BROADFIELD School has become the first special school in Hyndburn to be honoured with specialist school status.
The school on Fielding Lane, Oswaldtwistle, fought off strong competition to be awarded the accolade which will bring an additional £180,000 funding to the school enabling it to specialise in cognition and learning.
Headteacher Jane White said: "We are really thrilled, this is such a big honour and is a credit to our school and the pupils and the staff.
We submitted the 90-page bid in April and all last week when we expected to hear I jumped every time the phone rang and I eagerly checked the post.
"We had to put in a lot of hard work and we had to raise £20,000 but we had amazing support from our partnership schools, local businesses and parents but it has all been worth it. It is tremendous news and we are all very excited about it."
The school has been granted the status for four years in cognition and learning, and the school plans to concentrate on enhancing learning in reading and life skills.
Mrs White said: "We had a lot of positive feedback from our bid and our success stems from our partnership with Hollins, Mount Carmel, Peel Park, St Andrew's and Green Haworth Schools.
"We run an inclusion programme which allows our pupils to attend courses and classes in mainstream education. This is a great partnership but it is very costly so this extra money will help."
Plans for the school include employing an extra teacher and teaching assistant to provide personalised teaching and the construction of a new Pathways Centre which will be used to train staff.
It will also provide extra teaching space and rooms which can be used by doctors, speech and language teachers and social workers.
Mrs White added: "We were told by someone from the Department for Education and Skills that we had been successful and he said we had a lot of work ahead of us, but I said we know what we want to do and how it can improve learning for the children and we can't wait."
