Lambeth Teacher with Lambeth NUT

Incredibly, more than a decade after its closure, the experiences, the history of the former Lambeth School have been kept alive on the internet. We are including a short piece here, but you can link up with their site where much of the history of the school - staff and pupils can be traced. Not only is this a tribute to the community who served the school all those years, but strengthens our case in fighting for proper secondary education in the borough.

What have Mayor Ken Livingstone, Linton Kwesi Johnson and ATL Secretary Wendy Stevens got in common?

Quite simply, at some time in their lives they were at Tulse Hill. Because of falling rolls, ILEA in its dying days decided to close the school in 1989. It brought to an end decades of education at this Lambeth boys school.

The site, created by ex-teachers at the school traces many of its traditions and mentions the invaluable skills of those who worked there.

The legacy of the Tulse Hill closure is the cavalier attitude that Lambeth as an LEA took to schools after 1990, in particualr in relation to Secondary schools where they either closed or lost schools by parental votes to GM status under the Tories.

We look at the situation today where we see no secondary school in the centre of Lambeth, with Dick Sheppard being closed in 1995. We also have an imbalance in the co-ed schools where boys are predominant and parents cannot easily send their children to a boys school if they so wish.

In campaigning for a new school, we can draw on many of the values of Tulse Hill that was to assist us.