A PRIMARY school which government inspectors said was failing its pupils five years ago has won beacon status.

Wensley Fold Primary in Blackburn is one of 21 new beacon schools in the North-West -- and just three in East Lancashire -- announced by the Department for Education and Skills.

Minister for Young People Ivan Lewis said: "The schools will play a vital role in raising standards by sharing good ideas and best practice with other schools in the area."

Wensley Fold headteacher Gaynor Stubbs said: "We were put in special measures in 1997, so this is a tremendous achievement for the staff, many of whom were here then."

She explained that Wensley Fold would use its new funding to help spread good ideas and best practice to other primaries.

"But we won't be going in saying: 'This is how you should do it.' It's a two-way process.

"We have benefited in the past five years from the help other schools have given us."

Special measures involves a school being given a specific action plan, regularly inspected, in a bid to raise standards.

Mrs Stubbs added that Wensley Fold had fought its way out of special measures through a lot of hard work, which involved improving the way lessons were planned and how literacy and numeracy were taught.

He said that the main priority was to look at setting targets for every lesson, so that at the beginning of each session teachers wrote down on the blackboard what they wanted the children to achieve.

St Augustine's RC High in Billington and St Michael and St John's RC Primary, Clitheroe, have also been given coveted beacon status.

All three schools will benefit from handouts averaging £36,000 to fund work with other schools.

Anthony McNamara, head teacher at St Augustine's, said he was delighted that the Billington school had been chosen on a like-for-like basis compared with other schools. "We will now be working with other schools, but very much as a partnership," he added.

Mr Lewis said: "The programme has helped many schools to benefit from advice and experience shared by some of the best schools in the country. We know from previous experience that beacon schools and the schools they work with get a great deal out of these partnerships."

The Government's schools inspectorate, Ofsted, recently praised beacon schools for "having a real impact on standards, and acting as a lever for change."

In its latest report on Wensley Fold last year, Ofsted inspectors pointed out that two-thirds of pupils had English as an additional language. They said the attainment of pupils was below average when they entered school but National Curriculum tests showed they scored above average in English by the time they left.