A HEADTEACHER has been praised for 'raising the bar' at a primary school now rated good after coming out of special measures.

Government education watchdogs have said that St Aidan’s CofE Primary School in Blackburn has been improving overall.

And Ofsted inspectors singled out headteacher Julian Rogers for raising standards at the Mill Hill school with his 'firm and authoritative leadership.'

The Norfolk Street school was placed in special measures in October 2007 after being labelled inadequate due to exceptionally low standards.

But the latest report by the education body said that the school had shown big improvements.

The report said: “St Aidan’s is a good school with a friendly and welcoming environment. The head teacher has established a good climate for learning and a clear focus on raising achievement.

“Under his firm and authoritative leadership, school improvement strategies have been implemented very effectively so that teaching is now good and pupils’ rates of progress are increasing.”

The report also noted that the school promoted community cohesion and that pupils were polite and well behaved in lessons.

But a number of improvements were also recommended by inspectors.

The report said: "The school needs to raise expectations further and ensure that work is suitably challenging, especially for more able pupils.

"And it should continue its drive to improve attendance by developing further strategies with a stronger focus on pupils with slightly below-average attendance."

Headteacher Julian Rogers, who was appointed in September 2008, said: “This is another great inspection result for us, and shows our hard work is continuing to reap great rewards in terms of the pupils’ education and wellbeing at the school.

“This takes us another step towards our goal of achieving outstanding school status.”