A SUPPORT group has been set up to fight in favour of a controversial education academy.

A group of residents and parents in Darlington have decided to band together to back plans for a multi-million pound academy in the town.

Darlington Borough Council proposes to merge Hurworth and Eastbourne schools into the £25m city academy.

The proposal has been bitterly opposed by residents of Hurworth, who set up the campaign group, Save Hurworth and Rural Education (Share).

Share feels the high-performing Hurworth School is being sacrificed unnecessarily to make way for the academy.

However, the academy support group feels it would be the best way forward for education in Darlington.

Maureen Horton, the chairwoman of the governors at Heathfield School, said she was anxious that her pupils got the best opportunities when they went to secondary school.

She said: "A few people contacted us saying they had been to some of the education meetings and felt they had just been shouted at and felt intimidated, so that they did not want to speak up.

"They were saying that they needed the strength of the group before they would say anything."

The support group believes the investment in the academy, and the opportunities it would create, would be the best deal for Darlington.

Mrs Horton said the group had not been set up to oppose Share, but to find a common way forward.

She said: "We need to get some commonsense into this. We need to look at the future, not just for ourselves, but for the whole of Darlington.

"We need to find common ground and not have slanging matches - that doesn't help anybody and it looks ridiculous," she added.

"We want the public to be aware that it is not all downsides. We should be working together to create a good academy.

"To condemn things before they've even started is just so defeatist and we want to be positive."

A council spokeswoman said: "We welcome this community support for the council's proposal to build an academy in Darlington.

"The academy will provide a secondary school in a part of Darlington where almost 2,000 secondary school-age children live and will also provide state-of-the-art facilities for the whole community to use."

Anybody interested in joining the academy support group can contact Mrs Horton on (01325) 281061 or Dave Preston on (01325) 462979.