This is possibly the first revolution to have started over lasagne and salad. It’s certainly the first revolution ever to have affected Acton, in suburban west London, one warm September evening.

Over nibbles at the home of Toby Young, the writer, a small group of disgruntled mothers and fathers gathered to exchange stories of astronomical private-school fees, frustrating state-school catchment areas and disgraceful class sizes. As the lasagne was served, a new militancy swept through the room. They would rise and fight a government that had failed to deliver on their promises.

It wasn’t just Acton. From Bristol to Birmingham, parents are getting ready to go live on YouTube with their ambitious plans for a network of dozens of new schools nationwide that they plan to run themselves.

The movement has been championed by the Conservatives, who have turned it into the New Schools Network initiative, under which the party, if it wins the next election, is committed to setting up as many as 3,000 of these Swedish-style “free schools” — not-for-profit institutions that are set up and managed by parents. YouTube and other social networking sites are the tools of the campaign.

Young, whose father, Michael, was the visionary educationist who set up the Open University, explains: “I have four young children. I desperately want to educate them in the state sector, but I know just how easily comprehensives can let down some pupils.”

He failed all his O-levels after attending two “mediocre” comprehensives, but following a switch to a grammar school he won a place at Oxford University. He now aims to set up a local school with an intake of 72 pupils a year, eventually growing to accommodate 504 children. Each pupil would be financed by the new government to the tune of about £5,000 a year.

The steering committee for the project includes an investment banker, a dotcom entrepreneur and Oliver Peyton, the restaurateur, who lives next door to the Youngs. Now with a shortlist of six potential sites for the school, Young has faced criticism that he is nothing more than a “metropolitan Tory squire” for his proposal.

“The meeting wasn’t just the middle-class parents who are terrified of sending little Tristan to the local comp,” he says. “I’ll be going out to the local housing estates canvassing for pupils.”

Such middle-class parents do exist, however, and have real concerns. Lucy Wills, 32, a web designer, is the mother of Adam, nearly two years old, and Sophie, six months. She met Young at his lasagne evening and confesses that she is driven by not wanting her children to mix with the badly behaved youngsters who live nearby.

“I’m worried about the behaviour at our local school. The well behaved children get swamped by the disruptive kids,” she says. “I want to educate my children well.”

For her, the meeting at Young’s was “inspirational”.

“There were about 40 people there. Everybody is very keen. I really think this is the answer.”

How easy will these parents find it to realise their dreams? First there is the funding. Although the Tories have promised to give finance for every pupil who enrols, what about the cost of the building itself? Not to mention the pens and pencils, books and teachers.

When Sweden introduced its system in the early 1990s in the wake of a recession and a banking crisis, money was taken away from local government bureaucrats and given to the new schools, which were opened in humble premises such as disused offices and libraries.

Over here parents are thinking up ingenious ways to secure premises, such as one group of Sikh parents in Birmingham, who are raising funds direct from local residents. Others are trying to cajole friendly Conservative councils into providing premises at low rent.

Even then it won’t be easy. John O’Farrell, who helped to set up a similar groundbreaking state secondary school in Clapham, south London, faced hostility from local residents. They campaigned against the school, hired a barrister to challenge the project and leafleted residents warning there would be a surge in teenage crime. Some councils also oppose plans for “rival” schools to their own.

However, the rewards were golden, such as being moved to tears when the pupils sang their hearts out in the school production of Oliver!. O’Farrell’s teenage son is still in touch with children he met as an infant.

Claudia Fein, 42, another of the parents unveiling their plans on YouTube today, is hoping to experience exactly this. The mother of Ish, 20, Cecilia, 14, and Tatiana, 5, she wanted to raise her children within her local community in west London. So far, all three children have been privately educated. She wants to send her youngest daughter to a state school, but only the right sort of state school, so she got involved in the grassroots education movement and is attempting to set up a primary school with local mothers.

They have talked to the council and Fein has posted her views on a YouTube video clip, shot on her sofa. “There were other mothers living near me who weren’t happy with the choices,” she says. “They weren’t happy with the class sizes or the entrance criteria in our area ... For a while it was just a question of sour grapes. Then someone said, ‘Why don’t we do something about it?’ ”

Emily Phillips, 37, is the mother of three-year-old Scarlett. She describes the primary school she is trying to establish with Fein, who is her sister. “There would be fewer tests, no national curriculum, a huge amount of imaginative play and less homework,” she says.

“There would be excellent discipline for children and a strong emphasis on manners.” She also wants to see Latin on the curriculum: “It is the basis of nearly all European languages.”

Is this a truly democratic, allinclusive movement, or a bunch of middle-class parents getting together to set up their own schools at the taxpayers’ expense?

Mark Lehain, 31, from Bedford, went to Cambridge University and then into the City, before switching to a career as a maths teacher in the state sector. He is now assistant head teacher at Wootton upper school in Bedford.

“No, it is not just pushy middle-class parents getting together,” he says. The father of two girls under three, Lehain deplores a “one-size fits all” state system and wants to help set up a school in Bedford.

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