EYNSHAM Primary School has been plunged into special measures after a damning report which criticised leadership and teaching.

Now education bosses are investigating the possibility of stepping in and brokering a deal for the school to become an academy.

That would see it partnered with a better performing school in the area.

A crunch meeting of Oxfordshire County Council education officers and schools improvement cabinet member Melinda Tilley was due to take place today.

Following a visit to Eynsham Primary in February, Ofsted inspector Alison Grainger said the school was inadequate and said “substantial deterioration” had taken place as a result of poor leadership and management.

There are 407 pupils at the school, and the council recently consulted on expanding the school to a two-form entry.

In a report just made public, Ms Grainger pointed to weaknesses in teaching and the curriculum and said pupils were underachieving.

She said: “Many pupils currently in the school are not making enough progress in relation to their starting points and capabilities.”

Headteacher Zena Vass was last night unavailable.

In a statement on behalf of the school, chairman of governors Angela Cox said: “The school has already put in place an action plan to address the findings of the report.

“This is already raising standards.”

Mrs Tilley said the school had already been “on our radar for a while” prior to the Ofsted judgement.

Mrs Tilley said: “It is dispiriting but my worry is the Department for Education will step in so we need to step in before then. We are thinking about groups of primary schools supporting one which isn’t doing so well.”

She stressed the council had no power to impose academy status on the failing school.

But she said she hoped a local solution could be found rather than change forced upon the school by the Department for Education.

But she said that if deemed necessary, an interim executive board could be considered by the authority.

She said: “It’s very sad because they serve a lot of children and whichever way you look at it, there are children that are being failed by the system.

“We will do everything we can to turn it around.

“We can’t leave it to do what it’s doing because it’s failing children.”

The problems at Eynsham come after two Oxford primary schools – SS Mary and John in East Oxford and John Henry Newman in Littlemore – managed to get out of special measures.