TENBURY High School is to feature in a national showcase of some of the most improved academies in the country.
It is the latest step in a remarkable story of recovery for a school that just over a year ago was put into special measures.
That all seems a long time ago and what is now known as the Tenbury Ormiston Academy will feature in the Parliamentary Review publication.
The Review has several editions, each focusing on an individual policy area, all with a strategic aim of raising standards by highlighting best practice.
Tenbury High will feature among some of the educational success stories.
The school has come out exceptionally well in the latest performance tables, placed as one of the best schools in Worcestershire.
These show that 58% of students who sat their GCSE examinations last summer achieved five A* to C passes including English and maths.
This compares with a national average of 53% and represents a transformation for a school that just 13 months ago was judged to be failing after a highly critical inspection from the education watchdog Ofsted.
But the headline figure for GCSE passes is not the only mark of success because Tenbury High was one of only two schools in Worcestershire where the pupils considered to be most able achieved a 100% pass rate in the benchmark five A* to C grades including English and maths.
“The figures show that we had a group of students who arrived at the school just below the national average for attainment and left above the national average,” said head teacher Adrian Price.
Mr Price also said that he is ‘rather fed up’ with people who try to play down the relevance of the latest set of performance figures.
“The fact is that we have done well and we should celebrate that success that is good for the pupils, school and the local community,” he added.
Tenbury High School was put in special measures largely because of inconsistency with results in English and maths but has shown major improvements in these subjects.
This progress was further enhanced when some of the English papers from last summer were re-evaluated in the autumn with a number of student grades improved.
But the head teacher says that the school will keep its feet on the ground and not get carried away.
“They say in football that a team is only as good as its last result and we have to remember that,” said Mr Price, who is a keen supporter of Aston Villa.
“We now have the challenge of making sure that the improvement is sustained and that means that we keep doing what we have been doing to turn things around.”
When he took over as head teacher he told the teaching staff that the priority was ‘to make the main thing’ by which he meant academic teaching.
However, he was committed to retaining the school’s close links with the community and a caring ethos.
He has said that academic attainment is a key objective for a good school but is not the only thing that matters.