Language support staff are demanding to know why they are the only teaching group to be excluded from Bradford Council's no compulsory redundancy guarantee.

The specialist teachers in the city's closing middle schools are facing an uncertain future with no guarantee of jobs, according to the National Union of Teachers.

Ian Murch, of Bradford's National Union of Teachers, said about 60 Ethnic Minority and Traveller Children Achievement Grant (EMTAG) teachers worked in middle schools which are being closed under the education shake-up.

Bradford Council leader Ian Greenwood would not comment on whether the EMTAG teachers were excluded from the redundancy guarantee but he said the authority was in "detailed negotiations" with teaching unions about their jobs.

"We are liaising with school governing bodies and the trade unions to ensure they are treated fairly," he said.

"We are in detailed negotiations with the trade unions about this issue and we do not intend to conduct these in the press. It would be inappropriate to discuss the conditions of service of individual employees in a public arena."

EMTAG staff are funded from a specific Government grant which aims to improve educational standards among children with English as their second language.

Until recently, the money was held by local education authorities which directly employed the teachers but the Department for Education and Employment decided to give the money directly to schools which now have the responsibility for employing EMTAG staff.

Mr Murch said the placement process was just starting because details of budgets for EMTAG staff had only just been finalised.

"Schools have received their allocation and have been asked if they want to create any extra posts. It's very late in the day and I think there are considerable causes for concern in terms of capacity of funding to absorb them all.

Executive member for Lifelong Learning, Councillor Susanne Rooney, said: "I empathise greatly with the EMTAG staff because of the traditionally temporary nature of their posts.

"The employment of EMTAG staff always varies a great deal depending on the needs of individual pupils with English as an additional language. We will continue to liaise with everyone concerned to ensure the best possible outcome."

Bradford Council has pledged not to make teachers redundant from the district's middle schools which will all close in July, as part of the shake-up which will see a two-tier system of primary and secondary schools throughout Bradford.

About 200 teachers - plus the 60 or so EMTAG staff - still do not know where they will work in September.

Steve Goodfellow, an EMTAG teacher at Priestman Middle School, said: "Why pick on us? I think it's shocking. The kind of service we are has a much higher proportion of ethnic minority and Asian teachers."

The EMAG staff were doubly disadvantaged because their process of redeployment was only just starting - when many of the available jobs in other schools had already been filled - and now they had no guarantee of a job at all, he said.

"The skills built up over the length of the language support service in Bradford, going back years, will disappear. To me, what the local authority has been building and has been proud of building seems to go on a whim, to be replaced by who knows what."

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