THE £85,000-a-year superhead tasked with turning round an East Lancashire high school which returned one of the worst sets of GCSEs results in the country has been unveiled.

Lee Harris, 45, is the executive head of Lostock College in Trafford, Greater Manchester, and according to Blackburn with Darwen Council education bosses has experience of reinventing schools.

He will be responsible for launching the new school - set to open in place of Queen's Park Technology College, Shadsworth Road, next April.

Queen's Park will close in March for the Easter holidays and the new school will open on the same site, with the same pupils, in time for the summer term.

Union leaders today said they would work with Mr Harris but stressed they would rather the £300,000 per year being spent on creating a new management team had been used to help the staff currently running Queen's Park.

The troubled school was put in special measures earlier this year after a poor Ofsted report.

It then recorded one of the worst sets of GCSE results in the country - with just 11 per cent of pupils getting five GCSEs grades A*-C.

Council bosses made the decision to shut the school after deciding it had not improved fast enough for their liking.

Teachers have been told to reapply for their jobs.

Mr Harris said: "I am excited by the challenge. This is an opportunity to build something special for the pupils and the community, and to create a community school of which everyone is proud."

Coun Dave Hollings, executive member for education and lifelong learning, said: "He has experience of forming a new school from the closure of two under-performing schools and he has national experience of offering training in behaviour management for both primary and secondary schools. He is an outstanding candidate and we are delighted to welcome him on board."