CAMPAIGNERS bidding to save a special school have recorded a cover version of an indie rock band's hit song in a bid to boost their fight.

Staff and parents from Crosshill School, Shadsworth, Blackburn, have adapted the lyrics of the Manic Street Preachers' protest anthem, If You Tolerate This, Then Your Children Will Be Next, for the latest phase of their battle against proposed closure.

The effort has been filmed and is set to be uploaded onto video sharing website YouTube in a bid to give the Crosshill campaign a wider audience.

And as the song was recorded at Crosshill on Saturday, the campaign received a major boost after it was revealed that the chairman of the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust had asked Education Secretary Alan Johnson to save the school.

Campaign leader Peter Rush said he had roped in everyone from colleagues to parents and teaching assistants for the song.

Most of the verses have been changed to reflect the school's fight to avoid the axe, under Blackburn with Darwen council's Building Schools for the Future (BSF) programme.

But the chorus, belted out by the assembled music makers, young and old, remains the same.

Mr Rush said: "The song is about parental choice - and we believe that parental choice has been applied incorrectly in this case.

"One of the things which has delighted us is the number of people in Blackburn who know about Crosshill, through reading about our fight in the Lancashire Telegraph, and feel strongly about wanting to keep it."

Meanwhile, it has emerged that Cyril Taylor, chairman of an official education watchdog, Specialist Schools and Academies Trust, contacted Education Secretary Alan Johnson, calling for Crosshill to be spared.

In a letter to Mr Johnson he states: "This is a superb special school, where headteacher Mike Hatch is one of the best headteachers in the country.

"The reason given for closure appears to be extremely bureaucratic, as it forms part of the local community's Building Schools for the Future goal.

"Parents should have a choice of sending their special needs children to either a special needs school or a mainstream school.

"They should not be required to send their special needs child to a mainstream school if they do not think it is in the best interests of the child."

The consultation period for Building Schools for the Future continues through the school holidays and ends in mid-September.

Campaigners at Crosshill are planning a protest march to the town hall next month and have invited councillors to tour their facilities, ahead of any final decison being made.

Crosshill was the first special school in the UK to achieve specialist college status. It is now recognised as a leader in information and communications technology.

Council bosses want to close the school, the only one in the borough to cater for pupils with moderate learning difficulties, by 2010 as part of the borough-wide £150million shake-up.

The closure is part of a plan to educate more special needs children in mainstream schools.

More than 6,000 signatures have already collected for their petition against closure.