­SOUTH Farnham Junior School pupils are officially among the brightest in the country, after the high-performing primary school topped the league tables for its Key Stage Two exam results this week.

Figures released by the Department for Education reveal South Farnham scored better SATS results in summer 2015 than any other school with 100 or more year six children in the whole of the UK, with an average point score of 33.

Not only did 100 per cent of the school’s pupils, aged 11, achieve ‘level four’ – the required standard for their age – in reading, maths and writing, but a further 64 per cent went one better by achieving level five.

Other junior schools across Farnham also fared well, with almost nine out of ten 11-year-olds (89 per cent) in the town and surrounding villages meeting the expected standard in reading, writing and maths.

St Polycarp’s and Rowledge schools shot up the league tables with average point scores of 32.4 and 31.9 respectively, and all bar two schools in the area exceeded the level four average both in Surrey (83 per cent) and nationally (80 per cent).

Sir Andrew Carter, the headteacher of South Farnham School knighted in 2014 for services to education, hailed the results as a great accolade for his school and Farnham as a whole.

“To top the league tables is an extraordinary result and of course I am very pleased,” he said.

“But it’s nothing new and we’ve been able to maintain this level of success for the past 20 years - the key being what Ofsted refers to as our ‘extraordinarily rich curriculum’.

“Hundreds of our children are learning to play a musical instrument, they all play lots of competitive games and our pupils are very focused. The curriculum strengths of our teachers are excellent, pupils receive very strong support by their families at home and we strive to be at the forefront of what’s going on nationally.

“But we must never get complacent and think we’ve got a god-given right to top the league tables - we have to keep going and keep striving to be better.”

Since becoming an academy, independent of local authority control in 2011, South Farnham School has rapidly spread its influence across Farnham and further afield.

It amalgamated with Bourne Infant School in 2011, and was granted its fourth straight ‘outstanding’ rating by Ofsted a year later. The South Farnham academy then became one of the first in the country to be granted ‘teaching status’ in 2012, and in 2013 took a third school under its wing.

After a year working alongside the struggling Pilgrims’ Way School, the Weydon Lane school was relaunched as Highfield South Farnham in February 2015 and bounced back from Ofsted special measures in March 2015 with a second-highest ‘good’ rating.

Sir Andrew continued: “You can be a ‘good’ school alone but you cannot be truly ‘outstanding’ unless you contribute to education both in the community and nationally.

“As a teaching school, we now work and support half a dozen other schools in Surrey and Hampshire and so are putting our experience back into the system. We have spread our influence right across the town, and would like to do that further.

“In the future I hope the academy trust will continue to expand and bring other schools in so we can work together and get even better.

“The trust is all about groups getting together to share common beliefs and values - the most important being that every child deserves the best possible education.

“A perfect example of that is Highfield South Farnham which has gone from bust to boom and is now a firm member of the trust.”

Linda Kemeny, Surrey County Council’s cabinet member for schools, praised the number of Surrey pupils achieving the level four threshold, which increased from 82 per cent in 2014 to 83 per cent this year, but repeated calls for more Government funding to meet demand for school places in the county.

“We want to unlock every child’s potential and ensuring they get the best possible education is at the core of this,” she said.

“We’ll continue doing all we can to raise education standards while at the same time pressing for more help to meet rising demand for school places – we need to create 13,000 more in the next five years but face a funding shortfall of more than £30million in each of the next two years alone.”