A parent campaign group has said a failing primary school’s improved results are “vindication” of its work to prevent the school from becoming an academy.

The parents of Snaresbrook Primary School, in Meadow Walk, South Woodford, led a high-profile campaign to save the school from the threat of academy status after it was placed in special measures by Ofsted in July.

The school was rated inadequate in every category and the Department of Education recommended to governors it become an academy in line with government policy.

Parents and campaigners believed the school had already made significant improvements by October and raised fears over academy status, which would have taken the school out of local authority control.

They collected a petition of over 2,500 signatures which they presented at Downing Street, and on October 29, the DfE threw out the proposal and announced the school had made significant enough improvements to avoid it being forced into academy status.

It now has the fourth best results for the age group in the borough and, according to the DfE, has seen 87 per cent of pupils achieve the national requirement of Level 4 or above in reading, writing and maths - an 11 per cent improvement on last year.

Save Snaresbrook campaigner Paul Daintry, said: “It’s great news and a real vindication of everything the parents’ group was saying.

“Snaresbrook could and did pull itself up. We are an excellent school that had a temporary dip and the threatened academy transfer was neither wanted nor needed.

“It’s nice to be proven right again.”