ENCOURAGING progress is being made at Enfield academy, Oftsed has found at its first official inspection.

Attainment at Oasis Academy Hadley, in Bell Lane, formerly the Albany School, is "rising quickly" and behaviour has dramatically improved, the monitoring report said.

The school, which opened in Sepetember 2009, achieved poor GCSE results in 2010 which Ofsted said was to be expected considering the level they were at in Year 7.

It praised the school for putting "extensive and thorough systems in place" to monitor improvement, and observed that "this tracking show that students are increasingly making better progress."

Pupils with special education needs or disabilities were also improving at a similar rate.

Inspector Christopher Russell, who visited the school in January, said: "Much has been achieved in the past eighteen months. Staff and students are very clear that the transition to Academy status represented a fundamental and very positive change in direction."

He added:"Students are positive about the new Academy. They recognise and appreciate the improvements that are being made.

"They are increasingly ambitious and aspirational for themselves citing the support given by staff and the leadership of the Academy as key factors driving this improvement."

In order to improve further, Mr Russell recommended that the school made sure its high-achieving students were suitably challenged and said that the teachers, who lessons ranged from good to "superb at best", to improve their question to ensure all pupils got involved in lessons.

Principal Lynne Dawes said the report was a "fantastic start" for the newly-opened school.

She added: "It has been a whirlwind 18 months, which has included opening our Primary phase and getting the funding for a new building.

"The staff and students deserve huge amounts of credit for what they have achieved so far. We do also recognise that this is only a start. We have lots of room for further improvement and will continue to work together to raise standards and continue to raise aspirations."