A SPECIAL school which won a battle against closure plans has been highlighted as the best in the borough at getting the most out of its pupils.

In school league tables published yesterday, Cross-hill Special School's Context-ual Value Added (CVA) rating put it in the top two per cent nationally.

The score makes it the most effective in Blackburn and Darwen in terms of progress students make in their secondary school career from Key Stage Two to Key Stage Four.

Based around a benchmark of 1,000, the CVA measure compares pupils' progress with those of pupils nation-ally who had similar prior attainment, taking into acc-ount other external factors such as gender, mobility and levels of deprivation.

The top five per cent in 2007 had a score of 1029.09 and above.

Crosshill, which takes children from across East Lancashire, was given 1055.1, several points higher than Haslingden High School and Tauheedul Islam Girls High School, Blackburn, which were listed in the Govern-ment's top 100 for CVA.

But the top 100 does not take special schools into account.

The achievement comes soon after an Ofsted report which deemed Crosshill "a good school with many strengths."

Mike Hatch, headteacher of the Shadsworth Road school for young people with moderate learning diffic-ulties, said: "We are again delighted at such a good result.

"It indicates how hard the staff are working in the school and how well the children are doing.

"The progress they make here is outstanding."

Staff, parents and students fought a passionate and well-supported campaign to save Crosshill from the axe after Blackburn with Darwen Council announced plans to close it as part of its Building Schools for the Future proposals.

Following last year's campaign, which produced a petition with over 9,000 signatures, the council changed its preferred option to co-locating Crosshill with a new community school planed for East Blackburn.

Blackburn with Darwen Council has been congr-atulated by the Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF), for being fifth on its list of top 10 authorities for sustained improvement in GCSE results (attaining five or more A* to C grades including in maths and English) over the last three years.