Parents told councillors they fear their children's education will suffer if two schools are forced to shut.

More than 300 people, including members of the Save Our Schools campaign, packed a meeting last night to demand West Sussex County Council halts plans for a new superschool in Crawley.

Campaigners said closing Southgate First and Middle Schools in Crawley would lead to three-year-olds having to mix with 11-year-olds at one 700-pupil school, damaging their education.

If the plans do go ahead, pupils would be expected to travel to Southgate West First and Middle Schools which would be merged to form one all-through primary super school.

Save Our Schools campaign member Sue Stooks, who has a son and daughter still at the schools, said: "We don't want a school with 690 pupils. That is a huge number for such small children.

"Ideally we would like to keep both schools open because we feel a super school is not the way forward.

"We are the larger of the two schools and we have better facilities including an indoor heated swimming pool, the only one in Crawley."

The proposals are part of a scheme to overhaul the education system in Crawley by merging a number of first and middle schools to create larger primary schools.

Three schools including Southgate First and Middle and West Green are earmarked for possible closure.

Mrs Stooks said: "We are fighting to keep Southgate open because we can't see any logical reason why they decided to close our school.

"The parents are devastated. It was so unexpected, we are heartbroken. We had an Ofsted report in the last week which said how good it was. It was a complete bolt out of the blue."

Crawley councillor Mary Mayne said: "The general consensus was to keep the schools, both Southgate First and Middle and Southgate West First and Middle, but amalgamate them into all-through primary schools.

"There were people getting hot under the collar but I think it went very well. It was not one school against the other. It was the two working together."

Jane Robinson, communications manager for the county council, said: "People were extremely frank in their questioning.

"People were encouraged to fill in forms in the consultation documents. They had a number of questions and a number of good points to make.

"Any school affected is having a public meeting. Everything is collated and a report will be produced which will go to the Independent Schools Committee."

She stressed the meeting was part of a series of consultations. If the proposals go through they are not expected come into force until 2004.

Mrs Stooks said the meeting was very positive.

Parents felt they had a strong case against the proposals.