The government is expected to announce soon its decision about Bradford council's plans to reform the district's education structure.

The proposals have caused controversy throughout the district, especially in Keighley. the main change will be the scrapping of middle schools as the system is changed from three-tier to a two-tier primary-secondary structure.

Officials at Keighley's Oakbank School hope the Department for Education and Employment accepts local proposals for a split-site secondary school involving its own and the nearby Bront Middle School premises. Oakbank fears without such a school, children from Keighley will in future have to go out of the town to be educated.

But the Funding Agency for Schools (FAS), from which grant-maintained Oakbank gets its budget rather than the council, has put forward its own compromise proposals. They involve simply enlarging the Oakbank building and its pupil numbers. The FAS' suggestion is a middle-ground plan which falls between the council's proposals and Oakbank's.

Oakbank head-teacher John Roberts says the scheme is a contingency plan in case the government rejects the split-site school idea.

The ultimate aim of Keighley Education Action Group (KEAG) is to convert Bront to a fourth Keighley secondary school catering for pupils aged 11 to 18. Bradford council, which wants to close it altogether, has objected and the Funding Agency is also opposed.

The FAS wants to increase pupil numbers at Oakbank from the current 1,300 to 1,710, including a 210-place sixth form. The move would mean an annual intake of 300 students from September 2000 and provide an extra 25 teaching jobs. Posts would be offered first to redundant middle-school staff.

Local objectors to the expansion proposal have until March 4 to send objections to Education Secretary David Blunkett.

Oakbank governors, conscious that rejection of the Bront link-up could prolong educational change in Keighley, have agreed to the alternative scheme being put forward.

Mr Roberts says: "We don't want to cause a log jam in the whole process and help continue the uncertainty about where students and staff are going.

"We still think our original plan is best for Keighley kids but if the DfEE rejects that we have something to fall back on. And there are advantages in having a big school."

KEAG says the new proposals will leave a shortfall of 80 secondary school places in Keighley. The group says the FAS proposals are 'too little and too late'.

By law, Education Secretary David Blunkett must allow two months for objections to any proposals and the deadline for opponents to the latest scheme is March 4. The agency plans an intake at Oakbank of 300 pupils a year, 80 fewer than Oakbank governors want and 30 more than the council proposal.

KEAG has said all along that the council has got its sums wrong. The group's Joyce Newton says the FAS plans will still leave a shortage of places in the Worth Valley.

She says: "We are all waiting for David Blunkett's decision. Is this going to keep our children, teachers and parents hanging on until spring before we know what's happening?"

She says KEAG will begin collecting objections yet again from local electors. "Local elections are approaching and prospective councillors will be knocking on parents' doors asking for their vote," she says. "I hope the people of Keighley will make their feelings known about the botched nature of this review and how important our children's education is."

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.