The UK's only specialist European school, in Culham near Abingdon, faces closure because the European Commission has pulled the plug on its funding.

Unless the school, which gets 50 per cent of its money from the Brussels-based commission, turns itself into an independent institution, it will have to start preparing for closure in 2010 and cease to exist by 2016.

Although supporters of the school have accepted they will lose the funding, they are setting up a trust to search for donors and benefactors and lobby European Commision president Jose Manuel Barroso for a stay of execution.

The school opened in 1978 to educate the children of scientists working on the Joint European Torus (JET) project, but that is being wound down and it the school now educates many pupils whose parents are not associated with the scheme.

Oxford's Lord Mayor Jim Campbell, who has been asked to act as a trustee, said: "It's important to keep the school going.

"The plan now is to come up with a system that will involve companies providing funding and certainly involve parents paying fees, but on a sliding scale.

"It would become an independent school in one sense but also get Government support.

"Language learning in this country is in a very bad state and this could be a flagship school."

Culham is one of 13 European schools across the continent and the only one in Britain, with about 900 nursery, primary and secondary students.

Maurizio Fantato, chairman of the parents' association said: "There might be the possibility of transforming the school into an independent school with a European curriculum, but it's all very sketchy at the moment and there is a phenomenal amount of work to be done."

"The great risk is about the Commission talking about closure rather than transformation."

Headteacher Berta Bustorff, the only person at the school the Oxford Mail was told yesterday was authorised to speak on the subject, is currently out of the country and unavailable for comment.

Henley MP Boris Johnson, in whose south Oxfordshire constituency the European School is based, is a former pupil of the European School in Brussels.

He said: "European schools are wonderful things, a fantastic model of education and made me what I am.

"We should definitely try to support that kind of approach in our area.

"The grim reality is this is a fee-paying institution, therefore it can't be construed as a state school in any way."