Parents have been warned to contact their children's primary schools to check they are open - despite an announcement that the classroom chaos was expected to end on Monday.

Portakabin promised to bring 40 workers from all over the country to complete the work on temporary classrooms which were not ready for the start of the school term last week.

But head teachers at some schools, including Cottingley Primary have told parents not to bring their children back until Tuesday or later next week.

The heads are said to have been sceptical about completion because previous dates have been given and passed.

Now working parents face problems because they have made child minding arrangements or reorganised their jobs.

But the message from Angela Drizi, head of the school reorganisation, to parents who had been given others dates was that children should stay at home and ring the school to check when it was opening.

She said: "Some head teachers have been very cautious about assurances because so far that hasn't been their experience.

"Portakabin will be working right through until Sunday night."

But she said schools could be empty shells and would have to set up the classrooms before they could be used.

She added that head teachers would contact parents wherever possible to make them aware of the situation. The crisis has come in the first phase of the massive schools reorganisation.

Pupils who would have left their first schools for middle schools this month have been kept back for a year, requiring portable classrooms to be built during the summer holidays.

Now Portakabin has agreed to work right through the weekend and Council Chief Executive Ian Stewart says he expects all the work to be done by Monday.

He will then meet Portakabin managing director Stephen Price to review the situation and discuss other issues which could include compensation.

Mark Newman from Bradford branch of the National Association of Headteachers said "We are looking at a significant loss of education."

He hoped that parents would note the delays were nothing to do with head teachers.

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