Meeting with Jonathan Fingerhut

This evening the Steering Committee was lucky enough to receive a visit from Jonathan Fingerhut, one of the parents involved in setting up the new Jewish Community Secondary School in Barnet (http://www.jcoss.org/). He was full of useful advice. For instance, he stressed how important it is to secure political support, both locally and nationally, before spending too much energy on such things as trying to locate a site or designing your imaginary building. It wasn't until his group managed to get all the different players on side -- the local authority, the Department for Children, Schools and Families, etc -- that their project finally got off the ground. 

It has taken Jonathan's group nine years to get to this point (the school is due to open next year). But we shouldn't be too disheartened by this. The Parent Promoter group who set up Elmgreen (http://www.the-elmgreen-school.org.uk/) -- the only other group of parents to have successfully set up a state secondary school -- managed to do it in three years. And we have an advantage in that Parent Promoted schools are currently flavour of the month, politically. I still believe that with a little bit of luck we'll be able to admit our first students by September, 2011. 

The important lesson we all took away from this evening is that it can be done.