PLANS to transform secondary education in the Burnley area will reinforce the social and racial divisions that exist in the borough's high schools, leading councillors have warned.

The Burnley Task Force said problems in the education system were one of the key causes of the riots in the town in 200.

That prompted Lancashire County Council to put forward a £150million plan to bulldoze the borough's high schools and replace them with five brand new state-of-the-art buildings.

But Burnley Council's executive committee looks set to raise serious concerns about parts of the proposals.

A written response to the county's vision for the borough's schools has been drawn up and is expected to be approved by the committee tonight.

In particular it urges county hall to rethink plans to introduce geographic priority areas for all the new community schools, which are aimed at making the admission arrangements more understandable for parents.

The response states: "We are concerned that the current proposals in relation to geographic priority areas will have the effect of reinforcing current patterns of division, and will in fact lead to the pupil profiles of all the new schools being more segregated than some are at present. This would be an extremely negative step."

If the county council continues with its plans to introduce geographic priority areas Burnley Council has asked for the boundaries to be re-drawn to create a better balance of pupils from a mixture of different neighbourhoods. Council leader Coun Stuart Caddy said: "This is a very detailed and considered response to the plans, which would reshape schooling and education in Burnley for decades to come.

"They are exciting and positive plans, and the council has already stated that it very strongly supports the need for investment in Burnley education.

"We are now making detailed suggestions, and while the borough is saying that the county needs to consider some issues in more detail and make some changes, this is very much in the spirit of the consultation which is now going on."

County Coun Alan Whittaker, cabinet member for education, said with consultation period now over officers were considering all the responses and would be reporting to him in August.

He said: "As you would expect, we have had quite a lot of responses from all parts of the community, these include issues about the location of the new schools.

"We will respond to all these in a positive way, but it would be inappropriate at this stage to say what the outcome will be."