A former teacher has criticised a decision by Oxfordshire County Council to close two centres for difficult Students.

Gill Baden, a former teacher at Carterton Community College and The Henry Box School, in Witney, and a teacher representative on the county council education committee for eight years, said it was important to keep the existing units open.

The Orchard and West Oxfordshire Pupil Referral Units (PRUs), in Abingdon and Bampton, which help young people with emotional and behavioural difficulties face closure as part of a countywide shake-up.

The units were set up to help students, either expelled or facing expulsion, to return to mainstream education.

Mrs Baden said: "The need for the kind of help they provide is indisputable. It is late in the day for these students to be given special help with their difficulties.

"Research shows that the earlier emotional and behavioural difficulties are diagnosed, the more effective help can be. It would be failing these students to simply send them out on work experience programmes until they cease to be our responsibility, with little done to help them cope with adult life."

Members of Oxfordshire County Council's education committee have voted to close the units within a year, and replace them with a countywide service - providing a rapid response for students at risk of expulsion.

The service, which will operate out of the existing centres in Oxford and Banbury, is designed to identify at risk students earlier. Students will be reintegrated back into mainstream education through a range of special learning programmes.

Alan Klee, head of Carterton Community College, one of the schools served by the west Oxfordshire PRU, said schools would need more cash to allow the system to work.

He said: "As long as we get the resources to deal with the difficult children, that would otherwise be at the PRU, the school can cope adequately. If we don't, and are asked to do more, it could become very difficult. There is also the question of whether schools can do the job that PRUs did -- but better. Some schools can and some can't."

He added: "Schools are not for everybody. Some people are just not suited to life in an institution. We have to be imaginative in looking at alternative programmes for those students who struggle."

County education officer John Mitchell said: "The service that will emerge will be different from the present one in that pupils will work with the units for a shorter length of time. It will be more focused and the total number of people dealt with will be greater. There will be more emphasis on reintegrating them into mainstream education. It is our job as an education service to educate people in mainstream schools wherever possible. We all work together to make sure people who have had difficulties are given the skills to reintegrate successfully."