Bradford's much-vaunted and desperately needed schools reorganisation has descended into farce.

Almost a year after the move from three-tier to two-tier schools was finally approved, the Council is still £47 million short of the funds it needs to make it work.

As if that was not enough, dismay has been piled on top of disappointment and disillusionment by the news that more than 50 schools are unlikely to be moving in September as they had originally been led to believe.

After months of detailed planning and preparation they now face the uncertainty and discomfort of temporary classrooms.

For many, that's nothing new: some schools have had "temporary" buildings for 30 years and another 200 were installed across the district last year as a stop-gap measure. Some children even had to miss a week of lessons last September because their new portable buildings were not ready on time.

Now many face that uncertainty again after being told that building work to prepare schools is almost certain to be unfinished - and, in some cases, not even started - by the time they are due to begin life in a two-tier system this autumn.

Those fears are merely compounded by the fact that the Council still has not appointed a Managing Partner to oversee the £171 million building works project.

The education authority is still in talks with the Government over where the £47 million deficit is to come from. And it has still not provided a satisfactory public explanation for the huge shortfall.

It is just not good enough to blame it on a "miscalculation". There are many questions that remain unanswered:

WHO made that "miscalculation?"

HOW could anyone have been that far out on a project of such magnitude?

WHY has nobody been brought to book for getting it so wrong?

IS anybody, ever, going to hold their hand up to an error which, at one time, would have brought down the whole Council?

WHY didn't Government officials, who were supposed to have gone through Bradford's plans with a fine toothcomb, spot this enormous mistake?

Questions, too, must be asked about how we arrived at a situation where hundreds of governors, staff and parents have spent months preparing for a move they almost certainly will not now make at the time they were told to plan for.

WHY were they forced into action when so many of them told the Council "we'll never do it in time?"

WHY did the Department for Education and Employment take so long to make a decision when every day's delay made the project harder to achieve?

AND WHY, for that matter, did the Council fail to get that message across to officials?

WHY has it taken so long to sort out the bricks and mortar contracts?

WHY has building work barely started?

What should have been Bradford's flagship project to carry it into the new millennium with real hope for turning round the district's education performance and prospects has become a shambles.

And it could all have been so different.

Most reasonable people are willing to accept that immense obstacles have been put in the way of the shake-up's completion within a three-year timescale: even NUT spokesman Ian Murch said yesterday that some of the blame lay with the Government.

So why hasn't the Council been more open all along? Many heads and governors have told us they were shocked by this week's announcement, even though many knew in their heart of hearts that the situation was looking bleak.

But why haven't they been involved all along? Why haven't they had daily bulletins on progress? Why have they been kept so much in the dark?

There seems to be little understanding in the corridors of power of the sheer pressure and anxiety this whole process has placed on already over-burdened school staff. There have been many sleepless nights already in the build-up to these moves.

Teachers' jobs are blighted, parents are frightened with uncertainty and their children cannot fail to be affected by the atmosphere of tension.

The shake-up was always going to disrupt pupils' lives: the failings in the process so far have only served to render that disruption so much worse.

Now it's time to end this disarray.

The Telegraph & Argus - along with the vast majority of our readers - is fully behind the reorganisation. It must happen if we are to stand any hope of turning round the district's dismal failure to attain the sort of educational standards we need to sustain and develop our economic and social future.

But the Council must start listening to the concerns of those on the ground whose job it is to make all this happen.

It must make the whole process open and it must involve everybody in the chain at every stage. It must come clean about what now needs to be done and what else is likely to cause delays.

Why, for instance, despite several meetings already, has such an important issue not yet been brought before the Council's new Executive? Surely it should have been Items One, Two and Three on the agenda of every public meeting so far.

The Council's controlling group clearly has one eye on the looming local elections in May, which some believe threaten the prospect of a hung council.

But it will do itself no favours by trying to sweep this issue under the carpet.

It must set out now with a new spirit of co-operation and work together openly with schools, their staff and their governors to make this shake-up work.

It can't avoid further trauma in this process - but it must do a better job of looking after it.

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