The key role steering Bradford schools through a massive £170 million shake-up is up for grabs after Labour's election-night mauling - and widely fancied to take over is current education committee deputy chairman Susanne Rooney.

Meanwhile ousted Bradford Council leader John Ryan is expected to make a dramatic bid to snatch back his top job at a private meeting in City Hall on Monday.

He is likely to declare battle against Ian Greenwood who snatched the job from him by just four votes at the Labour group annual meeting last year.

As a result of his defeat Coun Ryan - former chairman of the education committee - has been relegated to the backbenches for a year.

Concern was expressed last year about the district's stability after having five different Labour leaders in eight years. Coun Greenwood and Coun Ryan today refused to comment on any new leadership contest.

But a Labour insider said Coun Ryan, who represents the Bowling ward, would definitely be submitting a challenge.

The private meeting will decide all the top Labour jobs in a secret ballot.

All the committee and sub-committee chairmen will be elected - but the main players, education committee chairman Jim Flood and social services chief Mike Young, who lost their seats, are no longer in the equation.

The election defeat of Jim Flood leaves open the key stewardship of the education committee, the Council's biggest spender and most controversial service.

Bradford's schoolchildren persistently underperform, attaining some of the worst results in the country at GCSE and Key Stage Two tests for 11-year-olds.

The city won permission to reform the education system from a three to a two-tier system in March and makes Coun Rooney ideally placed to take up the reigns of education.

Coun Rooney confirmed her nomination for the vacant post had been submitted by colleagues anxious she should become education chairman.

"My hat has been thrown into the ring and as far as I know it is the only hat in the ring," she added.

She added that school's sub-committee chair, Coun Eileen McNally, had also been nominated to take over the deputy's role.

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