SCHOOLS across North Yorkshire are facing a shortage of 400 staff when they open next week.

The Criminal Records Bureau is still to check the past of between 300 and 400 new appointments of teachers and support staff.

Those checks must be completed before staff can be put in contact with school children.

With a national backlog of about 18,000 new appointments still to work through, the CRB is not expected to have cleared North Yorkshire's new members of staff before most of its 400 schools return on Wednesday.

In York, 37 new teachers are awaiting clearance out of 1,400 working in the city.

Elsewhere in the country, the backlog has meant some schools having to tell their pupils to stay away because there is enough staff to deal with them.

North Yorkshire County Council spokesman Tony Webster said: "We still have hundreds of new appointments awaiting clearance and, obviously, we will not compromise safety of the children in our care if clearance is not given in time. No staff will be allowed to start without it.

"Going on past records, at least half of our schools would be expecting a new teacher to start and the shortage will definitely cause problems. I don't think we have got the situation where we'll be asking pupils not to turn into school, but we need to look at how to deal with the shortage."

The council's education spokesman, Councillor Christopher Metcalfe, said: "This is something we were aware of a long time ago and which we have asked our MPs to make representations about.

"Last week I was told we had 500 staff who still needed clearing. I was assured that would be cleared before schools went back, but obviously that is not going to happen. We have been very badly let down by the Home Office."

Mr Webster said arrangements to deal with the situation could include drafting in supply teachers. "We are hoping schools will be able to function fairly normally, even if the clearances aren't completed in time," he said.

"Arrangements are for individual schools to make, but I don't think we are going to be in a position where we need to be sending children home."

A City of York Council spokeswoman said: "We were contacted by the CRB yesterday and were asked to give them a prioritised list of staff who were awaiting clearance. Once the CRB has our list, we will receive an update from them on the checks that they will be able to make before the children return to school next week. Therefore, at this stage, we don't know what the impact on schools will be."

The CRB checks the criminal records of employees before they start work. The backlog has come after internal changes in the bureau.

With the current climate following the deaths of two schoolchildren in Soham, Cambridgeshire, the checks are considered essential.

A Home Office spokesman said: "Every effort is being made to fully clear these disclosure applications by the commencement of the term times , though there can be no compromise in the rigour of the process. The CRB will endeavour to ensure that all but a handful of applications (those which may have been submitted late) are processed in time."

Updated: 12:35 Thursday, August 29, 2002