PARENTS across Huddersfield will take advantage of controversial education changes, a top councillor believes.

The Government yesterday unveiled plans to allow parents and teachers to set up schools outside council control.

Clr Robert Light, who leads the opposition Conservatives on Kirklees Council, thinks free schools will be popular in the district.

“There are a number of communities in Kirklees who are dissatisfied with their schools and will be looking at this with interest,” he said.

“For a long time, Kirklees has only provided a good education in certain areas.

“There are a huge number of children from Huddersfield who go to schools in Calderdale and a large number from Batley and Birstall who go to schools in Leeds and Bradford council areas.”

Yesterday education secretary Michael Gove released a 10-page document explaining how groups of parents or teachers could apply to set up a free school. Some 700 groups have already expressed and interest in the plan.

Parents in Birkenshaw will be among the first groups to apply to set up a free school.

Kirklees wants to close the middle school in the town and send children to high schools in Batley. But parents want to turn Birkenshaw Middle School into a free school for 900 children aged 11 to 16.

Clr Light, who represents the area on Kirklees, backs the plan.

He said: “The parents group will put in an application by the end of the month and I’m very optimistic of success – David Cameron has said he supports the plan.”

Clr Light believes free schools will improve education in Kirklees.

“I think they will have a positive effect,” he said. “No choice is no longer an option. This takes power from the bureaucrats and puts it in the hands of parents.”

But the council’s Cabinet member for education Clr Ken Smith believes free schools are a bad idea.

The Labour man said: “It’s a pretty ill though-out concept.

“You have to design an education system to meet every child’s needs. But, if you have free schools popping up, it sucks energy and money from the system you’ve designed.”

Clr Smith doesn’t believe Birkenshaw needs a free school.

The Ashbrow councillor said: “There are more than enough high school places in Batley and Cleckheaton for the children from Birkenshaw, Birstall and Gomersal.

“The parents are trying to create a new school when it’s not necessary.”

Mr Gove also announced yesterday that planning laws would be relaxed to allow schools to be set up in shops and offices.

The Conservative minister said: “It’s amazingly complicated, not just to build a new school, but to convert an existing building into a school.

“It’s that sort of ridiculous bureaucratic nonsense which has impeded the imagination and idealism of people who want to transform state education that we are going to change.”