The University of Bradford is offering students more places next term.

Teenagers who miss out on their desired grades on Thursday will be able to apply for 255 extra places at Bradford through the Clearing system.

The Government has funded a total of 10,000 additional places on science, technology, engineering and maths courses at 57 universities and colleges to address the needs of the national workforce.

Universities were invited to bid for a share of £132 million to cover the costs of additional places through the Higher Education Council for England’s University Modernisation Fund.

Professor Geoff Layer, the University of Bradford’s deputy vice-chancellor, said: “We are delighted that the Government has recognised the nature of education at the University of Bradford and that we are able to offer these additional places for 2010-11.

“These places came to us in July which means they came at a time after we have made our offers and students have made their choices, and we want to make as many of these additional places available to people who don’t achieve what they wanted to on results day because we want to create opportunity.”

The extra places will be available to students in the European Union across courses in business, chemistry, computing, economics, engineering and maths.

Prof Layer said: “We secured these places because of the type of university we are. Our courses are very vocational and students here generally move into graduate employment. They lead into very specific types of jobs and the Government has invested in that type of provision because it sees it as essential for filling jobs for years to come.

“It’s great news for the city and its young people at a time when we have had a 19 per cent increase in applications, which is above the national average. We needed to respond to the increased demand.”

By the end of June, the University had received 12,593 applications from home students.

For more information about the University’s clearing process visit bradford.ac.uk/clearing. The clearing helpline on 0800 0731225 will be open from 8am on Thursday to help students find a place.