OXFORDSHIRE’S first free school is doing “très bien!” after receiving the results of its first inspection.

The Europa School in Culham is starting its third year in existence and is the only school in the country following the European curriculum and working towards the European Baccalaureate.

Children at the school are taught in more than one language with half the classes splitting their time between learning in English and French and the other half between English and German.

The school was inspected by Ofsted in June for the first time since it opened and has been rated “good”.

In her report lead inspector Lesley Farmer said: “From their earliest time in school, pupils are provided with stimulating experiences which motivate them to write about what they have learned.

“Teaching is typically good, and has resulted in good learning and achievement since the school first opened.”

The Europa School, which opened in September 2012 with six classes of pupils in reception, Year 1 and Year 2 will eventually replace the European School, which shares its site.

The European School was opened to serve the employees of the nearby JET fusion project, but will close in 2017 when the project moves to Cadarache, France.

Europa School principal Peter Ashbourne said: “We are very pleased.

“The key thing for us is that we have gone for a bilingual education from the very beginning, so we are achieving the results in half the time.

“We are teaching a curriculum which is not the National Curriculum, while at the same time satisfying its requirements. We know what we are doing is experimental and we have had confirmation from Ofsted that we are on the right track.”

The school teaches children from the age of four to 19 and currently has 224 pupils on its roll.

One issue the inspector raised was that not enough teaching is currently outstanding and the teaching of phonics is not yet consistently good.

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