A PRIMARY school has achieved accreditation by a national scheme for for people management rewarded the way it treats its staff.

Priory School, in Orchard Avenue, Slough, has been given credited with the Investors in People silver award for looking after its staff.

Inspectors visited the Slough school earlier this month to analyse the way staff were treated, and assessed the environment in which they worked.

Headteacher Jacqueline Laver was delighted to have picked up the prestigious award.

She said: “It is largely a corporate accreditation and a few schools are starting to look at it now.

“We have worked really hard to get the Ofsted rating where we wanted it to be, so we thought we wanted to do something to look at our staff and this seemed a really good thing.

“It was an online survey and it valued responses in order.

"Inspectors came on site for two days and spoke to staff and carried out interviews.

“They sat in on supervision meetings and leadership meetings.”

The school was deemed a ‘good’ school by Ofsted in March last year, after being judged as ‘requires improvement’ since 2009.

Mrs Laver highlighted how this could give the school an edge when it comes to recruiting teachers and staff to push the school further.

She said: “Recruitment and retention of staff in Slough is really tough.

"We hope that this will help us with recruiting staff as it is shows we value our staff.

“We have worked really hard for our staff and we have a good bunch of people here.

“It is a great family and this is a real achievement.”

The award is often given to businesses, with rankings in bronze, silver, gold and platinum, or ‘champion status’.

The next level is the aim for Mrs Laver as she intends to show how much she values her staff even more.

She said: “They [the inspectors] come back in a year’s time to check we are on track and our aim is to go for the platinum award.”

For more information about the school, visit the website www.prioryschool.co.uk.