"TO Infinity and Beyond" is the unofficial motto of Priestlands School in Lymington - and this place is certainly reaching for the skies.

Celebrating its best ever GCSE results last year, this school is striving for much more than just academic success. As Chris Willsher, headteacher since 2001, put it: "Exam results are a fraction of what this school is about - we are a school which focuses on each individual child and tries to give them a full range of opportunities.

"Academic success comes from being secure in the school environment. We are a big school - we have 1,200 students - but we create an identifiable community, like a family, where students feel not only safe, but happy."

Indeed pupils enjoy school so much that hundreds of them can be seen on the front field from 7.30am taking part in sports clubs - and many others stick around until 5.30pm such is the wealth and breadth of activities on offer.

Based on a 25 acre site it shares with the infant and junior schools, Priestlands boasts some impressive facilities including a plethora of sporting pitches to accommodate some of the 22 different sports played in school, including fencing, trampolining, football and rugby for girls as well as boys, handball and even the little-known tchoukball.

There is a wealth of clubs besides, not least for music lovers with 15 instruments taught at the school, and groups including a steel pan group, banjo orchestra and even a Gamelan group - that's the traditional ensemble music of Java and Bali in Indonesia for those not in the know.

A specialist school for performing and visual arts there is a beautiful arts block occupying the former manor house at the heart of the site, and a performing arts centre complete with recording studio. More than 200 pupils were involved in the school production of The Wizard of Oz last year, and students are currently preparing a 30 minute version of A Midsummer Night's Dream for the upcoming Shakespeare Schools Festival.

Priestlands is also a lead school for the gifted and talented, and offers enrichment and extension activities across the board - not least in the array of school trips including to New York, Austria, Iceland, Poland and India over the past 12 months.

After becoming a stand alone academy in 2011 it successfully bid for £3.5million EFA funding which refurbished two of the main school buildings. Investment has also been ploughed into bringing back to life the once derelict coach house and walled garden, which is now home to fruit and veg patches and the schools' own goats, pigs and chickens.

It is a school which seeks to inspire - right down to the pupil-designed murals which liven up the corridors, encompassing wise words from the likes of Albert Einstein, Charles Dickens and of course the Disney character Buzz Lightyear - whose famous catchphrase 'To Infinity and Beyond' has come to signify so much there.

Mr Willsher is quick to pay tribute to a devoted team of "highly committed staff, who give up their time without counting the hours" to create all the opportunities the pupils enjoy. He adds: "That's how you make children feel included and involved, that's how they feel happy in school, and that how they are successful academically - when everything else is in place."