SCIENCE teachers facing the jobs axe at University College Worcester are being treated like sacrificial lambs, according to a union representative.

Senior management at UCW are poised to close programmes in the biological and environmental science departments due to falling student numbers.

The move is part of the college's bid to reduce its pay expenditure by £900,000, and up to 20 jobs in total could go across all college departments with declining student numbers, including the humanities.

Mike Shotton, secretary of UCW Association of University Teachers, is pressing for negotiation following a UCW Academic Board meeting tomorrow in which college chiefs are expected to issue a consultation paper proposing to withdraw the science programmes.

Around 15 jobs are at stake in the science departments but there are a series of early retirement packages and opportunities to switch from full-time to part-time.

"There are falling numbers of students but what angers staff is that nothing has been done about it then suddenly we're for the chop - sacrificial lambs if you like," said Mr Shotton. "We have too many staff and I don't disagree with the analysis but I think it could've been managed more sensitively.

"There's a chance of keeping science and I'm hoping to convince the board it's worth keeping the core of science."

But college principal Dorma Urwin said the decision was not out of the blue and there had been on-going discussions since last year.

She said the action was necessary to ensure UCW had a strong future, and to satisfy full university status they had to have a broad spread of subjects with sufficient numbers of pupils in each subject.

"We want to build on the business, management, IT, media and health care subjects but in order to build these up we have to invest in them further," said Mrs Urwin.

She emphasised the changes would be implemented over two years and said there would be negotiation to try and reduce forced redundancies.

The UCW is required by the Higher Education Funding Council for England to produce a three per cent surplus to reinvest in the college, which for UCW equals £650,000.

"The senior management are confident science courses are never likely to be popular with students, or promoted by the Government, and so the loss of this area of the curriculum is to be seen as a welcome release of resources," said Mr Shotton.