A VILLAGE primary school near Devizes has more reason than most to celebrate after gaining recognition from the Department of Education and doing well in an inspection.

Urchfont Primary received a letter from Secretary of State for Education Nick Gibb after the school was judged to be in the top one per cent of all primary schools in England in its key stage two reading assessment last year.

A few days later the school underwent an the Statutory Inspection of Anglican and Methodist Schools by the Diocese of Salisbury and was found to be good.

Head teacher Carol Talbot said: "The letter congratulated the staff and pupils on the very high standard of achievement demonstrated in the reading Key Stage 2 assessments last year. This was a lovely surprise and reflected the hard work of the staff and pupils through the seven years that these pupils attended our school."

The school achieved a mark of 100 per cent in reading, 92 per cent in writing, 100 per cent in spelling, grammar and punctuation and 84 per cent in maths.

Mrs Talbot said: "I believe we received letter from the DFE because of the progress figure of 2.1 where the norm is 0 for progress from Year 2 to Year 6.

"As for this year, the children and staff are working very hard and I know they will achieve their very best whatever the results, as each cohort of children are different."