A PRIMARY school that was almost put into special measures two years ago has been championed by Ofsted following an inspection last month.

In February 2013 inspectors were so concerned about Chiseldon Primary School they recommended an external review of governance and listed improvements necessary to bring the school up to standard.

But 21 months on and inspectors graded Chiseldon as a good school, with only a handful of minor improvements left to make before reaching an outstanding benchmark.

Headteacher Spencer Allen, who took the helm in April 2013 after the local authority took swift action to start remedying the problems at the school, was delighted that the school had made such huge progress in such a relatively short space of time.

He said: “I’m ecstatic. To see how far we’ve come and the progress we’ve made in just 18 months is just brilliant.

“It has definitely been a challenge, the last inspection report was just awful, but the best thing about this report is that we can now draw a line behind that and work towards becoming an outstanding school.”

In the report, inspectors said: “Leadership and management are good because the school leaders have worked effectively together to overcome previous weaknesses.

“As a result, the quality of teaching and pupils’ achievement has improved significantly since the last inspection.

“The energy, enthusiasm and commitment of the headteacher are the key reasons for the school’s rapid improvement.

“The headteacher’s high expectations and ambition and the determination of staff have resulted in all weaknesses identified in the last inspection being resolved.

“Now that means previous underachievements being addressed and standards are improving.

“The quality of teaching has improved considerably since the last inspection because weaker teaching has been eliminated.

“Because teachers have high expectations and know their pupils well, lessons are well planned and structured to meet the range of pupils’ needs in each class.”

Until this week the school had never achieved higher than a satisfactory or requires improvement rating. The latest report is especially welcoming since the criteria to meet Ofsted standards is significantly more difficult this year.

Mr Allen said: “This was under the most difficult Ofsted framework yet. The report recognises all the hard work we have done, and the improvements inspector recommend we make are fairly minor.

“Most of the improvements involve embedding the new structures we have put in place.

“Everything has been changed. There is a new governing body, we’ve improved on the planning of lessons and the teaching, and we’ve employed some more staff as well as addressing the improvements Ofsted wanted us to make.

“In 2012, only 59 per cent of pupils were achieving the Government benchmark (level four) in reading, writing and maths, but this year 81 per cent have achieved it.

“We’ve also completely changed the ethos of the school.

“Every child goes swimming for six weeks, all children go ice skating for six weeks, and every child in Year 1 and above learns to play a musical instrument.

“We have a wide range of extra curricular activities so that there is plenty that children can be inspired by, which then feeds back into their reading and writing learning.

“If children develop interests and passions of their own then they can read and write about them, and it makes the academic leaning more interesting for them.”

Before Chiseldon can be graded as outstanding, inspectors said that work to refurbish the outside area for the Early Years Foundation Stage should be completed.