A new network of special units is being planned in a bid to avoid Bradford schools having to exclude disruptive pupils.

Work will begin on the £1.5 million scheme in September and eventually every Bradford secondary school will have access to one of five new units as a place to send very difficult children who they might otherwise have to exclude.

Pupils will remain on roll at their original school while they attend the units for limited periods. They will be taught core national curriculum subjects, receive more one to one tuition and have access to special health care and extra courses provided by colleges, charities and private training providers.

It is hoped the units will help pupils with emotional and behavioural problems progress to mainstream schools.

The move was today welcomed by Cheryl Barnsley, of Idle, Bradford, whose sons John, 11, and Ryan, nine, have both been permanently excluded from schools.

"It is better than chucking them out and letting them get worse," she said. "If they had had these units for my sons it might have made all the difference. Ryan has a private tutor now and with the one to one attention he has come on leaps and bounds."

The kind of package offered by the new units is usually only available at pupil referral units for students who have already been excluded. Some schools do have existing on-site learning support units for difficult pupils but these are limited.

Bradford Council's head of learning support services, Bill Turner, said: "We want to see reductions in exclusions, an increase in attendance and an increase in academic performance."

The scheme is being jointly funded by the Council, the Government's Excellence in Cities Scheme and the schools. The district's 27 secondary schools have been divided into groups of five or six which will each share a unit catering for 25 pupils. They could be housed at one of the schools they serve or in buildings left empty after schools reorganisation.

Queensbury School head Richard Moore said: "We start from the point that the best place for a pupil is in school. Then they don't have to deal with the added problems of being outside the mainstream school system.

"We can see why children sometimes misbehave and are disruptive. You want to support them but you can't do that at the expense of the rest of the school. The real difference with this is it would be bringing the schools together to solve the problems."

By keeping on more difficult pupils, schools can claim more grants from the Government. But Mr Moore denied that the motivation for schools was financial.

He said: "To be absolutely blunt most schools would be more than delighted to pay the money to lose these children. But we are looking at this from an educational perspective.''