A fantastic Ofsted result has staff and pupils at Malmesbury School jumping for joy.

With just half a day’s notice of an inspection, the school has achieved ‘outstanding’ in all categories assessed; overall effectiveness, achievement of pupils, quality of teaching, behaviour and safety of pupils, and leadership of management.

Head Tim Gilson said he is delighted at the report, which emphasised the pupils’ behaviour and the outstanding teaching.

“It is wonderful news and a very impressive result,” he said.

“We had a phone call on a Tuesday afternoon telling us we were going to have an Ofsted inspection, and the inspectors came in at 8am the next day. But we had a wonderful result.

"Staff have worked so hard for so long to achieve this. The students are fantastic, working hard to keep reaching their goals. We are very pleased indeed.”

The school has 1,237 pupils, ranging in age from 11 to 18.

It has specialist subjects in science, performing arts, mathematics and computing, and became a new-style academy converter in August 2011.

To improve even further, inspectors wrote: “Help teachers to make all teaching and learning outstanding by sharing the school’s best practice more fully and monitoring its impact so that inconsistencies are eliminated and all students know specifically how to improve further.”

Mr Gilson said that, despite the excellent results, the school will not stop driving to achieve more.

“There are always things you can do better,” he said.

“We have always got lots of things to work on. There is now the challenge to maintain the results we have achieved in this Ofsted, and ensure that we continue to keep the standards this high.

“One of the great strengths of this school is that, year on year, results have been getting better and better.

“We are steadily improving all the time, and not just that, we are sustaining the improvements. The aim is now to keep the trend for improvement going.”