A HAMPSHIRE boarding school for children with disabilities could be forced into temporary closure after four of their nine carers resigned when their hours were slashed.

The care worker's hours were cut as part of a cost-cutting drive by bosses at the Osbourne School in Winchester, which looks after ten boarding and 120 other students with profound disabilities.

The school says it was pushed into the move because of increases in the wage bill it will have to meet this year following Hampshire County Council's drive to increase the salaries of traditionally low paid care workers.

To fund that change the school then decided to cut back the care workers working year from 52 weeks to term-times only, in line with other teaching staff, and to reduce their weekly hours from 42 hours to 37.

Union representatives for the care workers said these changes could seriously compromise both staff and pupil safety, and that it was morally wrong to have taken this decision without consulting parents.

The Unison spokesman added that the school may now be forced to close while replacements for the workers are found.

However Osbourne School head teacher Rod Wakelam, said: "The final outcome of this reorganisation will not in any way diminish the quality of care or the safe staffing levels our children receive, in fact it will deliver the care more efficiently and will offer the pupils the continuity and structure they need."