CONCERNS have been raised over whether East Lancashire’s primary schools can maintain their improving SATs results.

A number of schools across the region have seen their pupils’ preliminary grades rise again this year, with both Blackburn and Burnley seeing large increases.

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Blackburn’s Intack Primary School saw its results jump from 67 per cent of students getting level four or above in maths, reading and writing to 89 per cent, the highest in the school’s history.

It is joined by the likes of Stoneyholme Primary School in Burnley, which has seen its results go from 73 per cent last year to 89 per cent.

The results, which were recently sent to pupils, are still provisional while some tests are sent back to the exam boards for clarification.

The official set of results will be released later this year.

Stoneyholme headteacher Lisa Davison said that she hoped to maintain the high grades next year but she had concerns over how the changes to the assessment system would affect the 2016 results.

She said: “I’m thrilled with this set of results and it’s down to a lot of hard work at the school and developing the whole child. We have seen some sample tests for next year but we still do not really know how they are going to turn out. It’s difficult to know how well we will do next year because of these proposed changes.”

Rachel Cairney, headteacher at Intack Primary School, said: “These results are fantastic for us and everybody is proud of our pupils.

“We will try and maintain our results next year but it will be difficult with the changes to the assessments. Nobody really knows too much about these changes but we will have to do the best we can next year.”

Simon Jones, the National Union of Teachers representative in Lancashire, said: “Things are changing next year and schools are going to have to work harder to make sure that they are not classes as ‘coasting’.”