece in the Ham & High, in which he said of the same headteacher : “Jacques Szemalikowski has provided exceptional leadership and driven up results.”