A primary school in Garston, which was rated satisfactory by Ofsted, will be turned into an academy in September.

The decision to convert Berrygrove Primary and Nursery School, in Fourth Avenue, into an academy comes after guidance by the Department for Education.

The development follows the departure of Chris Kronda, the headteacher who led the school since it opened in 2005, at the end of the spring term.

According to Hertfordshire County Council Mr Kronda left the school by "mutual consent".

Roger Billing has been made acting head, with the headteacher of Abbots Langley School, Anne Heywood, appointed as a seconded head at Berrygrove for the remainder of the academic year.

Once the change comes into effect Berrygrove, which teaches more than 600 children, will have sponsors from two other academy schools.

Bovingdon Academy and Hammond Academy will support the school and share their expertise in an attempt to pull up Berrygrove’s Ofsted rating.

The sponsors will appoint a full-time headteacher to lead the school from September.

Miss Heywood said: "It is tremendously exciting. It is a lovely school – it is going to be a wonderful place to be."

By becoming an academy the school will have freedom from the local authority, allowing it to set its own pay and conditions for staff as well as having the ability to change the length of academic terms and school days.

They will also have more freedom on how the curriculum is delivered to its pupils.

The headteachers from the sponsoring academies will visit the site in the coming months to help staff and pupils prepare for the transition.

Miss Heywood added: "It will allow the school to have all sorts of expertises to continue its development. I think it is a very positive move for the school.

"The whole point of the change is to keep focus on attainment and progress."

In its 2010 Ofsted report, inspectors thought that even though the school had a strong and improving Early Years Foundation Stage, this was not continued into Key Stage 2.

The school was given particular areas to focus on including improving the standards of English, maths and science in Key Stage 2 and creating a more creative curriculum.

At the follow up visit in April 2011, inspectors said the school had made satisfactory progress in making improvements.

A spokesperson from the Department for Education said: "We believe the strong external challenge and support of an academy sponsor is the best way to improve schools we find to be consistently underperforming and whose results are below national standards year after year.

"Academies are proven to work. They are popular with parents and have turned around hundreds of struggling secondary schools across the country. They are improving results at twice the national average rate.

"Wherever possible we want to find solutions everyone can agree on – as we’ve done with many schools that have become academies. But ultimately, this is about rooting out underperformance and driving up standards, so students reach their academic potential."