The Charter Schools Educational Trust began in 2010 with the academisation of the Charter School North Dulwich.
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Our story has its roots long before that with the opening of this first school, named “Charter’’ after the Parents Charter introduced by the Government in 1991 to extend parental choice and raise standards. 

The Charter School was born out of a need of the local community to provide a good non-selective state secondary school in the Dulwich area where many selective schools exist, and base this new school on outstanding comprehensive education.

This commitment to non-selective community schools and improving parental choice has only grown stronger over the years. In 2016, the Trust opened a secondary Free School in East Dulwich with a commitment to also provide specialist places for students with autism and a large Sixth Form.
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In 2020, we were joined by our first primary school, Charles Dickens Primary School and Nursery in the north of Southwark, as we sought to become a home to community schools for children and young people from two years old to eighteen. We are now home to six schools across Southwark, all sharing a commitment to our mission, inspiring and nurturing children and young people in South London to excel through education that transforms lives and strengthens our diverse communities.

We seek excellence in all that we do, and we have the greatest expectations of everyone to achieve highly. Our culture helps us achieve this excellence, for our children and young people, for our staff, for the communities we serve and for the broader educational system.
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We seek to grow, ensuring our pupils and staff benefit from our best collective and collaborative practice. At the same time, we want our schools to retain the agility to innovate, ensuring they can respond nimbly to their communities’ needs.

Our schools have the freedom to explore and learn from different practices. We know that authentic leadership and personal accountability are founded on ownership and self-direction.
We work collaboratively to identify shared and individual strengths and areas for school improvement.

Our teachers work across our schools on projects and joint learning. We are building wider opportunities for our children and young people to learn from and alongside each other. We are also developing relationships with community groups and organisations to ensure our pupils benefit from growing up in the culturally rich communities of South London.
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Our broader network of organisations, including London South Teaching School Hub, our Challenge partners hub and the Charles Dickens Research School, enables us to work constructively with schools across South London and further afield.