Mr Hayes replaced Mary Mihovilovic as headteacher at St John Fisher Roman Catholic School, in Reeves Way, Eastfield, Peterborough, after she announced her resignation on Thursday “for personal reasons”.

With no time to waste before the school closed its doors for the summer term yesterday, the new headteacher spent time meeting staff and pupils at the school.

Mr Hayes has also written to every parent in a bid to clarify recent events concerning the school and to highlight his plans for the future.

In the letter, Mr Hayes said: “I am delighted to be taking over this school at this exciting time in its development.

“My priority is to begin the process of moving the school forward out of special measures, but I will also be preparing for the move into our new building and the celebrations for the 50th anniversary of the school.

“I look forward to meeting you and working together with you in the coming year.”

The move to bring in a new headteacher comes five months after the intervention of Peterborough City Council, when the school was given an official warning notice under the Education and Inspections Act 2006.

It followed allegations of bullying, a decline in standards and a large turnover of staff.

Now the city council has sacked the governing body and a new Interim Executive Board (IEB) has been brought in to turn the school around after it was slammed in an Ofsted report and placed under special measures by inspectors.

The new IEB was installed on Tuesday and Mr Hayes, who has a track record of turning round schools that are in difficulties, was brought in.

The new teacher has previously been head at St Albans School, a high-performing Catholic school in Ipswich.

The IEB, which is made up of city councillors, city council staff, police representatives and members of the diocese, met for the first time on Tuesday to discuss the troubled school and the board will now focus its attention on the problem areas highlighted in the Ofsted report.

They included quality of teaching and poor results.

The secondary school is now closed for the summer holidays and will re-open again for pupils on September 3, due to extended teacher training days to cope with the “significant amount of work” required before the start of the new school year.