A councillor has expressed fears there will not be enough school places for children in his ward.

He says people in Silsden, Steeton and Eastburn are being 'left out in the cold'.

His comments follow approval of Bradford council's new two-tier education structure due to come into effect over the next few years.

Cllr Dawson, a Conservative, is calling for the schools in the communities he represents to be extended to be able to cope with the rapidly rising numbers of pupils expected as hundreds of new houses are built on land in his ward.

Cllr Dawson says he has asked Labour-run Bradford council whether the schools will be extended. "Bradford council cannot answer and does not want to know," he says. "And so once again the people of Silsden, Steeton and Eastburn are to suffer post-code politics and be left out in the cold."

Cllr Dawson believes the education shake-up is an effort by Labour to clear up a mess it alone created. He says Labour has finally realised that the three-tier education system has not worked.

"The back slapping, self-congratulating and the 'Didn't we do well' attitude at a recent seminar does not conceal the cock-up that Labour has made in its education reform," he says. "It gave us the inevitable 30-plus class sizes, the neglect of Bradford's crumbling schools, particularly infant and first schools."

He says the secondary education of children from Silsden, Steeton and Eastburn costs Bradford a huge amount because most of them go to South Craven School at Cross Hills, which is run by North Yorkshire county council. "Under the 1974 local government re-organisation, North Yorkshire just retained South Craven School and gathered in all those from Silsden, Steeton and Eastburn," he says. "It left Bradford with a dilemma. How to educate 11-plus scholars?

"It kept the two-tier system in the three villages and sent those aged 11-plus to South Craven in North Yorkshire. Each of those students is costing the local education authority thousands of pounds."

Cllr Susanne Rooney, chairman of Bradford council's education review team, says £20 million of the £170 million allocated will be spent on redressing the crumbling schools that were left after 18 years of Conservative underfunding. "It is the greatest allocation of money that any government has put into any local education authority in Britain as a result of the excellent job that the review team has done," she says. "Even more money will be ploughed into Bradford to raise educational standards. This is because the Government believes in education and that Bradford council's first priority is education."

Cllr Rooney admits children do go out of the Bradford area to South Craven School. "South Craven was purpose-built for Bradford children but after boundary reviews it was taken out of Bradford," she says. "Bradford council and the local education authority have no right to tell parents to send their children to other schools."

She says a site has been earmarked for a new secondary school in Steeton and will stay in the review team's plans. "But this cannot be built unless it can be proved that the building can actually be filled with children," she says. "It is down to viability and numbers."

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