A NEW programme being tested at a school where up to half of the yearly intake has special needs has produced stunning results in pupils' progress.

A group of 20 children on the Acceleread Accelerwrite scheme at Oaktree Nursery and Primary School in Park South has made an average of 15 months' progress in reading in just four weeks.

The success has prompted staff to extend it to younger pupils.

One youngster managed to move 36 months head in reading and 25 in spelling.

The school's special needs co-ordinator, Andrea Parkinson, said: "It has exceeded all our expectations."

She said the youngster who had made most progress had hardly been able to read before he started the scheme.

"Other things we tried didn't make any difference but this made him learn and utilise his new skills," she said.

"All the pupils have become so much more confident in using these skills and are tackling tasks with enthusiasm."

The scheme, aimed at boosting reading, writing and spelling skills, requires 30 minutes one-to-one work every day for a month.

"It has been tried out in other areas with very small numbers of pupils and the Local Education Authority asked us to do the same," said Mrs Parkinson.

"But this is the first large-scale test in Swindon."

The experiment was carried out with year six pupils, aged nine to 11, but already younger children are being started on the scheme.

Mrs Parkinson said one of the reasons the school was able to put such a large number of children through the scheme was the enthusiasm of parents and friends and the six parishioners recruited by Parks and Walcot rector Bob Burles, who had helped.

"Most of them have already offered their services for the next phase," she said.

"Apart from the results, we have been really pleased with the pupils' attitudes.

"Many have had to work with people they didn't know and they have been a credit to the school with their behaviour, manners and determination."

She said the fact the scheme was based around computers really motivated the children.

Whatever they keyed in was read back to them by the computer, complete with any wrong spellings, which encouraged them to make sure everything was correct.

Mrs Parkinson will be writing up the results of the study for the LEA and the pupils plan to thank their helpers during a special presentation at the school on Friday.

Tina Clarke