A FAILING high school has been named the eighth worst in the country for GCSE results -- prompting calls for an urgent review of its rescue plan.

Queen's Park Technology College -- the second worst in the North West -- was also named in the bottom 200 for unauthorised absence and failing to help pupils reach their full potential.

Today, council bosses in Blackburn with Darwen insisted the results prove they were right to change the school this April.

But critics said the plan to re-launch it, with a new name but many of the same staff, on the same site wasn't enough.

And they criticised council bosses for not taking the same swift action they took at another failing school, Darwen Moorland, which recorded improved results.

Queen's Park is one of two Blackburn with Darwen high schools to be placed in special measures by Ofsted in February. The other, Darwen Moorland, had a new superhead and reported an eight per cent increase in the number of pupils getting five or more GCSEs at grades A* to C, even though he arrived just weeks before exam season in May.

According to figures published by the Department for Education and Skills, just 11 per cent of pupils at Queen's Park managed five or more A* to C grade GCSEs in 2004, a slump of four per cent.

The school has not reached more than 20per cent - the Government benchmark for defining a failing school - since before 2000. Its rating fell around 40 places this year.

It also recorded one of the worst rates of unauthorised abscene in the country - 4.3 per cent of days a year lost.

Key findings in the Queen's Park Ofsted report included teachers being accused of poor lesson planning, unsatisfactory management of pupils and of not raising pupils' aspirations.

Children struggling with basic skills weren't given the opportunity to improve and headteacher, Ian Bott, was told he had not brought about improvements rapidly enough.

The council's Conservative education spokesman, Coun John Williams, said: "The signs should have been there, they should have been spotted.

"The pupils here have been let down really badly

"I'm worried that this new school plan is just a quick solution. How can you call it a new school when it will be in the same building, with the same pupils and most of the same teachers?"

Tory leader Coun Colin Rigby added: "I have never understood why drastic action at Moorland was so swift but so much slower at Queen's Park. There is no reason why the two schools were treated differently."

A spokesman for the National Union of Teachers said: "The practice of closing a school one day and opening a new one on the same site with the same pupils but a new name and a new head has happened elsewhere, and the success at best has been patchy."

Jack Fairless, chairman of governors at Witton Park High School and a former teacher at Queen's Park, said: "Until the school has an intake from across the borough, and not just one area, I don't see how things can improve. It will take more than a name change."

Coun Dave Hollings, executive member for education and lifelong learning, admitted support for the school in the past had been "piecemeal."

In the weeks after the inspection, drives to improve basic reading and writing and behaviour in school started, while an emphasis was placed on improving pupils' confidence, he said.

He added: "A lot has been done at the school but to compare it with Moorland is unfair because its weaknesses were different. Moorland's were about leadership weaknesses."

Moorland head Gareth Dawkins said: "We know we can improve more and we will do, that is for certain. The students really got stuck in and the way they responded showed in these exam results.

"There is a strong spirit here and we're pleased with the results, which also show that a lot of pupils are reaching their potential. Our form is good, as Mark Hughes might say."