Fantastic news that Michael Gove is the new Schools Secretary – or Education Secretary, as he will no doubt shortly be known. Rumours were swirling around last night that the job had gone to David Laws, prompting speculation that the Conservatives' manifesto commitment to free schools had been junked in the course of negotiations with the Lib Dems. Fiona Millar, Alastair Campbell's partner and the most vocal opponent of allowing parents and teachers to set up new schools, even felt confident enough to write something for Labour List entitled 'Why would Michael Gove want to give his job to a Lib Dem?'

Not so fast, Fiona. It turns out Michael Gove has got the job after all. And, judging from the just published Coalition Agreement, the new Government has not junked the policy. On the contrary, it's right there in black and white:

We agree to promote the reform of schools in order to ensure:

* that new providers can enter the state school system in response to parental demand;

* that all schools have greater freedom over curriculum; and,

* that all schools are held properly accountable.

That last cause might set alarm bells ringing for some. At first glance, it looks as though the Conservatives have been forced, at the insistence of the Lib Dems, to keep in place the veto that local authorities currently enjoy over the set up of new Academies. But according to my sources, that is not the case. Indeed, the local authority veto was a "red line" during the negotiations, i.e., something the Tories weren't prepared to negotiate on. They know that if local authorities can block the creation of free schools, they will – and that even goes for Conservative-controlled councils, as we discovered during the election campaign when the Conservative head of Kent County Council expressed scepticism about the policy.

The fact that the coalition Government is four-square behind free schools is fantastic news, and not just for the group of 500 parents and teachers I'm hoping to set up the West London Free School with, but for the 450 groups that have already registered with the New Schools Network and are champing at the bit to get going. More than that, it's good news for the children of this country.

Until now, the only children who have had access to high-performing secondary schools that offer a rigorous, academic education are those who are lucky enough to get into one of England's 164 remaining grammars, are of the right particular faith or whose parents are wealthy enough to either go private or move into the catchment area of a good comprehensive. Now, thanks to this new policy, every child will soon have access to a good school, regardless of wealth, ability or faith.

Welcome to the DCSF, Mr Gove. Your desk awaits you.

The following is a summary of where the parties said they stood when it came to our proposal to set up a parent-sponsored Academy in the borough. 

For Parliament:

•               The Conservatives: Angie Bray confirmed that allowing groups like ours to set up free schools is one of the Conservative Party’s flagship social policies and she was confident that under the Tories the Department for Children, Schools and Families would make sufficient capital funding available to enable us to set up our school. She also confirmed that if the Conservatives win the election they will remove the veto power that local authorities currently have over the creation of new Academies meaning it won’t matter what colour Ealing Council is – blue, red or yellow.

•               The Liberal Democrats: Jon Ball said that while the Liberal Democrats were interested in allowing parents to sponsor schools and the schools to develop their own ethos and curriculum, they would insist that any new schools, including Academies, are set up in partnership with local authorities. Asked if he thought it probable that the Parliamentary Party would insist on that as a condition of supporting the Conservatives’ education policy in a hung Parliament, he responded that they were concerned about the negative effect of free schools on neighbouring schools and they believed that granting local authorities “strategic oversight” over the creation of all new schools was the best way to safeguard existing schools. Consequently, if the Liberal Democrats win an overall majority on Thursday or hold the whip hand in a hung Parliament it is likely that our group will not be able to make any progress without the blessing of Ealing Council. He also said that the Liberal Democrats are committed to changing the School Admissions Code so faith schools like Twyford will no longer be able to give preference to children of a particular faith – at least, not to the extent that they do at present.

•                Labour: Bassam Mahfouz acknowledged that there would shortly be a need for a new secondary school in the borough, in addition to the one Ealing Council is planning to build in Greenford, but said he would favour the creation of a cooperative trust school in partnership with the local authority rather than a parent-sponsored Academy. He suggested that the key thing wasn't "what you call it, but how it works.” He said there would be an opportunity for local parents to have an input into such a school, along with other stakeholders in the borough.

For the council:

•               The Conservative council candidates were extremely positive and said they were four square behind this initiative and would provide whatever support we needed. Angie Bray pointed out that Jason Stacey, the Conservative leader of the Council, made a public statement in support of the West London Free School earlier in the week. They suggested that we might want to discuss with the Council in due course support services that we might need from them.

•               The Liberal Democrats were the least sympathetic of the three main parties to what we want to do. Harvey Rose, the leader of the Lib Dem group contesting the local elections, said they were not in favour of free schools and that we should be trying to raise standards from inside the borough’s existing schools rather than trying to set up a new one and they were concerned that funding for a new free school in the borough would divert resources from the existing secondary schools. He conceded that there might be a need for a new school in the borough in due course, but was adamant that it should be set up by the local authority. When I asked him whether there might be any circumstances in which a Liberal Democrat controlled Council would support our initiative, he said it was unlikely. “You would have a mountain to climb,” he said. However, when pushed he did say they would be prepared to listen to us.

•               The Labour council candidates denied that there was a need for a greater range of different schools in the borough and said that local parents already have a choice if they’re prepared to get on the bus or tube and go out of the borough. They said that in the event of regaining control of Ealing Council they would be willing to listen to any proposals our group might bring forward, but would need to be persuaded that a parent-sponsored Academy was the best way of meeting the need for additional secondary school places in the borough as opposed to a cooperative trust school. Their Shadow Finance Spokesperson appeared to become increasingly interested in our scheme as the evening progressed and said that personally she recognised the benefit of diversity in educational provision.

We would like to thank all the candidates that took part in the discussion – and those that didn’t have an opportunity, such as Tim Carpenter of the Libertarian Party who is hoping to be elected in the Council ward of Walpole and is an enthusiastic supporter of ours. All three main parties’ representatives engaged in a lively, but respectful exchange and the evening remained broadly good-humoured throughout. There is no doubt that all the candidates care a great deal about education in the borough, with a surprising number either currently serving or having served as governors of local primary and secondary schools. In addition to the hustings, we also wrote to all the local and national candidates in Ealing asking for their backing and we have put the names of those who have written back, pledging their support, on our website.

We would also like to thank Alice Hudson and Tony McKee at Twyford who kindly allowed us to use the Performance Centre and the Twyford students who ensured that the event ran smoothly.

Finally, could I take this opportunity to draw your attention to the consultation Ealing Council is carrying out about the sort of school the new high school in Greenford ought to be? The Church of England Diocese has expressed an interest in running the school in federation with Twyford, mirroring Twyford’s ethos and standards but without the faith-based admissions policy. I’m 100% supportive of this initiative and have described the sort of school I would like the West London Free School to be as a “secular faith school”. The new high school is too far away for most of us, and we’ll need an additional school to meet demand in any event, but if I was a local parent in Greenford the idea of being able to send my children to a secular version of Twyford would be enormously appealing. If you could take the time to fill out this survey and make your feelings known it would undoubtedly help their cause.

I was a little taken aback by this. Until then, I was feeling rather proud of the conscientious way we had gone about devising a curriculum. For instance, I had asked one teacher in the group to review all the latest research about the pros and cons of setting and even managed to supply her with a summary of John Hattie's book Visible Learning and a copy of a paper by Professor Jo Boaler entitled "The 'Psychological Prisons' from Which They Never Escaped: the role of ability grouping in reproducing social class inequalities"

But he was undoubtedly right. It was the fact that most of us were so clearly on a vertical learning curve that would grate with teachers. It would confirm their suspicion that a bunch of parents had no business trying to start a school.

At the beginning of the process, I thought all the key curriculum questions could be solved by doing some elementary research. Take the question of GCSEs versus the middle years programme (MYP) of the International Baccalaureate (IB).

Of course, MYP isn't an option at the moment, thanks to Schools Secretary Ed Balls' insistence that all new state secondary schools have to teach the national curriculum, but I'm hoping that his successor - Labour or Conservative - will be a little more flexible.

I met with a former headteacher of one of Britain's leading independent schools and she assured me that MYP was the answer to my prayers. "It's light years ahead of the national curriculum," she said.

But a couple of days later I met with another headteacher who told me that MYP was "politically correct nonsense". "It's designed to churn out pro-European social democrats," he said. "There's all this balls about 'joined up learning' and 'inter-disciplinary approaches'. What that essentially boils down to is indoctrinating children about global warming."

In the end, we decided not to go for MYP for the practical reason that the process of becoming an MYP-accredited school would add an additional layer of expense to our set-up costs.

Unfortunately, that was just the tip of the iceberg. What about GCSEs versus IGCSEs? Or A-levels versus the IB? A combination of IGCSEs and the IB looked superficially attractive, not least because they both require a bit more intellectual rigour than GCSEs and A-levels.

But do universities take the "hardness" of IGCSEs and the IB into account when making offers? I checked with my old admissions tutor at Oxford and he told me that he regards an IGCSE "B" as the equivalent of a GCSE "A". Some teachers on my committee thought that underestimated just how much harder IGCSEs are.

We took the coward's way out. We decided to postpone the decision on whether to go for the IB or A-levels until our sixth form is up and running and leave the issue of whether to teach GCSEs or IGCSEs to our own heads of department. That is to say, it will be up to them to make the call on a subject-by-subject basis. The same goes for setting.

As a general principle, we want teachers to have as much autonomy as possible at our school. We want them to choose the syllabus that will best enable them to communicate their passion for their subject, and decide how best to deliver it to a mixed ability year group.

We most emphatically don't want them to "teach to the test", and one advantage of mixing up GCSEs and IGCSEs is that it will make it harder to rank the West London Free School in the league tables.

We also recognise that it would be premature to make too many curriculum decisions before our senior leadership team is in place. We are very clear about our ethos and vision - we want our school to be rigorously academic, offering children a classical liberal education - but we're a little more flexible when it comes to the curriculum.

I hope any teachers watching us thrash out these issues on TV won't form too negative an impression.

As with so many aspects of starting a school, it's a question of figuring out what part of the process you can usefully contribute to and what is best left to the professionals.

When it comes to the nitty gritty of devising a curriculum, I've learnt the wisdom of Wittgenstein's maxim: "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent."

Does this mean that Ed Balls supports the idea of parent-sponsored academies? The cynical reading of this letter is that it's a meaningless gesture designed to shore up support for Martin Linton, the Battersea Labour MP who was elected in 2005 with a majority of just 163, one of the slimmest in the country. Is there any way Wandsworth Council would risk the £300 million in BSF funding it has already been promised by resubmitting its strategic educational plan? In a key passage, Balls writes:  

If it is considered appropriate to bring forward an alternative strategy for the delivery of your BSF investment then this will be reviewed in the same way as the original strategy. Wandsworth will need to work very quickly to ensure that any changes to its strategy are carried out in a timely fashion as the competition and consultation issues that could arise from such a change could take some months to conclude. A change to the sequence of the capital programme might therefore be necessary to avoid your BSF programme across 16 schools being brought to a halt.

If I was Paul Robinson, Wandsworth's Director of Children's Services, that paragraph would make me nervous. Thanks to the country's huge public deficit, there's already a question mark hanging over the BSF funding that's been promised to local authorities -- not just in Wandsworth, but across the country -- and any Director of Children's Services would need to think very carefully before revisiting a plan that's been agreed for fear that it might increase that risk. The words "some months to conclude" will send a shiver down his spine.

A more optimistic reading of the letter is that Balls is leaving the door open to Wandsworth -- and, by implication, other local authorities -- to resubmit their BSF plans in response to local campaigns by parent groups who disagree with an LA's decision about where to allocate its BSF funding. And perhaps the implication of that final sentence is that he'd be happy to try and do this in a way that didn't jeopardise the delivery of that investment.

At present, it's hard to see what bearing this would have on our plans, even if Labour are re-elected and Ed Balls remains at the DCSF. In those circumstances, we won't be urging Ealing to redraft its plans regarding how to spend its own allocation of £300 million BSF funding. Rather, we'll be arguing that it should apply for additional BSF money since it has under-estimated just how many new secondary school places will be needed over the next ten years.

Some people will think it's pie-in-the-sky to imagine there will be any additional BSF funding available, but the government has a statutory duty to provide secondary school places to all the children that need them, so money to fund additional places in Ealing will have to come from somewhere.

If the Tories win the election, by contrast, our lives will be easier. They've said they'd allow groups like ours -- and groups like the one in Kirklees and Wandsworth -- to apply directly to the DCSF for capital funding, cutting out local authorities. And the application process will be simpler than the BSF application process, enabling us to secure funding more quickly than if Ealing routed the application through the BSF programme.

We also have the advantage of wanting to lease a building. It isn't clear what a Labour government's attitude to that proposal would be, but the Tories have said they're all in favour. In principle, Labour should be keen, too, since it will mean the cost of creating the new secondary school places needed in the borough will be far lower than if the DCSF had to fund a new build through BSF. The average cost of a new build is £30 million, whereas we'd be able to fit-out a leased building for less than £5 million.

Fiendishly complicated, as always.  But we're confident we could make progress under either a Labour or Conservative government -- it would just be a lot faster under the Tories. The other advantage is that if Cameron squeaks in we won't be saddled with the task of persuading Ealing Council to apply for additional funding on our behalf. Something tells me that won't be a walk in the park.

Last night in the Rocket on Churchfield Road, a group of angry parents met to discuss how to fight Ealing Council's plan to stick a Portakabin in the playground of Derwentwater Primary School. Derwentwater is a three form entry school -- that is to say, it is already the most cramped school in Acton. Ealing's plan is to stick a Portakabin in the playground, enabling the school to admit an extra class in 2010 and possibly in 2011 as well. If you include the nursery, this will take the number of children at Derwentwater up to 785, making it larger than the secondary school I'm trying to set up. The effect of this expansion on the children already at the school is neatly illustrated by this YouTube video made by one of the Derwentwater parents.

The parents' fury is directed at Ealing Council, which is understandable, but the local authority has been wrong-footed by the unanticipated baby boom. Between 2004-06, births in Ealing jumped from 4,643 to 5,007 and last year rose to 5,445. This is a nationwide phenomenon as the Telegraph reported last week. Britain will need to find an additional 549,000 primary school places within the next eight years to cope with the increased demand: "According to projections published yesterday by the Department for Children, Schools and Families, there are currently 3,992,000 pupils aged under 11 in state-funded nursery and primary schools. It said numbers were expected to grow year-on-year to 4,541,000 in 2018 – an additional 549,000. It will be the biggest number of pupils in the system since the late-70s. The rise would be equivalent to around 2,300 average-sized primary schools, or an additional 18,300 classes of 30 pupils."

Projecting future births is an inexact science and most local authorities will, like Ealing, be looking at temporary solutions. After all, Ealing doesn't want to build any new primary schools in Acton if the expanding birth rate is a blip rather than a long-term trend. But if the mood at the Rocket yesterday is anything to go by, parents simply won't stand for Portakabins being put in school playgrounds, particularly if there are no guarantees that they won't become permanent structures.

A more practical solution would be to take the problem off Ealing Council's hands by allowing parent groups to set up schools themselves and lease the premises. If the birth rate remains high, they could continue to lease the buildings; if it starts to fall, they could end the leases and close the schools. Not as cheap as sticking Portakabins in school playgrounds, perhaps, but a good deal cheaper than building new schools.

The difficulties being experienced by the Derwentwater parents is a perfect illustration of the need for a new secondary school in Acton. The demand for more primary school places will shortly translate into a demand for more secondary school places and if no new school is set up to accommodate this the Council will have to put Portakabins in the area's three comprehensives as well. My solution -- which is to set up a new school in a leased building -- is surely preferable. (You can watch a new YouTube video about my plans here.)

No matter which party wins the general election, the DCSF should allow parent groups to set up schools in leased buildings -- both primaries and secondaries. Given the need to limit public spending, it's the only practical solution to the shortage of school places we're now facing. 

Seen against the backdrop of Blair and Brown's egalitarian rhetoric, the report is almost comic. For instance, income inequality in Britain (according to one measure, at least) reached its highest level in 2007-8 than at any time since the Second World War. Another shocking revelation: The richest 10 per cent of Britain's households have a total net wealth exceeding £853,000, while the poorest 10 per cent have a total net wealth of under £8,800, a figure that includes the family car. 

However, it isn'y Labour's failure to eradicate poverty that will be seized upon by the Conservatives -- something that Cameron has already made considerable capital out of -- but the impact of that poverty on the life chances of children. We already know that children on free school meals are half as likely to get five good GCSEs including English and maths than those who aren't -- and the report seems to lay the blame for this on the poor quality of education available in the majority of state schools. "The evidence we have looked at shows the long arm of people's origins in shaping their life chances, stretching through life stages, literally from cradle to grave," the report states. "Differences in wealth in particular are associated with opportunities such as the ability to buy houses in the catchment areas of the best schools or to afford private education, with advantages for children that continue through and beyond education."

Given the reach of this "long arm", it's not surprising that Britain isn't faring very well in the social mobility stakes, either. The report cites the work of Jo Blanden and Stephen Machin who used "birth cohort studies" to follow the progress of two groups of children, one born in 1958, the other in 1970. Blanden and Machin discovered that a child born in 1958 whose parents were in the bottom quarter of incomes was more likely to end up in a higher income bracket than a child born in comparable circumstances in 1970. Similarly, a child born in 1958 whose parents were in the top quarter of incomes was more likely to end up in a lower income bracket than a comparable child born in 1970.

This and other similar studies of intergenerational income mobility show that (according to this measure) Britain has the lowest level of social mobility in the developed world, with the exception of Brazil and the USA. 

The reason we're likely to hear a lot more about reports like this over the next few months is that the Tories claim to have an education policy designed to address these problems. By making it easier for parents and other concerned groups to set up state schools, and by freeing those schools of the need to teach the National Curriculum, Michael Gove hopes to create a new generation of high-performing Academies that will not only prove more accessible to children from under-privileged backgrounds than good schools are at present, but will drive up standards across the board. 

As someone hoping to set up one of these Academies in Acton, I've been trying to find out what we can do to boost the attainment level of children from under-privileged backgrounds and I visited a school last week that was inspirational. King Solomon Academy in Paddington is an all-through school, meaning it's a primary and secondary school combined. It's run by ARK, one of the most successful operators of Academies, and based on a model that synthesises the ethos and curricula of America's most high-performing charter schools, particularly those in African-American communities.  

King Solomon Academy aims to secure every student a place at a good university and expects 100 per cent of them to get five good GCSEs including English and maths. This, in spite of the fact that over 50 per cent of its pupils are on free school meals and many of them don't speak English as a first language. How do they hope to do this? It's simple really: by making them work really, really hard.

For the children at the primary school, the school day starts at 8.30am and doesn't end until 5pm; for children at the secondary school, the day starts at 7.55am. If a child at the secondary school hasn't done his or her nightly quota of homework, he or she has to stay until 5.45pm -- and the school is open on Saturday mornings for children who need additional support. The curriculum is narrow -- as narrow as it's possible to be while still adhering to the National Curriculum -- but the engagement with the material is deep. Max Haimendorf, the 30-year-old headteacher of the secondary school, boasted that his Year Sevens were the only ones in the country he knew of who were studying the full, unexpurgated text of Macbeth. There are notices all over the school urging children to become avaricious readers and half-an-hour of every school day is set aside exclusively for reading. 

In a sense, King Solomon Academy is more than just a school. It's a radical social programme designed to compensate for all the factors militating against an under-privileged child's willingness to learn. As an experiment, we won't know how successful it is until 2015, when it's first cohort of pupils take their GCSEs, but having met Mr Haimendorf and seen the school in action I would not be surprised if it achieves its 100 per cent pass rate.

The real lesson of An Anatomy of Economic Inequality is that successive governments, not just New Labour, have failed Britain's poorest families by not providing their children with the sort of educational opportunities that will enable them to escape the clutches of the "long arm". What we need are more schools like King Solomon Academy -- thousands of them, in fact -- and whichever party promises to make that more likely deserves to win the election.

It's becoming increasingly clear that one of the biggest hurdles our group faces is finding a site. We don't yet know what our admissions policy will be -- it will depend on which party is in power when we open for admissions and what criteria parent-sponsored academies are allowed to adopt. But to be on the safe side we're looking for a site that's in or near Acton.

     The way we’ve gone about the search is to circle an area on the A-Z and then divide it into several sections, with each member of the steering committee being assigned a particular zone. Then, armed with notebooks and cameras, we’ve got on our bikes.

         Our task has been complicated by the fact that we don’t have a clear idea of what we were looking for. We intend to admit four forms of 27 every year so when our school is at full capacity it will contain 756 students, including the sixth form. That means we need approximately 90,000 square feet of floor space -- ideally next to some playing fields

         However, beyond that we’re less certain. Our aim is to set up a parent-sponsored academy and under the present rules new academies are eligible for large capital grants. From that point of view, an ideal site would be 2.5 acres of open land that we can stick a brand new building on. But if the Conservatives win the election, the pot of money available to new academies will probably be a lot smaller. In that scenario, we’ll be better off with an existing building that we can either rent or buy.

         In the end, we decided it would be sensible to look for sites in both categories and we've come up with a shortlist of about a dozen. I'm meeting with Ealing's planning department on January 29 to see which of these the council regards as most suitable. Securing planning permission for a new secondary school is difficult, not least because local residents tend to get understandably nervous about an invasion of 756 adolescents. On the other hand, having a high-performing state school on your doorstep usually adds at least £10,000 to the value of your property.

         Obviously, we’d prefer a brand new school, designed to our own specifications, but if we have to set up shop in an office building, so be it. As far as we're concerned, the important thing is getting the ethos and the curriculum right, with the attractiveness of the building a secondary consideration. In Sweden, where parents have been allowed to set up state schools since 1992, renting commercial office space for educational purposes is common practice. Indeed, the most successful Swedish free school company, Kunskapsskolan, has a policy of always renting, never buying.

         The other reason for not being too fussy about the site is that we still want to admit our first cohort of students in 2011. Many of the people in our group have children in Year Five and if the West London Free School doesn’t open in 2011 it’ll be too late for them.

The publication of the school league tables today will cause the Government some embarrassment, mainly because Academies have performed more poorly than expected. The number of Academies in the Government’s National Challenge programme – schools in which fewer than 30 per cent of pupils get five or more GCSEs at grade A*-C including maths and English – has increased by a third, from 32 last year to 41 now. Academies make up just 6 per cent of secondary schools in England, but now account for 17 per cent of those in the National Challenge programme. In one of these schools – the New Line Learning Academy in Maidstone – 27 per cent of pupils are “persistently absent”.

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.

Consequently, we're now going to work with Ealing Council to do precisely that. That isn't going to be easy because Ealing has done a good job of preparing for the increase in demand -- it's setting up a new high school in Greenford, for instance. But we're cautiously optimistic that even with this additional capacity in place the number of secondary school places in Ealing still won't be sufficient to meet the demand.

Ultimately, our fate rests with the Secretary of State for Education. Together with Ealing Council, we’ll present the most persuasive case we can -- and if Ed Balls is serious about wanting Parent Promoter groups to set up schools, he’ll tell his officials to help us find a way through the maze. After all, there aren’t any other Parent Promoter groups out there trying to set up City Academies. If he does throw his weight behind us, we think it’ll be a big win for him. It will enable him to take the credit for the country’s first Parent Promoted Academy -- and if we’re successful, hundreds of groups will try and do likewise.

Our initial plan was to try and start a Swedish-style “free school”, but that would have meant waiting for the Conservatives to get elected and change the rules regarding what sort of schools parents can set up. If we did that, we wouldn’t be able to admit our first Year Sevens until September, 2012 -- and even that is optimistic. We might have to wait until 2013 or 2014.

Consequently, we’ve decided to press ahead under the existing rules and try and start a City Academy. Until recently, this wouldn’t have been possible without finding a sponsor willing to put up £2 million, but Ed Balls waived that requirement in July, partly to make it easier for groups like ours to start schools. Indeed, he is encouraging Parent Promoter groups to come forward and try and set up Academies.

According to the Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF), the first thing a group like ours needs to do is enlist the support of their Local Authority (LA). Consequently, we’ve met with several members of Ealing Council and told them about our vision. So far, they’ve been very supportive, particularly Jason Stacey, the leader of the Council, Ian Gibb, the Councillor who holds the portfolio for Children’s Services and Gary Redhead, the Assistant Director of Children’s Services.

The next step will be persuading the DCSF that a new school in Ealing is needed. Under the existing rules, anyone hoping to set up an Academy must first prove that there’s going to be a deficit of secondary school places in their borough over the next ten years or so. Only after the DCSF has accepted that will it consider a proposal for a new school. That means we’ll need to work with Ealing Council and the DCSF, as well as an organisation called Partnership for Schools, to demonstrate that there is enough demand for a new school in the area. Projecting demand for pupil places is an inexact science -- birth rates are, by their very nature, unpredictable -- and whether our group progresses will depend on how the available information is interpreted. My hope is that all the bodies concerned will prove helpful. Another possibility is that Ed Balls may change the criteria himself, dropping the need for a lot of jiggery-pokery regarding pupil place projections. These rules aren’t statutory, so he could change them without an Act of Parliament. That would certainly help groups like ours and encourage other parents to come forward.

If we do fail to progress under the existing rules we’ll simply wait until next year and then re-apply -- the Tories have pledged to make it easier for parents to set up schools and that includes waiving the need to demonstrate a deficit of supply. But I’m optimistic that our initial bid will be successful. Given that we’re one of the first parent groups to attempt this I hope the DCSF will see the wisdom of helping us progress under the existing rules. In all likelihood, the route we take will be the one followed by our successors and if the DCSF want to encourage other parents groups to work with LAs, rather than attempt to go round them, they’ll be as supportive as possible.

To a great extent, whether we succeed at our first attempt depends on how popular the officials within Ealing Council and organisations like Partnership for Schools -- as well as the DCSF -- believe the policy of encouraging parents to set up schools will be. Will hundreds of groups like ours spring up over the next five years, demanding new schools? If they believe that’s the direction the wind is blowing in, they will get behind us and help us carve out the critical path that other groups will follow -- a path that preserves their stewardship of the whole process of setting up new schools.

I have no doubt that we are blazing a trail on behalf of thousands of parents, if not tens of thousands. The instant response to my call to arms -- with 250 local parents signing up immediately -- tells me that there is a huge demand for the sort of school we want to start. But you can help us press our case by joining our group. Just email me on newfreeschool@googlemail.com telling me you’d like to join and I’ll sign you up. I may ask you to help at some point in the future, but I can’t think of a more worthwhile cause. The day the West London Free School opens for business will one of the proudest days in any of our lives.