Parents have judged the teaching and atmosphere at Mullion School to be “outstanding” in an independent survey.

It is the third time that the school has had a survey carried out by Northumbria-based independent company Kirkland Rowell.

Parents were asked to fill in a double-sided A3 sheet of questions about their perceptions of the school, with the results then collected into a 60-page document.

A total of 217 parents completed the questionnaires – a response rate of 42.5 per cent, although some of the parents would have more than one child at the school.

Summing up the results, Kirkland Rowell said: “The survey results reveal that the school still has reason to be very happy with most of its activities. Many of the parent comments were very positive and many of the negative comments were qualified in light of parents’ overall satisfaction with the school.

“Many of the parents who commented said how happy and confident their children had been since starting at Mullion School.”

A total of 89 per cent of parents gave an exceptionally high overall performance score, 28 per cent of parents with pupils in years eight to 11 said the school had improved over the last year and 43 per cent of parents in year seven thought the school was better than expected. Parents were most happy with teaching in Spanish, French and science.

In non-academic areas parents were most happy with the control of bullying, school discipline and development of moral values. The parents’ top priority for improvement was school facilities.

Head teacher Mike Sandford said the school asked for the survey to be conducted every two and a half years.

He said: “We would like to think that a lot of what we do in Mullion School is very good, but we are not complacent enough to think that we cannot improve and so we work very hard to do things even better.”

Mr Sandford added that all three surveys carried out over the last seven years had been positive, with each one better than the previous.

“This one is tremendously encouraging and I would like to say thank you to all the parents who returned the survey and who support the school so well. The staff and the governors do work hard to maintain high standards at the school and I can assure everyone that we will continue to strive to make the school even better,” he said.