Education bosses say they will give improved support to a head teacher to prevent a Leicester school failing for the second time in two years.

Fosse Primary School, in Woodgate, Leicester, is in danger of being rated as "inadequate" again, which could see the Government ask the city council to consider closure.

Officials say they are determined this will not to happen.

It comes after Ofsted's latest monitoring report said the 350-pupil school had not made adequate improvements since being placed in special measures in April 2008.

Head teacher Richard Stone said there were many good aspects of the school and he was convinced he would be able to prove that at the next inspection, expected to take place before the summer holidays.

Across the country only 67 schools were rated inadequate twice between September 1997 and 2008.

Margaret Libreri, director of learning services at Leicester City Council, said she was confident the school would improve but said local authority support needed to get better too.

She said: "We need to look at what has gone wrong because if our systems were 100% right this wouldn't happen.

"It's clear that Richard has the right focus and knows what needs to be changed and there are pockets of good practice, but it's too much for one head teacher."

A lot of the head's work had been taken up dealing with child protection issues which had diverted focus from raising standards in the classroom, she said.

She added: "We have complete confidence in him but we need to put in someone to help him focus on learning because overall it's not acceptable at the moment."

She said the city council had been successful in improving schools after they were judged inadequate but said Fosse's slow progress "shows that it's not there yet and we still need to improve".

Mr Stone said: "We don't disagree with things inspectors found, there are areas that still need to develop.

"But I've got a strong determined staff who work extremely hard.

"Some classes have made a lot of progress.

"It is not yet consistent across the school.

"We have changed children's attitude to learning, which was not fully there before.

"I'm here for the long term, not just to get out of special measures."

He said he hoped inspectors would see the improvements across the whole school when they next visited.

At this stage inspectors look at specific weaknesses they have identified rather than the quality of the whole school.

They said there was still not sufficient teaching good enough "to accelerate pupils' progress or to enable attainment to rise".