A BURNLEY superschool which is only half full is seeking to make 20 members of staff redundant.

They include almost a third of the teachers and nearly half the support team.

MP Gordon Birtwistle is now seeking an emergency meeting with the head of Hameldon Community College and Lancashire County Council education chiefs to discuss its future.

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The school, which opened in 2006 and is bidding to become an academy free of local authority control, is seeking to make redundant the equivalent of 11 teachers and nine non-teaching staff.

Mr Birtwistle and Lancashire National Union of Teachers secretary Sam Ud--din (CORR) have both expressed concern for the future of the school.

Head teacher Gill Broom has made clear to staff that with 342 pupils for a 750 place school, it faces a deficit of £2.24 million in the financial year to March 31 2015 without the cutbacks.

Denying the school may close, she said the maximum number of employees at risk of redundancy was 10.91 full time equivalent teaching staff and 9.2 full time equivalent support staff.

It currently employs 39 teachers covering 35.5 posts and 34 support staff representing 23.7 full-time equivalents.

The school is one of five in Burnley which opened as part of the £250million Building Schools for the Future scheme and was created with the merger of Ivy Bank and Habergham High Schools.

Last year Ofsted said the college in Coal Clough Lane had ‘serious weaknesses’ - the third time in six years failings had been identified.

Cuts, including temporary posts, would come from the English department, as well as ICT, geography, history, RE, art music, learning for life and science.

In June it announced five prospective job losses, including an assistant headteacher, and asked for voluntary redundancies.

The next month Hameldon announced it was bidding for academy status.

LibDem MP Mr Birtwistle said: “I am very concerned.

“I shall be seeking a meeting with the headteacher and county education officials before it moves to academy status.

“The school needs to raise standards and making staff redundant is not the way to do that.

“We can allow it to wither on the vine.

“Becoming an academy may be the way forward but I want to meet Miss Brown and education officials to discuss what happens next.

Miss Broom said: “There is no truth in any rumour that the college is to close next year.

“ After reviewing the curriculum and the available funding, it is necessary to look at the college’s staffing levels.

“In the letter to staff, we have identified a number of teaching and non-teaching posts in areas which we are proposing to reduce.

“We have also said that, as we are now in a period of formal consultation with Teacher Professional Associations and UNISON, those proposals may change.

“If staff within the college have queries that they wish to raise regarding the letter and the process, these should be addressed through their Professional Association, union representatives or directly to the Staffing Review Committee.

“It is important to remember that making sure that our students receive a high standard of education and pastoral care will always be our highest priority.”

Mr Ud-din said: “We do have concerns about the future of the school in the long term with these staff reductions.

“We will work with the other unions and organisation representing teaching and non-teaching staff on this.

“We feel for the staff at the school which has suffered the consequences of too much central government control of education.

“The NUT is very concerned about the ability of the school to deal with changes to the national curriculum in the future.”Do we know how many staff it has?