A SMALL village primary school has been rated as 'good' by Ofsted just over two years after being told it needed to improve.

Bishopton Redmarshall School, in Bishopton village near Darlington, which has 91 pupils, was rated as requiring improvement in its last Ofsted report in October 2016.

New head teacher Judith Skirving started about 18 months ago to help turn around the school's fortunes and develop better links with the community and with parents.

Overall, it has now been rated as good, with good leadership, good pupil outcomes and good early years provision. The welfare, behaviour and personal development of pupils was ranked as outstanding.

Ofsted inspectors said: "The headteacher and governors have shown determination to improve all aspects of the school's performance.

"They are ambitious and have high expectations about what the pupils can achieve.

"Teachers plan lessons that engage pupils and move their learning forward. As a result, pupils make good progress from their starting points."

They said pupil attainment in reading, writing and mathematics was high and they were well challenged.

"Pupils are extremely polite and their behaviour is excellent. Pupils are, rightly, very proud of their school. They enjoy learning, attend school regularly and are independent, confident and articulate," the report added.

Teaching of maths had improved significantly since the last inspection but inspectors said the quality of the curriculum teaching was not fully consistent across the whole school.

Parental involvement had improved 'significantly', inspectors said.

Ms Skirving said: "It is a really lovely school and it had to undergo improvement for a number of reasons but I think they hadn't been inspected for a while. One of the issues was that we had to develop the community links and we have worked really hard to make our school open, inviting and welcome to everyone.

"We now have regular assemblies and we have done a lot of parental workshops just to get people more involved.

"The parents have been very supportive throughout and we have had positive feedback. It is a really big thing for our community to have achieved this. Our children are an absolute delight.

"All of the staff, governors and children have worked hard to achieve this and we are really pleased with the outcome."

The school is currently part of the BRandH Academy Trust alongside Heighington Primary School but from April 1 will become part of the Durham Diocesan Multi Academy Trust.