SPRINGFIELD special school in Witney has been praised for giving its pupils a “very good start” in education.

The school, which shares its two sites with Madley Brook Primary School and Wood Green School, was rated good after a recent visit by inspectors from watchdog Ofsted.

Their report highlighted pupils’ good behaviour and their trust in staff, while the school provides a broad range of subjects for them to study.

Inspectors, who observed 15 lessons in February, wrote in the report: “All pupils achieve well. They acquire good literacy, communication and mathematics skills and are well prepared for their next stage of education.

“Staff make lessons interesting so that pupils enjoy learning. Teachers mostly plan effectively to meet pupils’ individual needs and use assessment well to set work at the right level.”

They said that the school, which takes children with a range of special educational needs, aged from two to 16, had not achieved outstanding status because teachers sometimes allowed pupils’ learning to slow down once they had grasped a subject and activities were not always demanding enough for the children.

The report said the majority of pupils’ special educational needs were severe learning difficulties and autism spectrum disorders.

Headteacher Emma Lawley said she was “delighted” to maintain the same rating that the school was awarded after inspectors’ previous visit three years ago.

She said: “We’ve put a lot of work in to make sure our teaching is good in the school.

“There has been a lot of work making sure we’re consistent with management, leadership and planning.

“We can now focus on how to become outstanding, because that’s our long-term goal.

“We want to work on developing our teaching that we’ve got to push that bit further.”