A BLACKBURN school which is set to reopen in a £3million new building in September has received a boost from government inspectors ahead of the move.

The Redeemer School was created in December 2004 after the town's St Bartholomew's CE Primary School and St Andrew's CE Primary Schools were merged.

At present the children are taught in temporary classrooms at the St Bartholomew's school site in Bolton Road but they are soon to move into a state-of-the-art primary school on land at the heart of the Fernhurst estate.

And the school has received a fillip ahead of the relaunch from the Office for Standards in Education (Ofsted) which said the that the merger of the two schools had so far been very successful.

Officials visited the school recently and their inspection report states: "The school has come a long way in a short time and provides an acceptable quality of education with several good features.

"Value for money is satisfactory.

"Personal development is good and the school is a happy community," says the report.

"Although standards in Year 6 are below average, inspection evidence shows that pupils have made satisfactory progress in the year they have been at the school."

Areas the school has been told to improve include better use of assessments by teachers to plan work that "reflects the different abilities of pupils, especially the more able ones" and working with parents to improve pupil attendance which the report said was "well below average."

However the inspectors concluded that: "This is a very caring school and pupils feel secure".

And they gave school headteacher Alison Taylor a glowing endorsement in their report describing her as "an inspirational leader."

The inspectors stressed that under her leadership the capacity for the school's 239 pupils to improve was good.

The merger and new building project to create the new school was prompted by a desire from education bosses and the Church of England Diocese to provide better facilities to cater for the increasing number of primary age children in the area.