Bradford has a bigger proportion of "failing" schools than anywhere in the country, the Telegraph & Argus can reveal today.

The district currently has 12 out of 208 schools that have failed Ofsted inspections and been placed in Special Measures.

That means nearly 9,000 local children are learning in schools branded a failure.

A total of 14 per cent of local secondary schools are in Special Measures and nearly five per cent of primary schools. There are no special schools currently in special measures.

Nationally, just 1.2 per cent of all schools are in special measures, although another 1.8 per cent have "serious weaknesses" - the next grade up.

In Bradford overall, there are 5.7 per cent of schools in special measures and another ten - or five per cent - with serious weaknesses. Bosses at Educ-ation Bradford have the job of "supporting and challenging" schools to get better.

The privatised outfit, part of global firm Serco, took over most of the functions of the local education authority in the summer of 2001. One of the targets in its £360 million contract is to reduce the number of schools with serious weaknesses, in special measures or underachieving to two per cent in 2003 and zero by 2004.

Today head teachers' leader Gareth Dawkins, convenor of the Bradford upper school heads, defended people working in "difficult" inner-city schools.

"We are reaping what has been sown in Bradford because we have had years of underfunding and years of a lack of support," he said.

"Some schools in Bradford are among the most complex and demanding of any in the country, given their social background, and the staff working in them are every bit as committed as those in other parts of the district which do not suffer those problems."

Ian Murch, secretary of the Bradford branch of the National Union of Teachers, said: "Numbers of schools in special measures are going down across the country. You can blame Education Bradford a bit, but they're not top of the list. We in Bradford have more challenging circumstances, to use the Government's expression, and the system doesn't recognise it adequately."

The news that Bradford now has the highest proportion of special-measures schools in the country comes as Education Bradford today plays host to educational experts from across the country for a conference on School Improvement.

Phil Green, director of education at Bradford Council, said: "We are acutely aware of the rising number of schools in the district requiring special measures.

"Part of the reason for this is that Ofsted inspections have now fully restarted after they were suspended during the main period of the schools reorganisation."

Mark Pattison, Education Bradford's managing director, said: "When we became a fully operational organisation 12 months ago we knew there were a number of deep-seated issues in a number of schools which we started to address as soon as we could.

"The majority of these schools were causing concern before we took over providing support services.

"Our work in setting up multi-professional teams, a secondary support team, federations of schools and an increase in the number of school-improvement officers will help to reduce the number of schools causing concern."