Plans have been announced to build a secondary school dedicated to serving the district's "forgotten children" - youngsters with behavioural problems who are failing in mainstream education.

Education Bradford, the private company that runs Bradford's schools, has been forced to react after Ofsted inspectors criticised provision for pupils with behavioural, emotional and social difficulties.

Under current provision, any teenager who is given a statement of emotional behavioural difficulties (EBD) is taken out of a mainstream school and placed in Bradford's secondary pupil referral unit (PRU).

However, Ofsted was critical of this system during an inspection of Bradford's secondary PRU.

The report said: "The local authority, as the appropriate authority, is failing some pupils because it does not have schools for pupils with social, emotional and behavioural (SEN) difficulties.

The report added such pupils should be "educated in an appropriate school setting" - "as a matter of urgency".

Since the Ofsted report was published in November 2005, Education Bradford has carried out a review of provision for pupils with EBD.

A year on, it has called for proposals for a 70-to-80-pupil school to be developed "urgently".

At a meeting of the Bradford Education Policy Partnership (EPP), Denise Faulconbridge, Education Bradford's director of access and inclusion, said: "Ofsted deemed this authority to be failing as it does not provide specialist support for children with SEN needs."

Mrs Faulconbridge said the authority favoured one school dedicated to this "forgotten group" as it would "attract high-quality staff and excellence of provision".

She said the multi-million-pound development, which has yet to be officially costed, should be "progressed as a matter of urgency".

Proposed sites for the school or a timescale for the project have yet to be identified.

Mark Carriline, Bradford Council's strategic director for children's services, said the authority had a "self-evident gap in its provision".

He said he anticipated problems arising when proposed sites were announced.

"We are going to have an issue of where such a site is going to be in the district," he said.

"We need to be mindful that in every local community there is likely to be significant local resistance."

Mr Carriline said he would work with Council colleagues to examine the possibility of allocating cash for the project from the next financial year's capital programme.

However, Donald Andrews, who represents special school governors on the EPP committee, was critical of building SEN provision on a single site.

He said: "Running an institution of this type with 80 children will be in itself extremely challenging.

"I would look at the notion of smaller institutions."

Coun David Ward (Lib Dem, Idle and Thackley), said: "I am concerned about the issue of travel. With one site, children from Keighley who have challenging behavioural problems could be travelling from one side of Bradford to the other to reach the school."

Pupils with emotional difficulties are currently placed at the PRU's Woodend Centre in Shipley and Ellar Carr Centre in Thackley.

The PRU also has two units at Jesse Street in Thornton and the Aireview Centre in Shipley which are for pupils who have been permanently excluded.

e-mail: dan.webber@bradford.newsquest.co.uk