A FAILING education centre managed to turn their service around.

The Education Other Than At School (EOTAS) service – which includes Stratton Education Centre – held a special celebration yesterday after coming out of special measures.

Following a damning Ofsted report, Stratton Education Centre Referral Unit was put into special measures on September 23, 2009.

Ofsted said the referral unit was failing to give children a decent education and described management as weak.

Since then Krysia Butwilowski, headteacher at Stratton Education Centre, has worked hard to get the service back on track.

In its latest report Ofsted said the centre had made good progress since the previous inspection.

The centre now meets the needs of its students appropriately, and its leaders and managers were said to have demonstrated good capacity for further improvement.

Students’ attendance has improved and their behaviour is good and they feel safe and the school’s arrangements to ensure their safety were said to be effective.

To mark the achievement, the centres were visited by magician Neville Sinclair who performed for children at the centres in Stratton, Riverside and Oakfield.

Ms Butwilowski, who was brought in last April to help turn the centre around, has said she is thrilled with the improvements in such a short period of time.

She said.“We are comprised of seven different centres and in 2009 it was found to be providing an unsatisfactory level of education with some of the main issues being poor leadership and young people not achieving their full potential.

“The challenge for us was to achieve a shared vision and sense of purpose to help children who have either been excluded from mainstream school or have excluded themselves – it is very challenging.

“We’ve gone from scoring fours, which is inadequate, to twos in some areas which is good.

“It wasn’t all bad, there were some really good points before but they have now recognised the quality of staff and what they are doing to fulfil the potential of the children. That has been one of the best aspects to come out of it.

“All the children that we have here have got challenges and can be challenging, so part of the process was to identify the potential barriers and then to overcome them.

“Ofsted have also recognised that we are now good with the capacity to improve further and I think this has given us an excellent springboard to move forward.”