75560-67HIGHWORTH Warneford School is Swindon's most successful according to the Government latest league tables.

Based on last year's GCSE results, it moved up to first place beating last year's top school, Ridgeway, which moved down to second place.

In sharp contrast Headlands was named as one of the bottom 200 schools in the country.

It had the Swindon's worst GCSE results just 13 per cent of the students there achieved five GCSEs grades A to C a five per cent drop since 2003.

This compares to 72 per cent of Warneford students a nine per cent rise since 2003.

Jan Shadick took over as headteacher of Headlands School in September 2004 when the school re-opened its doors under the Government's Fresh Start initiative a scheme aimed at relaunching failing schools.

Ms Shadick said: "I think it's important to remember that last year was a very difficult year for the school.

"There was a lot of instability and turbulence and I think the students did remarkably well considering.

"Part of me expected the results to be lower than they were."

She said she is determined to drive the results up this year.

"I want to improve on these results. We have a lot going on here and we have been focussing on teaching and learning.

"Year 11 are a priority for us because they had such a difficult year 10. We are doing a lot of work to rebuild that.

"We have been monitoring their progress carefully and we have just held the students' mock exams and will be identifying where we need students to achieve higher.

"The students have responded positively and I have every confidence that the results will improve this year. I would be mortified if they didn't."

As well as improving GCSE results, Jan hopes to improve attendance at the school and has already achieved an 88 per cent attendance record the target is 90 per cent.

The headteacher of Highworth Warneford School, John Saunders, is delighted that his school has hit the top spot.

He said: "We are very pleased because what this represents is a reflection of the heard work of all the staff and students and governors.

"I am especially pleased with the pupils that have done so well.

"We felt we did do reasonably well but we were pleasantly surprised by the results.

"We have high expectations of pupils to perform the best they can."

"Whether they get high grades or not we expect them to do their own personal best."

"In February we will be having a study day dedicated to preparing the students for their exams.