Ed Miliband condemns Labour party heckler of schoolgirl Schoolgirl Joan al-Assam speaks at the Labour party conference, where she was heckled. Ed Miliband has condemned a Labour delegate for heckling a schoolgirl during a speech to the party's conference about her academy school. The year 11 pupil was explaining how her school encouraged the arts when one delegate shouted: "A lot of comprehensives do the same." Academy schools are controversial because they are freed from local authority control. The Labour leader later tweeted: "The person who shouted during the speech by a year 11 pupil was totally wrong and doesn't speak for Labour. The hundreds who applauded her do. Joan al-Assam, who is due to sit GCSEs this summer, is a pupil at Paddington Academy in west London, a school created under the last Labour government. She came to Britain from Iraq as an asylum seeker at the age of six. In her speech, Joan, who hopes to study law at university, spoke about arriving in the UK "with only the clothes on my back. I was powerless, helpless and most of all I was lost. But in Britain we can change out future ... mould it into whatever shape we desire. To me, education has a simple meaning: it's simply a key - a key that will open a bright future. The education secretary, Michael Gove, said: "Heckling a schoolgirl because she goes to an academy is disgraceful. But it also shows the real face of Labour - a party where aspiration and achievement gets booed. Joan was speaking at the Manchester conference before the keynote speech of the shadow education secretary, Stephen Twigg. Twigg said: "It's a privilege to do this job when you get the chance to meet young people like Joan ... despite all of the barriers she faced, she became a grade A student." Gove said Labour should expel the heckler from the party. This pupil is a credit to her school and proof that we need to expand the academies programme. On Thursday night, Labour released a statement saying: "Nobody should be heckled, especially not a 16-year-old girl. We should debate education in a civilised and polite fashion at conference. A Labour spokesman said no further details about the girl were being released by the party, at the request of her family.