Top councillors were today expected to approve a timetable for bringing in a private company to take over the district's education services.

Bradford Council's executive committee members were to hear a presentation from consultants, Pricewaterhouse Coopers, who have just completed an eight-week review of education in Bradford.

They have endorsed the serious criticisms made of Bradford local education authority (LEA) by schools watchdog Ofsted. They recommend that a private partner be awarded a contract to run most LEA services in April, 2001 with the takeover taking place in July, 2001.

This will be 14 months after Ofsted published its damning report in May 2000. Then the Government's Chief Inspector of Schools, Chris Woodhead, made it clear that he wanted things to progress quickly.

But a spokesman for the Department of Education said today: "The amount of time isn't inconsistent with other authorities. It does take a bit of time to complete this process."

In the meantime, an interim schools improvement board/ policy partnership containing representatives of groups including teachers and councillors will monitor the work of a beefed-up LEA. They will focus on:

l Management and support for education

l The action plan prepared by the LEA in response to the Ofsted report

l The Bradford schools' shake-up

l Training and development in preparation for the changes.

Joint Bradford secretary of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, Syd Matthews, said he did not mind the 14-month delay because it was important to get the arrangement right.

"It is what we were told the timescale would be," he said. The executive committee are also expected to recommend that council Chief Executive Ian Stewart begin an analysis of how the contracting out of education will affect the rest of the authority, particularly central services like payroll.