A charm offensive has been launched to sell the idea of rebuilding Bradford's secondary schools through an ambitious private finance initiative.

Council chiefs will submit a bid for a £200 million Private Finance Initiative (PFI) project to the Government in January. If successful the scheme would be one of the biggest of its type in the country and has huge implications for local schools.

It would enable many of the district's 28 secondary schools and 12 special schools to be completely rebuilt or refurbished to a 21st Century standard, starting in 2004.

The new buildings would belong to a private sector company, which would lease them back to the Council over 25 or 30 years.

The private company would take over management of the buildings in return for a regular fee. School support workers including caretakers, cooks and cleaners, grounds maintenance staff and possibly even office staff would transfer to the private company's payroll. The running of the buildings would be taken out of the hands of governing bodies, and their funding would be reduced accordingly.

Bradford Council has set up a series of consultation meetings to brief governors, head teachers and councillors, starting this week. And today councillors were debating the issue for the first time, at the Education overview and scrutiny committee at City Hall.

Steve Jones, head of service procurement at Bradford Council, said: "Having fully serviced accommodation would leave teachers to get on with their core task while the building stuff was dealt with under the PFI. Schools' budgets would be top sliced."

He said the private firm would be contractually obliged to maintain standards and would forfeit part of their fee if buildings were not properly clean, for example. "They would lose performance penalties so it does hurt them in the pocket, where most people think it should hurt them," he said.

Unions are opposed to PFI due to concerns over the long-term costs and lack of accountability. They will lobby governing bodies to urge them not to sign up to the new proposal.

Ian Murch, of the Bradford branch of the National Union of Teachers, said heads could have problems if caretakers and other workers were no longer directly employed by the school.

"You won't be able to tell someone to fix something - it will be a big bureaucratic process to get things done," he said. He estimated that as many as 80 workers in each secondary school could be transferred to the private sector.

"This is more than a method for raising finance, if you use it as a vehicle for privatising the delivery of services," he said.

"In return for some extra building, which they will have to pay for under a mortgage, governing bodies are being asked to hand over control of their school to somebody else."