The people who will decide on the future of Oxford schools do not know what they are doing, a councillor has claimed

The Schools Organisation Committee, which meets in July to finalise plans to scrap the city's middle schools, has been accused of failing to do its homework on the issue.

Its members met last week for a training seminar with a Department of Education official. Representatives said they wanted "clear guidance" on their powers. The committees were set up last year by Education Minister David Blunkett to give more power at a local level on school decision-making.

But Tom Richardson, Labour councillor for New Marston, told Oxfordshire County Council: "I don't know if the SOC knows what it's doing.

"Many questions were asked last week about procedure, but there were no answers not even from the Department of Education representative."

Cllr Janet Morgan, chairman of the SOC, said the seminar had been called to clarify the issues to avoid a delay to the meetings in July when a decision might be taken on whether to retain the present three-tier structure. She said: "It made sense for us to get answers to our questions before the main meetings in July rather than hold those up for hours while we clarified things."

She added: "This is a new organisation and we want to make sure things are done the right way."

The committee is made up of five groups consisting of county councillors, the Oxford Diocese, the Further Education Funding Council, Roman Catholic Church representatives, and governors.

Each group will vote en bloc on whether to scrap middle schools. The matter will be referred to a Government adjudicator if no unanimous decision is reached by all five parties. Earlier, the Save Our Schools campaign handed in more than 1,300 letters of protest, thousands of names on petitions and a 20,000-word document arguing their case against closures.

The deadline for objections ends today after the statutory two-month consultation period.

In February, the county's education committee voted to change to a primary and secondary school structure, but parents vowed to fight the scheme, claiming it would lead to major disruption of classes.

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