EACH day, pupils at a small village primary school spend 10 minutes going through a series of physical exercises designed to improve their learning ability.

Brailsford C of E Primary is one of just a handful of schools across the country using the system developed by the Institute for Neuro-Physiological Psychology in Chester.

The latest SATs results for the school appear to show that the exercise programme is paying off, as 100% of pupils achieved at least level four, the required standard for 11-year-olds, in both English and maths this year.

This is up from 83% last year and 56% in 2009 and has left head teacher Jackie Micklethwaite delighted.

She said: "The results at any school are always affected by those children with learning difficulties.

"Experts found that, in some children, some of the reflexes that should have developed in the womb or very early childhood don't work.

"They worked out a series of assessments which identify which children would benefit from the exercises, which help to develop and assimilate those missing reflexes.

"We have seen great improvements in most of the children we have put through these exercises. This has helped reduce the impact of the poor performers on the results."

Brailsford Primary is one of more than a dozen in the county which managed to achieve a combined 100% maths and English result.

Mrs Micklethwaite said that, although the number of children taking the tests was smaller than some schools – this year there were 12 – the abilities vary from child to child and year to year.

She said: "One year you might get a couple of gifted children, another year there might be more children with learning difficulties.

"As each of the 12 children represented 8.3%, if one child had been ill on the test days in May, our figures would have been down straight away."

Mrs Micklethwaite said that she and her staff had looked at schemes that work for pupils and confessed that the physical exercises are not approved by everyone.

She said: "We have done our own research, tried things out, decided what works for us, and have stuck with it, ignoring the changes in fashion brought in by rapidly changing ministerial appointments.

"It is also difficult to justify spending time on activities like art, music and PE – which, unlike some schools, we do right through the school.

"Those who set specific targets for key subjects, such as English and maths, must realise that, in doing so, there are side effects for non-key subjects.

"And we mange to do it all in an 1824 building that the distant relatives of some of our current pupils used to attend."

Others achieving a 100% pass rate included small primary schools at Kniveton, Kirk Ireton and Milford.

Simon Field, head teacher at Milford Primary, said it was a good time to be at the school, which is also housed in an old pre-Victorian building.

In April, the 67-pupil school was visited by inspectors from the Office for Standards in Education, who decided it should be rated "good".

He said: "With so much happening right now, our school is a very exciting place to be."

Several county schools have scored highly for how much value is added to a child's education between the infant and junior stages.

The value-added measure is calculated by using a complex formula, which gives a figure based around 100, which is considered to be average.

Anything above that means more value is being added, such as at St Edward's Catholic Primary School, in Newhall, where a figure of 103.8 was calculated. Pupils at the school also managed to achieve a 100% level four or above pass rate.

Other schools with high value-added measures were St Elizabeth's Catholic Primary, Belper (101.8) and Street Lane Primary, Denby (101.5).