Who we are

Our Community, Our Schools is a group of parents, teachers and local residents who have come together to campaign for progressive education in Waltham Forest.

Originally formed in response to proposals to set up Free Schools in our borough, we have grown to become a positive voice for a broadly shared progressive vision of education.

 

Our vision of education:

• We think that everyone should have equal rights to a good quality education in our local community schools, regardless of their social class, religious faith, ethnic origin or postcode.
• We think that everyone should have access to a broad, balanced and rounded education that prepares them for life as an active, thinking democratic citizen as well as giving them the skills they need for employment.
• We think that everyone who provides education should be open, transparent and democratically accountable to their communities, their staff, their pupils and students and the taxpayers who fund them.

We are proud of our local comprehensive schools. We believe that our local comprehensive community schools are a great democratic achievement, the result of generations of struggle in the post-war period.

Democratic education under attack:

The policies of the Coalition government are now driving this progress backwards:

• Forcing community schools to become unaccountable academies against the wishes of their parents, teachers and communities
• Promoting private companies and churches as they create greater social, religious and ethnic segregation through the sponsorship of academies and Free Schools
• Preparing the way for private companies to use our schools and colleges to turn taxpayers’ money into private profit.

The great advances of the past were not handed to us on a plate. They were fought for and won by passionate, committed people, working together to build local and national movements for change.

We want to help build that pressure for change in Waltham Forest:

We will:

Encourage debate on education in Waltham Forest and work to raise consciousness about the need for a progressive, democratic education system that genuinely serves our communities;

Campaign to defend our local community schools wherever they are threatened by Academy status or by new Free Schools;

Campaign to put pressure on those schools and colleges already outside democratic control to adhere to the best standards of our local authority schools and to make themselves democratically accountable to our community in Waltham Forest.