Once upon a time there was a little school. It was a very good little school and all the children were happy there. But when the time came for them to leave, some of their parents were afraid. “We don’t want you to go to the big school,” they said. “It’s no good. Everybody says so.”

More and more people heard bad things about the big school and decided not to send their children there. The boys and girls went on buses and trains to lots of other big schools instead. Some of them were far away or expensive, but they were all better than the big school nearby.

Then some grown-ups thought it would be a good idea to have a nice, new big school locally. So they wrote lots of letters to the people in charge of schools, who thought about it, then said: “OK, we will change the big school into a nice new school with lovely classrooms and lots of good teachers and everybody can go.”

A fairytale perhaps, but this really happened. The Charter school used to be known as Dulwich high school for boys, and before that it was known as William Penn school, but in both these incarnations, it was better known for being a bad school. Designed in the 1940s for 1,200 pupils, by the time it closed in 1999, Dulwich high had just 250.

Its natural feeder school, Dulwich Hamlet primary, stands beside a village green with white fences and fingerpost signs, so pretty and so incongruous in inner London that they could, indeed, have sprung from the pages of a children’s storybook. Roger Gane’s two children went there, but he balked at the thought of sending his son to Dulwich high.

Many other parents felt the same. The 90 children leaving the school each year were spread between 40 or so schools. Mr Gane chose to pay for his two children to go to Alleyn’s, one of three independent schools in the area. Along with James Allen’s girls - known as JAGs - and the 1,400-pupil Dulwich college, one of the largest independent schools in the United Kingdom, it competes for the custom of parents unhappy with what the state sector has to offer, and with the money to look outside it.

But Mr Gane didn’t abandon comprehensive education altogether. He was a former chair of governors at his children’s school, and left when they did. But he joined the governing body of Dulwich high in 1996, just after it changed its name, until it closed three years later. He says that while the school had some very good teachers, others were “appalling”, the buildings were “pretty decrepit”, and there was an atmosphere of “intimidation”.

The school was in a “downward spiral”, he says, with children unwanted by other schools bussed in from neighbouring boroughs. He says he saw parents coming before exclusion panels (there were many exclusions) desperate with worry about the future of their children. “I used to feel terribly sorry for some of the mums who came along,” he says. “They were putting a lot of effort into trying to get their kids a good education.”

Four years ago, Dulwich resident Jan Barden had just given birth to her son but she was already thinking ahead to his education and the unhappy prospect of having to send him outside the area for his schooling when he reached 11, just like 60 per cent of Southwark’s children. So with other like-minded parents, she began to leaflet houses in the area, proposing a new, non-selective 11-18 co-educational school for local children. “We printed 17,000 leaflets. We were mostly mums with babies; we pounded the streets, putting a leaflet through every letter box we could find. Within a fortnight we had 1,000 replies, saying, ‘yes, we back you’.”

A Labour Party activist, she used her contacts in the council and won the support of local MP Tessa Jowell. The campaign coincided with a review of education in Southwark. “We were lucky and unlucky. We were asking for the right thing at the right time. We were pushing at an open door in many respects. Southwark education had got to the point where the LEA was delighted that parents had got up and said we want a say in education,” she says. Eventually the parents got their wish when the Charter school opened on the site of Dulwich high in September 2000.

“Parents want a good school at the end of their street,” Ms Barden says. “With all these people clamouring for schools like this, it seems an almost old-fashioned idea for local kids go to a local school.” She became founding chair of governors of the new school but has since stepped down. Ironically, her own son is unlikely to go to the school she campaigned so hard for because the family is planning a new life in France, where Ms Barden will use her experience to set up in business - as a marketing consultant for schools.

It’s early days, but the Charter school is thriving. Five times oversubscribed, it has just admitted its second year intake, and headteacher Pam Bowmaker talks about competing with the James Allen’s girls school next door. All that separates the two schools is a wire mesh fence, but there used to be an educational gulf between them and, for a while, sixth formers from JAGs helped out with the remedial classes in Years 7 and 8 at Dulwich high.

Now Ms Bowmaker can look across at JAGs’s swanky new swimming pool without feeling the least bit envious, because she knows that, as its pound;16 million refurbishment nears completion, the Charter school has plenty to offer its students.

The old quadrangle is now an atrium with a sloping roof that sends rainwater down a transparent pipe to be recycled into its plumbing system, one of several visually arresting and environmentally minded features. Another block is insulated by a grass roof, and photovoltaic panels will contribute to the power needed to run the computer terminals in every classroom. It is barely recognisable from the album of dismal “before” photographs Ms Bowmaker keeps in her study, and a stunning example of what parent power can do.

“There is an increase in demand for local school places that can’t, at the moment, be met in the area where those people are living. It was a mistake to introduce parental preference in the 1988 Education Act - children should go to their nearest school. In a deprived area they need to put more money into that place, then let the community take ownership.”

She is a true enthusiast for comprehensive education. “Our school community is a true reflection of where we are. It is a fantastic cultural and socio-economic mix.” But she worries that “the Charter factor”, as she calls it, has raised expectations.

It certainly did in neighbouring Lambeth, where parents quickly set up their own pressure group modelled on the successful Charter school campaign. “We went to see them and said, ‘how did you do this, how is it working, we want to do the same?’ We took a page right out of their book,” says Devon Allison of the Secondary School Campaign in Lambeth.

SSCIL (pronounced skill), together with similar groups that have sprung up in Lewisham and another part of Southwark, gathered more than 1,000 signatures on its petition for a new comprehensive, which campaign members presented to Downing Street in September under the banner of the London Parents Community School Coalition.

More than half of Lambeth’s children have to go outside the borough for their secondary education - there are 2,400 Year 6 pupils but only 1,000 Year 7 places in the borough. Eighty-five children who were unable to find a place anywhere after leaving primary school this summer are currently being taught at a temporary centre in the borough.

In Lambeth, parental involvement has already done much to improve schools in the borough. Sudbourne junior school in Brixton is one of the most improved primaries in the capital, and a beacon school since January 2000. Tony Blair, keen to associate himself with its achievements, chose to visit the school on the morning after the 1997 general election.

But Devon Allison, a Sudbourne governor, says parents and teachers rather than politicians were responsible for its success. “We built up that school. You have to do something. It’s not just like you can write a cheque and everything happens.” Despite Sudbourne’s excellent record, three of its Year 6 pupils had nowhere to go to when the new school year started.

Lambeth’s director of education, Michael Peters, admits that “the need for a new school is obvious”. But parents hoping for a comprehensive in the image of the Charter school initially had their expectations dashed. Lambeth was proposing a city academy, a new type of school created in a last-minute amendment to the Learning and Skills bill in July 2000, just weeks before the Charter school opened. Originally intended to “replace seriously failing schools in urban areas” city academies can also be built, says the Department for Education and Skills, “where there is an unmet demand for school places”.

City academies are planned for Barnet, Bexley, Brent, Ealing, Hackney, Haringey, Hillingdon, Lambeth, Manchester, Liverpool, Middlesborough and Walsall, - with two more in the north of Southwark, one in Peckham and the other in Bermondsey. They will be publicly funded but run by a private sponsor willing to pay 20 per cent - or about pound;2 million - towards the building costs. The DfES says they “will not be selective” although, like specialist schools, 10 per cent of the intake will be chosen for aptitude in the academy’s chosen subject, for example, technology, languages, and so on.

In Lambeth, the council approved the Church Schools Company, which runs eight independent schools, as its sponsor. After receiving assurances that the school would not be exclusive to non-Christian children, Lambeth will allow the CSC to appoint a practising Christian as headteacher and head of religious studies. It was nothing like the co-educational, non-religious, open admissions 11-18 school Lambeth parents want, according to SSCIL. “That is what parents want and what attracts teachers” says Devon Allison. “Every parent I know wants their children to go to a good state school.”

But in October the council had a sudden change of heart and decided to join campaigners in demanding a non-denominational comprehensive with a sixth form, and in lobbying the DfES “to understand Lambeth’s need for a comprehensive school, with specific reference to its possible funding through traditional channels”.

In Dulwich, the Charter school is beginning to “kill the myth that this is Dulwich high revisited” says Pam Bowmaker. The murals in north Dulwich station, painted by boys from Dulwich high, are one of the few reminders of the old school. In the estate agent’s next door, a five bedroom, two bathroom house on Red Post Hill “near the Charter school” is on sale for pound;550,000. “We certainly have people who are specifically requesting to be within the catchment area of that school,” says Wallace Jaffrey of Hampton’s estate agents, although, he adds, it’s too soon to calculate the added value of an address within the catchment area.

Unless every area has one, the Charter school could see its comprehensive principles undermined by a more pernicious form of selection as education comes to depend on location, location, location. Southwark council’s online consultation forum is already attracting resentful comments from parents in other parts of the borough. “It must be very nice for the Dulwich village residents to have the new Charter school to send their children to,” reads one. “What choice have we?” Meanwhile, in Lambeth, parents continue their campaign. Maybe the Charter school will not be the comprehensive’s last stand after all. This story is not over yet - and its ending still undecided.

CAMPAIGNING PARENTS

Examples of parental success in the battle to get a good new local school are rare. One 30-year campaign in Peacehaven, East Sussex, ended this year with the opening of a new school. In Bristol, parents await the outcome of a consultation exercise.

Peacehaven’s first cohort of 180 pupils started in September - as documented in head of English Jane Branson’s diary for ‘Friday’ magazine. Lindsey Cove, a school governor and mother of one of the pupils, joined the parents’ action group in 1996. They embarked on a policy of “direct action”, including marches, mass letter-writing and various stunts to get press coverage. “It was a question of directing pressure in the right place at the right time,” she says.

Bristol’s 1,300-strong parents group, PASE, has been campaigning for a new school in the north-west of the city since 1998. Cotham, the only non-religious state school in the centre of the city, is vastly oversubscribed, and a PASE survey showed that while just 20 per cent of parents sent their children to state secondaries in Bristol - 92 per cent would choose a new state secondary if one was built.

The local authority recently announced a 10-year plan for rebuilding and expanding schools in the city. Consultations finished at the end of October, and Bristol council agreed in principle to open a new school in north Bristol for 945 11 to 16-year-olds, with a Post-16 centre once demand for places, a viable site and financing can be established.