Hundreds of campaigners heard praise heaped on Cradley High at a meeting to discuss how to save the 30-year-old top-performing school from the axe.

Around two hundred parents and pupils crammed into the school hall to hear campaigners, councillors Tim Crumpton and Gaye Partridge and MPs Lynda Waltho and Sylvia Heal speak.

Dudley Council wants to close the Homer Hill school due to falling pupil numbers but protestors say their GCSE results - which saw it come second only to Oldswinford Hospital School in Stourbridge - prove it warrants saving.

Ex-pupil Becky Willetts (pictured standing left), now a doctor at New Cross Hospital in Wolverhampton, joined the committee to save the school along with a host of others.

She told the meeting: "I'm disgusted they are trying to close this school. I'm so proud to say I went to Cradley and that I have made a difference."

Parent Nahad Yafai said his son came to England in 1991 at age 11 and couldn't speak a word of English but now he is applying to become a policeman.

Mr Yafai said: "There's a large Yemeni community in the area, most of them go to Cradley High.

"My son came to this school and the support the teachers gave him enabled him to do something good for himself. Why don't they look at these success stories - we all work together in this school - it helps the ethnic community.

"Let's unite together to save it."

Governor and councillor Gaye Partridge told the meeting: "It's important we have a voice.

"The closure will be difficult to overturn, but the results have been stunning this year."

Lynda Waltho MP assured campaigners: "We can win this through people power - you have got to make them listen to us" and Sylvia Heal MP backed the campaign and asked why other options including federation or amalgamation weren't considered.

Cllr Crumpton said campaigners were set to meet with governors this week and other meetings were in the pipeline.

Under proposals from Dudley Council the school, designed to accomodate disabled pupils, would close in August 2008.