Primary schools regarded as the "weakest links" because of their poor performance or unpopularity face the axe, it emerged today.

Education chiefs want to cut surplus school places in the system as they strive to raise classroom standards.

Schools with low SATs scores, or which are unpopular with parents, will be given 18 months by Education Bradford to save themselves from closure.

Then "prompt action" has been pledged to deal with those that do not improve.

The Bradford district has more schools rated by Ofsted as "failing" or with serious weaknesses than anywhere else in the country and Education Bradford's job is to improve them.

Education chiefs say eight per cent of places in the district's primary schools are surplus and this should be brought down to five per cent.

Where schools have too many places for the communities they serve, the successful ones will be encouraged to find other uses for their extra space, to stop children 'rattling around' in large uneconomic buildings.

But where schools are shunned by parents and standards are low, they may be closed.

"The LEA will take prompt action to secure this after the schools has been given time and opportunity to improve over an 18 month period," says the new-look School Organisation Plan.

"If a school is not deemed to be capable of improvement, or has failed to improve, it is possible that closure will be considered especially if there is room in nearby schools, which are performing more effectively. It is also possible to close such a school and expand more popular, high-achieving schools."

The document - which schools can comment on next term - says schools targeted for closure will be those with "low levels of parental preference, and demonstrably low standards, taking into account both raw scores and value-added measures."

It has been drawn up by Bradford Council and Education Bradford which jointly run the district's education service.

Labour's education spokesman, Councillor Phillip Thornton (Shipley East), said: "I would hope that closing any school would be a last resort because I know it would be a big issue for parents and children involved but a failing school is in no one's interest.

"It's only right and proper that the Council works alongside Education Bradford to achieve the best possible outcome. We owe it to our children to deliver high quality education."

But today teaching unions spoke of their concerns about the plans to axe weak schools.

Pauline Anderson, the new chairman of the Bradford Primary Heads' Association, said in the past two years surplus places had been cut through reducing the number of classes in schools, rather than closure.

"I would be shocked if they pursued this line," she said.

Her own school, Haworth Primary, will shrink from two forms of entry to one and a half in September, and as a result would be "just about full".

She was aware that Haworth is deemed to have surplus places, and is expecting a meeting next term with the LEA to discuss it.

"There are meetings booked in, but we don't know what the agenda is. Running schools with surplus places reduces the budget for all schools. We understand it's an inefficient way to work," she said.

Ian Murch, secretary of the Bradford branch of the NUT, said of the threat to axe poor performing schools.

"This is blaming teachers who have volunteered to work in difficult circumstances. It's a stupid thing to do.

"It does the children of Bradford no good to be in a constant process of reorganising schools, which has now been going on for five years.

"There is such volatility in demand for places and so many mistakes have been made in estimating this in the past, if you try to push the places down to a minimum there is a big risk of leaving some areas with not enough," he said.

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