Schools Secretary Ed Balls yesterday admitted children on an Oxford estate were not getting good enough exam results - but pledged they would improve.

Mr Balls made the promise when he visited the Leys Children’s Centre at Cuddesdon Corner after a recent analysis of 2007 GCSE results, broken down by area, showed children from Blackbird Leys gained the fifth worst scores in the country.

Just 8.7 per cent of pupils achieved five A* to C grades including English and Maths.

Mr Balls said: “A few years back pretty much every school in Blackbird Leys was on special measures. That is no longer the case.

“We also have a new academy.

Is that good enough? Of course not. There is a lot more to be done.”

The Oxford Academy, formerly Peers School, was set up in September with one of its key aims being to improve exam grades.

Mr Balls continued: “It is a long-term task to improve the situation, but we can be confident that in the next two to three years the academy will have a direct effect on results.

“It will raise aspirations because we are saying to the children ‘you are sufficiently special to give you the kind of chances other kids in Oxford already have’.

“Every child growing up in Blackbird Leys has the same right to go to school, go to college, get a job, like children in every part of the city — but it will only happen with investment and leadership.”

He believed children’s centres were key to solving the problem by providing facilities for children at a very young age and getting them interested in learning.

Issues relating to high unemployment were also a factor.

He said: “We would like every single parent to have a chance of a job and every young person coming out of school to do so with a qualification and, until we achieve those things, it is never going to be a level playing field for this estate.

“That is why we need to keep investing in Blackbird Leys.”

Head of Leys Children’s Centre Jenny Martin said: “If you look at all the things we are doing, none of them were here two years ago.

“We know you have to start early with children. When children are coming here, they are not sitting at home doing nothing and watching television, they are getting involved.”

Mr Balls spoke to volunteers, parents and children at the centre and helped the youngsters play with building bricks and painting.

Mum Sara Bailey, whose daughter Lola Parkin created a picture with Mr Balls’s help, said: “He was a very nice man. He seemed genuine and was good with the children.”

Mr Balls also visited Banbury School and Cheney School, Headington, where he was discussing extremism with Year 10 and 12 pupils who had recently taken part in a play on the subject.