PLANS for the Church of England to invest £20m in replacing a North-East school at the centre of a pioneering education scheme have collapsed.

The proposal to pull down Eastbourne Comprehensive, in Darlington, and replace it with a voluntary aided 900-pupil school has fallen through after weeks of speculation that it was in doubt.

Education chiefs revealed in April that they were in talks to establish the new school by 2007, with cash from the Government's Partnerships for Church Schools programme.

The news followed Eastbourne forging links with the top-performing Hurworth School in the country's first education federation.

That link-up has already had a major impact on academic performance, with both schools expecting record GCSE results this year.

Eastbourne is also on the verge of coming out of the "special measures" category imposed by Ofsted inspectors in 2002.

But the church partnership scheme has now been withdrawn by the Department for Education and Skills (DfES).

The reason for the collapse of the partnership has not been made clear, but the school is now looking for other funding sources if a new building is to be constructed.

Eastbourne headteacher Karen Pemberton said she hoped that plans to replace the school could still go ahead through the Building Schools for the Future programme - a Government initiative aimed at rebuilding and renewing secondary education buildings.

She said: "There isn't the money for the church to build the new schools that it wanted to build.

"What the church does will depend on the next announcement on Building Schools for the Future.

"I have now got to take this back to the governors, but that's not to say that there won't be a new school at some point in the future."

An announcement on Building Schools for the Future is due in October, the same month Eastbourne governors meet to decide whether it should become a church school even if there is to be no new building.

Mrs Pemberton said: "There appears to be so much money and so many schemes that I'm sure we'll fit into one over the next five years.

"There will certainly be something that comes in its place."

A Darlington Borough Council spokeswoman said: "This opportunity to bid for money has been withdrawn. We are still discussing options with the church."

A spokeswoman for the DfES confirmed: "The scheme has been withdrawn. In terms of Building Schools for the Future, the school may qualify."