A head teacher today hit out at the 'naming and shaming' of his school which has been placed in Special Measures by Ofsted despite major improvements over the past year.

Buttershaw High School is on the up and up, says John Midgley. He accepts exam results at the comprehensive are low, but says placing the school in Special Measures will not help as it is simply an "embarrassing label" that will not bring the school any extra resources.

The school is already working flat-out on improvements, which have been recognised by the school watchdog.

Achievements include: staff absence a third of what it was; pupil attendance rates up from 80 per cent to 89 per cent in two years; attendance by parents at parents' evenings up from 20 per cent to 79 per cent; new extra curricular opportunities for youngsters including a Debating Society; recent successes for the school include a Rock Challenge where a team reached the Yorkshire final, and the Young Enterprise scheme where the Buttershaw group Favour won the Bradford round.

The school has bid successfully for a new £1 million sports hall from the New Opportunities Fund and its 1950s buildings will be replaced under a private finance initiative scheme.

But the school, one of the district's largest with 1,700 pupils on roll, still has too much below-par teaching, said Government inspectors who visited in February.

Of the lessons they watched, a third were rated good or better, but a third were unsatisfactory, says the report.

It adds: "The quality overall results in the pupils making too little progress in lessons and over time, and leads to widespread underachievement."

Mr Midgley said: "The risk is that parents will now think it's a lousy failing school. If being in Special Measures brought in another £100,000 a year, or two teachers, that would help. But it brings nothing, it's just an embarrassing label.

"The staff have put their backs to the wall and said we're going to sort this out."

The report states that pupils' behaviour and attitudes to learning "were satisfactory or better in about four fifths of the lessons and good in over a third. The head and senior team have been effective in setting the priorities and agendas for improvement."