A head teacher says a “turbulent” two years are over after her school was taken out of special measures.

But Hayley Liddon, of St Edward’s Catholic Primary School in New Road, Sheerness, says there is still a great deal of hard work ahead.

Ofsted’s latest monitoring inspection, carried out on June 25 and 26, ruled school “requires improvement” but it is no longer rated “inadequate”.

The report said Mrs Liddon, who took on the role permanently in April after becoming the acting leader toward the end of 2014, “provides very effective leadership and has rapidly made significant changes to improve the school”.

Low attainment of pupils is turning around and standards among Year 2 and Year 6 are on track to be above the national average by the end of the year.

Some of the reasons the school still requires improvement include uneven progress across the school and standards in reading, writing and mathematics and the quality of teaching not yet being consistently good.

Mrs Liddon said the news was the “perfect end to a very difficult year” but stressed there is a lot to do in order to reach the school’s target of a “good” rating within two years.

She said: “It’s given everyone a boost. The staff, parents and children all deserve it, they have just worked so hard for it.”

The school was rated “inadequate” in March 2013 and several monitoring inspections between then and now found it was not making enough progress.

Mrs Liddon said: “For me [the monitoring inspections] gave us things to work towards.”