Parent inspired by Marcus Garvey led the campaign to take over the school
Dayo Abifarin presents an award to one of the head girl.
 I have always believed that we can educate our children and help them to achieve high standards.
Dayo Abifarin, Director of Parkside Preparatory School
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Parkside Preparatory School has been in existence as a school for over 80 years. Housed in private dwellings built by Sir Roland Hill in 1827, in 1920 it was acquired by an English woman who became the school’s first headmistress. “The school has always had a good reputation. Even before we took over Parkside was known to have very good standards,” Dayo Abifarin, the school’s present owner told Black Britain. Five other English head teachers followed the original principal until 2002, when the sixth head teacher retired.
It was at this point that Abifarin and four other black parents decided to take over the running of the school by forming a limited company. “My son was a pupil at the school and the head teacher was looking to retire and was going to close the school,” he explained. The five parents decided that because it was a good school it was worth preserving for their children and others in the community. “The only options were for us to pull together as parents or find other schools for our children,” so they took the first option.
Abifarin, who describes himself as a ‘Garveyite’, believing in self-reliance and self-determination, told Black Britain: “I have always believed that we can educate our children and help them to achieve high standards.” The decision was not made lightly as each parent had to contribute £2500 to help fund the school. Abifarin also admits that the main challenge they faced was a lack of experience within the education system. “I’m not a teacher and I came into it not knowing anything.” But as time passed Abifarin came to understand through experience exactly what it takes, mentally and physically to run a school.
“Becoming an employer, having to employ teachers and the head teacher, having to deal with parents,” were some of the tasks they had to get to grips with. It was a steep learning curve. “Like most parents I was pretty much an outsider,” he told Black Britain. During the transitional period when Abifarin and the other parents were trying to secure the school’s future, some parents withdrew their children. “When we started out, we didn’t even have enough numbers of children that we needed to keep the school going,” Abifarin explained.
Not all of the parents believed that the new venture would succeed during a period of uncertainty. Although the school originally had a good ethnic mix, after the school was taken over by the black parents, white parents gradually withdrew their children from Parkside, and it is now an all-black school.
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