DECISIONS taken by the local education authority since a leadership change at a failing Worcester school have been questioned by a county councillor.

Coun John Buckley, who represents the St Martin's city ward, said he supported the idea of the council intervening at Elbury Mount Primary but doubted whether local people were being involved enough.

At a full council meeting yesterday, Coun Buckley said: "The school is being operated in a vacuum.

"There is no local participation in the running of the school.

"When is an interim board going to be set up to get local representation?"

Coun Buckley also wondered whether money available as part of the Government "fresh start" initiative would just be used to fund teachers' redundancies.

Coun June Longmuir, cabinet member for education, said: "As far as the interim board is concerned, we asked for it to be made up of people from outside the local community so no one was connected with the concerns of people involved before.

"We will hope most of the staff will be retrained.

"However, we have been offered a considerable amount of money as part of the fresh start package to look after anything we need to do to make sure the teaching in the future is sufficient."