pgnjohnson

Happy to talk about this but hope you understand that I'd rather not do so piecemeal in a public forum. There is information about the parent group and CfBT (and much else) on the school website: www.jkps.org.uk. CfBT would operate the school and be accountable to the DfE for its performance. The parent group will provide two governors on a regular-sized governing body. We felt it made perfect sense to combine CfBT's reputation and professionalism with parents' local knowledge and personal enthusiasm.

Well, I'm a parent, have lived in Southwark for 14 years, school governor, work freelance. Our parent group contains people from a variety of professional backgrounds, including 2 teachers. CfBT, who will operate the school, are a major educational charity and have been around for 40 years.

Yes, we are planning to open this September with classes in Reception, Year 1 and Year 2. Whilst we are still waiting for DfE to confirm premises for us, we are focusing very hard on the SE22-SE24 area.

A new application process has been set up, but they are formally the same kind of institution and have the same obligations and freedoms.

Formally i.e. in terms of the enabling legislation that governs approval, structure, funding process, and regulation they are the same. You'd better ask the Department why there are two names.

Why German? - well, it just happens that my knowledge and interest are primarily in German and there's a fair amount of support for it in this area. French is widely covered already, and I believe a school is being started in Greenwich specialising in French. So far - at least for a free school - you'd have to go to Brighton for your Spanish... But the more languages the better, in my view.

I'm not here to argue the case for government policy, but so far as I understand, at present new money is being made available for free schools. One simple reason for this is that population forecasts show that capacity, especially in London, needs to increase, so this will require more spending, whoever spends it. On your second point, we are absolutely not creating a private school in any guise. Entry will be (and is required to be) free and comprehensive i.e. non-selective on any basis. None of us parents plans to run a school. What we are doing now is developing what we think is a good idea and later - hopefully - a team of really good teachers and educationalists to run the school day-to-day. And of course, we'll only get approved if the Department thinks our curriculum is up to scratch. Peter

I am the founder and one of the promoters of a free school initiative to create a bilingual primary school in Southwark or possibly E Lambeth / W Lewisham. The school would teach a balanced curriculum in English and German, with an additional emphasis on the arts. We believe passionately that all children, whatever their linguistic or cultural background, can benefit in a bilingual environment. Research shows that early language learning is not only beneficial in itself, but is associated with many other cognitive and developmental gains that can last throughout your child?s life. We would hope to open in 2012. Our school would provide language units in both English and German to support children in either language as needed and we?d hope to organise activities for families to meet each other and improve their language skills together. We have a website on www.bilingualfreeschool.co.uk and if you like what we?re about you can register your support there. We hope to submit our first stage application to the Department for Education in the next month and are now gathering public support for our initiative. We?re delighted with the response so far, but of course we?d like as many supporters as we can attract. So if you?re a parent with an interest in language who would think about supporting your child through a bilingual education, we?d love to hear from you. Peter Johnson