TEACHING union leaders said today they expected around a dozen staff would not be offered posts as part of the shake-up of secondary education in Burnley and Pendle.

More than 1,000 letters were due to be delivered teachers in Burnley and Nelson who have to re-apply for their jobs as part of the Building Schools for the Future revamp.

And Ken Cridland, from the National Union of Teachers, said it was expected about half a dozen people in each area would not get the jobs they wanted.

However he stressed that did not necessarily mean they would be out of work by September.

A deadline of March 31 was set for letters to be sent to all secondary school teachers, meaning an offer of a job or rejection should land on their doorsteps today.

A back-up system is in place so that if letters do not arrive they can be collected from either the Springfield primary school, Oxford Road or Northern Technologies, Netherfield Road.

Mr Cridland, Lancashire divisional secretary of the NUT, said: "We are hopeful there will be no compulsory redundancies.

"But there will be around six or seven teachers in each area who will not be offered posts.

"That does not mean they will not get jobs, just that they have not been slotted in as yet."

The shake-up of teaching staff has come about under plans to replace 11 high schools with eight new "super-schools" and two new community colleges as part of the £250million Building Schools for the Future project.

Mr Cridland said he did not think fears that 80 teachers would lose their jobs would materialise.

He said the science sector might be overstaffed but people who could not be matched to a job might be offered work elsewhere in the county, retraining in a different subject, or early retirement.

A spokesman for Lancashire County Council said the process of appointing staff to the new schools had been agreed with the teaching unions for a long time and the authority gave the commitment to send out the letters to teachers at the end of March.