Thousands of primary schools are likely to merge or form partnerships with nearby schools in response to falling budgets and government pressure to improve results.
League tables published today reveal that children in 1,310 primary schools failed to make adequate progress in reading, writing and maths last year. A hard core of 150 schools has failed to meet government targets for five consecutive years.
Ministers repeated warnings that they would take action in the weakest schools to put an end to their under-performance. Michael Gove, the Education Secretary, said last summer that he would find academy sponsors to take over 200 failing primary schools by September next year and ordered local authorities to intervene to improve results in another 500.
Although some sponsors have been