The Parent Promoters Foundation

Press and Media

BBC1 Six O'clock and Ten O'clock News, Radio 4 News, BBC News 24, BBC1's Inside Out, BBC Breakfast TV, Teachers' TV News, Today Programme Radio 4, Radio 4 You and Yours, Radio 4 Broadcasting House, Radio 5 live, LBC radio, Sky TV News, The Sunday Times, The Times, The Times Educational Supplement, The Independent, The Guardian, The Evening Standard and ES magazine, The Sunday Express, Candis Club Magazine and The South London Press have all run stories on the new school.

Twenty Television companies have sought to make documentaries to follow the parent promoters as they help to create the new school. (The parent promoters have turned down this style of television documentary).

Please see below for links to some of the articles

Parents to open own school to avoid battle for places
By Sarah Cassidy, Education Correspondent
09 April 2005

A group of parents who feared that a severe shortage of secondary schools would leave their children without a place are to open their own state school. The Elmgreen School in Lambeth, south London, will become the first state school to be set up by parents, using new legislation. More

No school? Then we'll build one of our own
By David Cohen, Evening Standard
13 April 2005

It sounds like the ultimate in middle-class chutzpah. A group of 15 worried parents facing an acute shortage of secondary school places in their London borough of Lambeth meet around a kitchen table and decide - sod this, we'll build our own school. All it needs is £25 million! More

Filling the gap

Lambeth is suffering from an acute shortage of secondary school places. Sam Friedman reports on what parents are doing to change things

Friday April 15, 2005

Parents are notorious for meddling in their children's education, but in the London borough of Lambeth interference is perhaps warranted. A population of 300,000 must make do with only 11 secondary schools and the local educational authority (LEA) recently projected a shortage of 1,500 places by 2011. Parents throughout the borough are rightly appalled by the situation and a number of parent-led groups have sprung up in recent years to try to address the problems themselves. More

Parent power surge

Michael Shaw
Published: 15 April 2005

A group of parents who feared their children would not get places in local schools are to become the first to found a state-funded secondary themselves.

The campaigners in Lambeth, south London, are taking advantage of two-year-old regulations which force local authorities to consider other providers when they plan new schools.

Stephen Twigg, the schools minister, has agreed to fast-track funding for the £25 million Elmcourt school so it can open in 2007.

Read more in the TES

Education: The future of schooling? Published: 25th April 2005
Parents in south London have come up with a radical solution to the secondary school crisis – build their own, says Zoe Brennan More

The School built on parent power
Focus By Geraint Jones
The quotes below were taken from a two-page spread that appeared in the Sunday Express on the 1st May 2005

When Sophia Yates examined the secondary school options ahead for her daughter Eva she found to her horror that she was facing an hour-long journey morning and evening and the prospect of being split up from her friends.

The sense of outrage and helplessness she felt is shared by parents across Britain. Around 70,000 families cannot find a suitable secondary school for their child. The process has been described as nightmarish and the worst possible way for 11 year olds to begin Secondary education.

What marked Sophia out was that she wasn't content to moan about 'the system' and leave improvements to the experts. She talked to fellow parents and found they had similar feelings. So they decided to do something about it - themselves.

The transfer from primary to secondary puts children 'under the most intolerable pressure.' she said.

Power Struggle

By John Crace
Published: 10th May 2005

But many and perhaps even most middle-class parents would prefer to hand back control to the professionals and to work in collaboration with local education authorities. Sophia Yates (pictured on the cover with her children) is heading a core of 40 parent promoters to set up Elmcourt school, a new comprehensive in Lambeth, south London, that is due to open in September 2007. Much of the media attention concerning this campaign has focused on the anger of Yates and her fellow parents over claims that the borough had insufficient secondary places. More

You can find another 19 articles listed on the South London Press website. Click Here.