THE head teacher of a school set to be merged with another Cwmbran secondary next year has hailed the “embedded” and “sustained” improvements at the school highlighted in a new council report.

Fairwater High head Helen Coulson spoke out after education bosses found her secondary was now on a par with or better than the Welsh average in areas such as attendance, Key Stage Three and GCSEs.

In its report, Torfaen council said the Cwmbran school had made “significant improvements” across a range of areas in the last two years, adding this had been confirmed by an Estyn report in November 2013.

Fairwater High is to be amalgamated with Llantarnam Secondary next September under plans to reduce the number of surplus places in Torfaen.

Llantarnam Secondary in Cwmbran was put on “special measures” two years ago.

Estyn will conduct a monitoring visit helping to track its progress at the end of this month.

Ms Coulson will lead the new school, provisionally called Cwmbran High, when it opens next year.

Ms Coulson, 42, said yesterday: “With GCSEs we’re above the Wales average and the local education authority average. We are making embedded and sustained improvements. Everywhere, we are getting better and better.

“Hopefully we will be able to take forward these improvements into the new school. I am always looking at areas we can improve on.”

The council report showed sustained advances in GCSEs at Fairwater, from level four in 2010/11 to level one in 2013/14.

Provisional figures also show that GCSE performance at Fairwater, including in the core subjects maths and English or Welsh, was slightly higher than the average in Wales and Torfaen this year.

The report also showed persistent absences at Fairwater High had fallen and were now on a par with the Welsh average and Torfaen. The proportion of pupils who were persistently absent at Fairwater fell from 6.1 per cent in 2011/12 to 4.8 per cent in 2013/14.

Statistics also showed improvements at Key Stage Three in reading, writing, maths and science level five-plus, which is on a par with the Torfaen and Welsh average.

Torfaen council standards monitoring sub-committee is to discuss the Fairwater School report tomorrow.