A RADCLIFFE school is celebrating being officially granted dyslexia-friendly status, after inspectors gave a raft of changes their seal of approval.

Staff at St Andrew's CE Primary School, in Graves Street, have been working for three years to improve the teaching environment for dyslexic pupils, having volunteered to be one of three centres taking part in a local authority scheme.

The programme has seen the school taking a number of important steps to ensure that children with dyslexia are as comfortable in the classroom as other pupils, with the new policies including a switch to cream-coloured paper rather than white.

Debbie Bennett, the school's inclusion lead, said that she is proud to have been part of the scheme and that no dyslexic child at the school will now be forced to feel excluded.

She said: "We have been working towards this status since 2012 and it has taken a lot of work.

"This programme has all been about making the school a dyslexia-friendly environment, so that no child with dyslexia is classed as having additional needs."

The project has aimed to change the way dyslexic children experience every aspect of learning, with everything from teaching methods to the school's display boards coming under scrutiny.

She added: "Instead of having to take them out of class to work on their own, all of the resources that we have available in the classroom are accessible to them. The big change has been going from white to cream paper across the school, but we have also stopped using black pens and brought in reading rulers to the classroom.

"It has been so important to us to make sure that every child is able to learn in the classroom and that nobody has to be excluded because of their dyslexia or think of themselves as different."