Pupils and staff at a Radnorshire school were celebrating after officially coming out of ‘special measures’ for the first time in three years.

Llanbister County Primary School’s acting headteacher Mark Hulin-Taylor paid tribute to what he described as a “huge community effort”, which has seen the school turn around its fortunes, and said he was hugely proud of the way everyone connected to the school had come together.

“We have worked so hard and it is great to see the school recognised for its hard work. It’s been fantastic, the community has taken ownership of the school once more,” he said.

“There’s been a huge amount of fundraising which has allowed us to buy technology for the children to use, one of the key recommendations for improvement, parents have come in and painted classrooms and cleared up the playgrounds, it’s been a huge effort from everyone.

“The school didn’t look loved - but now it feels like it’s alive again.

“While we still accept that there are still a great many things we want to do moving the school forward it is a great boost to be brought out from Estyn’s special measures after all this time.

The school received a critical report when Estyn, the Welsh education inspectorate, visited in 2015, resulting in the school being placed in so-called ‘special measures’, a remedial programme of monitoring and target setting supervised by Estyn.

In particular, the authority said the school’s leadership and governance were “unsatisfactory”, and the prospects for improvement were also below target.

But the results from this year’s inspection say the school has turned the corner in these areas, and now lists leadership and governance in the top category, with strong improvement in all other areas.

The report says: “Llanbister Primary School is judged to have made sufficient progress in relation to the recommendations following the core inspection in January 2015. As a result, Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Education and Training in Wales is removing the school from the list of schools requiring special measures.

“The acting headteacher has established a clear vision for improvement within the school. He shares this well with all stakeholders, creating a positive, shared sense of purpose within the school community.

“In order to maintain and improve on this progress, the school should continue to sustain the level of progress it has already made.”