Durston House School has been recognised for its first class achievement in the 2016 Renaissance Awards.

The school was ranked as the top performing primary in England. The awards honour those schools who have achieved the best results using the assessment technologies, Renaissance Star Reading and Renaissance Accelerated Reader (AR).

In the UK the AR tool supports over 1.3m students to become independent readers. Under AR, students read a book, take a quiz, and get immediate feedback.

Star Reading is aligned to the national curriculum and features highly adaptive software that means its tests cannot be taught to and it is in use in almost 5,000 schools.

The ranking of school achievement was part of a wider study into pupils’ reading habits by University of Dundee Professor Keith Topping for Renaissance.

Dirk Foch, Managing Director of Renaissance said: “It is great to see Durston House School rewarded for its achievements this year.

“Renaissance Awards recognise both students’ progress and successes in literacy. We believe that it is important that schools continue to be congratulated for their achievements so that teachers and students’ hard work doesn’t go by unnoticed.

“Rewarding achievement is central to enjoyment – but in turn making education enjoyable is the first step to improving achievement.”