A school has transformed standards of behaviour after hiring former Royal Navy personnel to patrol corridors and eject disruptive pupils from lessons.

Charter Academy in Portsmouth deployed a team of three retired naval staff - including an ex-Royal Marine - to help enforce consistent discipline and provide boys with positive male role models.

The former sailors – part of the school’s pastoral staff – insisted on high standards of behaviour around the school and in the playground and even drove to pupils’ homes if they failed to turn up in the morning and brought them to lessons.

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Prime Minister David Cameron speaks to students during a visit to the Ark Charter Academy School in Portsmouth

The initiative was praised by David Cameron yesterday as he visited the comprehensive to launch a package of measures aimed at turning round failing schools.

Plans include giving powers to a new network of commissioners to intervene immediately in failing schools and order changes such as new uniform policies and setting by ability.

An elite corps of 1,500 expert teachers will also be built up and dispatched around the country to boost under-performing schools.

Mr Cameron hailed the role of the former military personnel as he toured Charter Academy and suggested other schools adopt similar schemes.

‘I was delighted to meet the former Royal Navy personnel who have made such a difference to behaviour and discipline at the Charter Academy in Portsmouth.

They have played a key role in the dramatic turnaround at this school under their brilliant head teacher Dame Sharon Hollows,’ he said.

The comprehensive has transformed standards of behaviour after hiring former Royal Navy personnel to patrol corridors and eject disruptive pupils from lessons

‘At the heart of our reforms, we want to give head teachers the freedom to make the decisions that will improve standards in their school - and this is a perfect example.’

The ex-naval staff were brought in by Dame Sharon after she became the academy’ s first head five years ago.

The school had long been in the doldrums in its previous incarnation - St Luke’ s Church of England Secondary – regularly achieving some of the worst exam results in the country.

Dame Sharon – ennobled in 2000 for turning round struggling schools – began by tackling poor behaviour and attendance.

This included drawing on Portsmouth’s naval links to build a team of school pastoral support workers.

Their responsibilities included driving a school car to the homes of youngsters who had failed to turn up for classes – assuming no good reason had been given – and insisting they get out of bed and come to school.

Prime Minister David Cameron accompanied by education secretary Nicky Morgan are met by head girl Brittanni Carvell, 15, and deputy head boy George Carnell, 15

They also checked behaviour in corridors and removed pupils from lessons if they were seriously misbehaving.

Another of their key roles was standing at the school gates and ensuring pupils were behaving well before entering the premises.

‘They were really useful members of staff because they were non-confrontational but have great personal presence and were very very good at being consistent about implementing our school policies,’ said Dame Sharon.

‘They also presented very positive male role models to the students and of course many of our students don’t have positive male role models in their lives.’

She added: ‘The Navy is a very valuable source of personnel. Most of them retire from the Navy in their early forties.’

Behaviour among pupils at St Luke’s had previously been so poor other schools had resisted using its pool facilities.

‘When I asked them why, they said that when they had used it in the past, the children used to throw chairs at them out of the third floor window and spit at them,’ said Dame Sharon.

Following the introduction of a tough new disciplinary code backed up by the pastoral support workers, behaviour steadily improved.

Charter Academy in Portsmouth deployed a team of three retired naval staff - including an ex-Royal Marine - to help enforce consistent discipline and provide boys with positive male role models

The school also emerged last year as the second most improved in the country and the best-performing in Portsmouth with 68 per cent of pupils achieving a set of five good GCSEs including English and maths.

Other measures adopted by the academy - motto ‘work hard, be nice and no excuses’ – include a strict new dress code with traditional blazers and a house system.

Teachers also drew on methods used in Singapore to boost maths teaching while primary school specialists were brought in to help pupils with very low reading ages.

The techniques are among those that may be introduced more widely under Mr Cameron’s plan to give regional school commissioners strong powers to intervene directly in schools judged as failing by Ofsted.

They will be able to sack heads and bring in new governing bodies as well as introducing new policies on classroom discipline, school uniform and homework.

Schools may also become academies under the control of outside sponsors with a remit to drive up standards.

But the reforms provoked consternation among heads who feared their jobs would become vulnerable.