At least 100 submissions are expected to be made to a group set up by the Department of Education to plan for schools for the future to suit each area’s individual needs across Northern Ireland.

The department’s Area-based Planning Exercise focuses on enabling all young people from the age of 14 to have access to a broad range of GCSE and A-level subjects on a local area basis by 2013.

Under the Entitlement Framework, all schools from September 2013 must provide all pupils with access to a minimum number of courses at GCSE level (the current target is 24) and A-level (current target 27).

In both cases at least one-third of the courses must be academic and at least one third vocational.

Some schools will have to work in collaboration with others to provide their pupils with access to the full range of courses.

Already there are 31 Area Learning Communities (ALC) across the province within which schools, further education colleges and other providers are working to increase the range of courses for pupils in local areas.

A central group and five area groups have been established to produce draft area plans — due to go out for consultation next month.

However, concerns have already been raised about this timescale.

Some schools will have to work with others to provide their pupils with access to the full range of courses

SDLP education spokesman Dominic Bradley claimed in September that area-planning within the post-primary sector was at least eight months behind schedule. Mr Bradley said that consultation on the local area plans would not be completed until January 2010 — a year later than planned.

The Central Group — which is chaired by Adeline Dinsmore, principal of Ashfield Girls’ High School — has met four times and an interim report was provided to the Education minister last month.

However, the area-planning website states that “due to a number of technical difficulties over the first weeks of operation”, a number of the expressions of interest submitted before November 6 have not been electronically forwarded to the group and “are therefore lost”.

Anyone affected is asked to resubmit.

An urgent notice on the site states: “The Central Group would like to apologise for any inconvenience that this has caused.”

A spokesman for the Department of Education said that the area-based exercise is “well underway” and that a dedicated website (www.ef-abp-exercise.org) had been launched in October. He continued: “The primary purpose of the website is to support those wishing to make a submission.

“This website contains the terms of reference for the exercise, details of the membership of each group, statistical data on each area, the pro-forma and guidance for making a submission and links to the relevant DE policy documents that provide the context for the exercise.”