Conservative leader David Cameron today pledged to fulfil parents’ dreams of opening their own secondary school in Birkenshaw during a rally in the village.

Around 1,000 people took part in a ‘Defiance March’ led by Mr Cameron from Birkenshaw Middle School to a field off Bradford Road, where both he and Shadow Schools Secretary Michael Gove committed their support to the Birkenshaw, Birstall and Gomersal Parent Alliance.

The group is disillusioned with Kirklees Council’s re-organisation of schools from a two-tier to a three-tier system, which will not provide a secondary school in Birkenshaw.

Parents want to open their own school for 900 pupils, BBG High, on the site of the village’s middle school, but Schools Secretary Ed Balls ruled out their proposals because of an impact on the viability of other schools in the area.

At around 12.40pm yesterday, Mr Cameron and Mr Gove signed a wall set up for people to post comments of support before they turned to address the crowd.

Mr Cameron said: “You have got the belief, I have got the faith in you and together we can make this happen.

“You are an inspiration in terms of an active community that is not going to put up with the bureaucrats saying ‘no’ and want it to be the case that it is the parents that say ‘yes’.

“The whole aim of my Government, if we win this election, will be to help people like you to realise you dream – a great school at the heart of your community with great standards, great discipline and great aspiration for all the children who want to go there. I promise you if we get elected I will help your dreams come true.” He said the local school decision, taken by Labour and Liberal Democrat councillors running Kirklees Council, was a “perfect example” of why a hung parliament was bad news.

Reacting to Mr Cameron’s visit, Mr Balls said: “Today in Kirklees, when he promises a new school to a local parents’ group and the money to set it up, he’s not telling people that the local community has already rejected this proposal in favour of different plans including a new academy.

“And he is concealing from local parents that the expert adviser Professor David Woods looked at these proposals and found this new extra school could only be paid for by cutting the budgets of all the other schools in the area and undermining their education.”