A school dubbed the toughest in the country has continued to improve after receiving a ‘good’ grading from Ofsted inspectors.

Muntham House School in Barns Green, near Horsham, is home to some of the most challenging students in the UK, with most of them having been expelled from at least four schools before arriving there.

The school’s 63 pupils are boys with behavioural and emotional difficulties and the school appeared on Channel 4 in 2014 in a documentary entitled The Last Chance School, which followed some of the boys’ progress during the course of a year.

Ofsted visited the school in January and found pupils were given a second chance. Their report stated that most of the pupils valued this and turned their lives around.

Headteacher Richard Boyle was surprised by the visit because it was not due for another 18 months, but was thrilled the school had been shown to be delivering a good education.

He said: “We have continued to improve and, strangely, they have nothing for us to fix apart from to measure different groups of pupils.

“One of the most pleasing things was that the young people were impressed by the school and when they were asked about it they said they wouldn’t know what to do without us. Their behaviour was exceptional, as we would expect.”

Although it was found to be doing a good job, Mr Boyle admitted it was unlikely Muntham House would become an Ofsted ‘outstanding’ school.

He said: “The funny thing is we were ‘outstanding’ under the old regime.

“We were told that it would be nigh on impossible for a school like ours to achieve ‘outstanding’ under the current guidelines because our pupils have behavioural and emotional difficulties.

“On average, our pupils have been out of mainstream education for five terms before coming to us, so it’s impossible for students to reach the levels of attainment, especially in GCSEs, seen in other schools – that’s what they’re telling us.”

Denise Morris, who led the inspection, said: “Behaviour improves rapidly once pupils start at the school, enabling them to quickly catch up with their learning.

“Pupils show how much they value the school by exceptionally high levels of attendance.”