When Jessie Kaur was parachuted in to a Birmingham primary school it was on the brink of no return.
Known previously as Matthew Boulton Community Primary, the school had been placed in special measures in February 2012 after education watchdog Ofsted branded it "inadequate".
Over a year later in March 2013, a third monitoring inspection by Ofsted found the school was still failing – with high levels of staff absences and angry parents claiming teachers were failing to stop pupils from being bullied by their peers.
READ MORE: {}
A month later, the school had been taken over by a chain of academies and was re-branded as the Oasis Academy Boulton – with Mrs Kaur the new head.
And she is first to admit that she was facing an uphill battle – with its numbers of disabled and special needs pupils well above average, while attempting to retain staff seemed an impossibility.
"Almost three quarters of my staff were either supply or newly qualified teachers," she says. "A big problem was recruiting staff; teachers just weren't attracted to the school."
And the school also faces the challenge that almost half (47 per cent) of its pupils are "disadvantaged" – a term coined by the Government to refer to children from poor families that qualify for free school meals.
The Department for Education has become so concerned about the future of disadvantaged pupils – who statistically achieve much poorer results than wealthier children – it introduced a 'pupil premium' in April 2011 in a bid to boost their education.
Most Read
The initiative has already seen over £2.5 billion ploughed into schools across the country, with a further £2.5 billion to be spent in the 2015/16 academic year.
Each disadvantaged child is allocated a slice of the funding pot – cash used as schools see fit to enhance their education and meet the government's plan to stamp out child poverty by 2020.
And the money has been used in innovative ways – with some schools reportedly using it to buy alarm clocks for pupils whose parents fail to get them in the classroom punctually.
But Mrs Kaur said: "We have had punctuality issues so we have created a walking bus to pick kids up. But I don't focus on what parents are doing at home, at my school a lot of our parents don't speak English.
"I don't count on parents doing our jobs for us, the most important intervention for me is what is happening at school – making sure children are being given the most fantastic resources."
To that end, Mrs Kaur said the school – which received almost £150,000 in pupil premium funding this academic year – splashed much of it on training teachers.
"Now the vast majority of my staff have been graded as good or outstanding," she said. "It has been a real turn around. I am so incredibly proud of my team and the results are really beginning to show."
Don’t miss
In fact, as Britain's disadvantaged pupils are starting to close the gap in terms of their academic achievements, children at Oasis Academy Boulton are no exception.
This year 67 per cent of its disadvantaged 11-year-olds left the school with level four or over in reading, writing and maths. It means the Key Stage 2 children can spell, start to use grammatically complex sentences and use joined-up handwriting by the end of Year 6.
In maths, they are able to multiply and divide whole numbers by 10 or 100 and use simple fractions and percentages. The results at the Handsworth school reflect the national average, which also saw 67 per cent of disadvantaged pupils leaving primary school with the desired level of attainment in literacy and maths.
The national figure is up four percentage points on 2013, closing the gap between poor children and non-disadvantaged pupils – 83 per cent of which attained level four or more.
"We are setting the kids up for life," added Mrs Kaur, who is fast developing a reputation for turning failing schools around ever since quitting her job as a child psychologist 13 years ago to become a teacher.
She has been so successful she was chosen to become a 'future leader' – a scheme funded by the DfE and run by charity The Future Leaders Trust.
It has seen 90 'outstanding' head teachers placed in schools with high numbers of disadvantaged pupils.
Heath Monk, chief executive of the charity, said: "All our future leaders are working to make their schools places where every child, regardless of background, achieves.
"We know that great primary schools are of particular importance because the attainment gap between richer and poorer students begins early."
Meanwhile, Schools Minister David Laws said: "It is encouraging to see the attainment gap between disadvantaged children and their peers continue to narrow and parents, teachers and pupils deserve to be congratulated for their efforts.
"But we know there is more to do and there are still too many areas with simply unacceptable levels of attainment for disadvantaged pupils."