A PRIMARY school head teacher in York claims the innovative “open plan” layout of his school is helping boost results.

Chris Wigley, head at Clifton With Rawcliffe Primary, said the £7 million school has been open a year and in that time the school’s Key Stage 2 SATS results were above the national average and above the city average as a whole.

He attributes some of this success to the way the school building is designed with open plan areas allowing teachers to teach in either small groups of focused learning or larger group activities all in the same space.

He said: “We can move the furniture around to break up the space and configure it as we like.

“I feel that every time I walk around the school I hear working noise and the system means I have all my best teachers on show and there is nowhere to hide.”

The school’s open plan design has come in for criticism from some parents who claim that it has led to disruption and three children have been taken out of the school which has 594 pupils.

One mum, who did not want to be named, said she had put her children in another school with a more traditional layout, because she felt they were falling behind.

She said: “It all just seemed a bit chaotic to me, the teachers are lovely there and I am not blaming them, but if you have large groups of young children all in one space with some doing one activity, while another group are doing something else, then it is bound to lead to distractions.”

But Mr Wigley said that the mum is in a minority and the majority of parents are happy with the new school design and he hopes the school will continue to go from strength to strength.