A CATHOLIC comprehensive girls school has been named as one of the top schools in the country, according to the inspection body Ofsted.

St Hilda's in Burnley was one of the best 203 schools out of 3,500 inspected by Ofsted, the Office for Standards in Education.

It was placed in the category of "good and improving secondary schools", one down from the top category of "outstandingly successful secondary schools", of which there were only 32 in the whole country.

Ofsted described St Hilda's as having a "very good inspection report" and said it was "successful in all major aspects of its work".

Head teacher Miss Bernadette Bleasdale said she was delighted by the report.

"We think we deserve it," she said. "We worked very hard to prepare for the Ofsted report and anyone who says Ofsted is a pleasant experience would be lying! "I don't know what criteria they used to put us in the top 203 but suffice to say we are delighted to be there."

She put the school's success down to its hard working staff and the common values and discipline engendered by a Catholic school.

St Hilda's achieved 61 per cent of pupils getting five or more A to C grades at GCSE last year, placing it among the top 10 non-selective schools in the county.

The school takes children from a wide catchment area including Burnley, Padiham and Todmorden and for next year there are already 180 applicants chasing 150 places. Nine per cent of the school's intake can be non-Catholic.

St Hilda's was one of only a handful of schools in Lancashire, including Holy Cross RC High School, Chorley, to be named as "good and improving".

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