A FURIOUS headteacher has branded new academic league tables "unfair" and "demoralising" after disadvantaged children at his tiny school were ranked as some of the worst performers in the country.

Shelly Primary in Ongar saw just half of its 11-year-old pupils achieve the expected basic grades in English and maths, and only three-quarters in science, in last summer's standard assessment tests (Sats).

That put it near the bottom of about 15,000 primary schools nationwide and meant it was well below both the national and Essex average for Level 4 attainment - the standard considered necessary for doing well at secondary school.

But headteacher Jonathan Tye said the results give a distorted view of the achievements of the dozen youngsters who took the tests as they are from a socially-disadvanted catchment area, and more than half had special educational needs.

He said the results should actually be celebrated as they revealed that each pupil had made significant progress since they started at the school with a level of development well below the national average.

He pointed out that Shelly had achieved a 100.3 contextual value added score - an indicator of the progress made by pupils throughout their time at primary school - and this was well above the 99.8 Essex average.

He said: "Unfortunately schools like our's are always seen as 'failures' because of Sats results. But we pride ourselves on the quality of education we give our children. We work incredibly hard to help them achieve their potential and it is so demoralising for the whole school when someone says we are failing when, clearly, we are not.

"Our children come in from an incredibly low starting point, and for them to achieve so much is a testament to themselves and the education they receive.

"In black and white it may seem the school is not doing well, but they are, and this is why Sats and league tables are in fact an extremely unfair representation."

Norman Taylor, secretary at the Essex branch of the National Association of Headteachers, said: "Schools like Shelly do get a raw deal because they are compared with larger schools who place a huge emphasis on doing well in these tests. It really is an unfair playing field."

The top performer in the district was Coopersale and Theydon Garnon Primary School in Epping which achieved a 100 per cent pass rate in maths and science, and 87 per cent in English.