It was the realisation that her daughter Eva would soon be torn from her primary school friends because of a local education crisis that turned Sophia Yates into a campaigner.

“Hearing that the 70 children from her school were being sent to 26 different secondary schools made me so angry,” says Yates, who lives in the borough of Lambeth, south London.

“I’d always been aware that there was pressure on state secondary places locally but I couldn't bear the thought of Eva being split up from her playmates and bussed for miles across different boroughs. The children here have to go through a soul-destroying process of rejection after rejection. I’ve seen some crack up. They have nightmares, they wet the bed.

“As a parent, you feel helpless — it’s horrific. Some parents lie to their children to bolster their morale. It’s just the most intolerable situation, and I couldn’t bear the thought of my girls going through it.”

Yates joined forces with a group of similarly desperate parents when Lambeth offered them the opportunity to get involved in setting up a brand new school two years ago.

In June last year the group of 15 gathered around the large round table in Yates’s roomy south London kitchen, determined to turn their dream of a brave new world where parents would design a top-class local state school for their children into a reality.

It appears that — against all the odds — they will achieve just that, having harnessed £25m in government funding for their plans. At the beginning of the month Stephen Twigg, the education minister, approved their proposals, sanctioning the creation of Elmcourt secondary — the first state school to be set up by parents using new government legislation.

Architects are being called in, locals canvassed and the scene is set for the school to open to 180 11-year-olds in September 2007. It will eventually accommodate 900 students, plus 200 sixth-formers and 120 special needs pupils.

Now, politicians are falling over themselves to claim the Elmcourt success as their own and numerous television crews have put in bids to chronicle the story. Yates, 41, who has turned her home over to the Elmcourt campaign and is being paid for her time by Lambeth council, is dizzy with success.

Like a British Erin Brockovich, she juggles ministerial meetings with public consultations; leafleting and petitioning with piano lessons and after-school classes for Eva, 9, Rachel, 7, and Trudy, 4.

“Tuesday was just mad,” she says. “I had to get Sky News into the kids’ school playground for an interview at 3.30, and then bundle the girls into the car to get them to their swimming class at Crystal Palace, before packing them off to bed in time to get to a public meeting on the proposals. It doesn’t stop.”

Tall, slim, and dressed in the shabbychic bohemian garb favoured by trendy yummy mummies, Yates and her fellow campaigners deserve their moment of fame. “I’ve never been involved in anything political before,” she says. “I didn’t want to do this but Lambeth had reached an absolute crisis point — we were facing the nightmare of nightmares. At the local primary school, over a quarter of the pupils didn’t get a place at any secondary school at Easter. You have got no idea how thrilling, how empowering, it is to create a new school and start to address the misery of parents in Lambeth.”

It was the 2001 census which revealed that Lambeth — run by a Liberal Democrat and Conservative coalition, but still burdened by the legacy of the Labour “loony left”, who bankrupted the borough in the 1980s — had seriously misjudged the number of school places required locally. Three new secondary schools were needed to address the projected shortfall of 1,500 secondary school places by 2011.

Instead of setting up new schools themselves, however, the local education authority was obliged — under the government’s new 2002 education act, which aims to offer more choice — to open the field to proposals from interested parties such as parents, charities or private organisations.

Yates was one of 40 parents who attended a public meeting in her daughters’ school hall, where Lambeth promised to support a parental bid. Sandy Nuttgens, 41, who composes music for television, was also at the meeting.

“We had meetings once a month at first at Sophia’s house, then once a week as things became more hectic,” recalls Nuttgens, who has three daughters, Mia, 9, and twins Grace and Evie, 6.

“Lambeth earmarked a site for us in West Norwood, which they have given free, and the turning point came in November 2004, when Lambeth was successful in its bid for funds from government. Then we knew it would happen.”

The group — which includes an architect, solicitors, two directors of charities, journalists, website designers, an accountant, a teacher and a consultant pathologist in its skill base — was told by the Department for Education and Skills that the school could be built in 395 days.

So, could this potentially bright future for Lambeth act as a template for improving the situation across the country? Tessa Jowell, the secretary of state for culture, media and sport, has been heavily involved with the Lambeth parents and believes that her constituents could act as role models for others.

“It’s not by any means a universal solution but in this case where these parents wanted a mixed comprehensive school, it has worked wonderfully well.”

For more information on the School Standards and Framework Act 1998, visit www.dfes.org.uk; for the Lambeth project www.elmcourt.co.uk