The leadership team has maintained the good quality of education in the school since the last inspection. Based on the evidence gathered during this short inspection, I am of the opinion that the school has demonstrated strong practice and marked improvement in specific areas. This may indicate that the school has improved significantly overall. Therefore, I am recommending that the school’s next inspection be a section 5 inspection. Following the last inspection, leaders were asked to respond more quickly to pupils’ learning so that work is adapted promptly within lessons and continues to challenge all pupils, particularly the most able. You were also asked to make the best of every opportunity to develop pupils’ language skills, to provide more opportunities for writing at length across the curriculum, and to encourage all pupils to present their work neatly and carefully. To your credit, these aspects have been tackled successfully. Indeed, over the past three years, the school has built an enviable track record of academic improvement, particularly at the end of key stage 2, which has led the local authority and local schools to seek your counsel and support. Your leadership and that of your deputy headteacher has been highly effective and you are both ably supported by a very capable team of senior leaders and expert teaching and support staff. Clear direction and cultivating a collective responsibility and shared ambition among staff and pupils have created a culture of success and ambition. Your strategy, and not surprisingly your school motto, has been simple: ‘Aiming High in the Heart of the City’. This underpins every decision you have made and this ambition for all pupils, families and staff who work at Blenheim Primary is evident. The vehicles for this are high-quality teaching, an engaging and rich curriculum and excellent levels of care, guidance and support, which promote pupils’ personal development very well. You and your team have fostered a caring, inclusive and welcoming atmosphere in the school. Most pupils’ behaviour is impeccable and they are a credit to their families. Pupils love coming to school and they and their families value the effort staff put into helping them develop as individuals and learn lots of new things. Pupils know they are doing well because of the regular feedback staff provide and their ever-increasing knowledge, skills and understanding. One child said that ‘the best thing about the school is the challenge the teachers give me with my lessons, which makes me learn even more’. Pupils and staff relationships are strong. Parents and carers value immensely the school’s caring ethos and appreciate the school’s tireless work on behalf of their children. They welcome the guidance you offer and the time staff invest to help them better support their children’s learning and development. The school really goes the extra mile to ensure that pupils receive a high-quality education. None of this would be possible without your talented and dedicated staff, who embody the school’s core moral purpose of working to ensure that every child aims high to reach their potential, regardless of any barriers to success that may exist. Your evaluation of the school’s current effectiveness is precise. You have taken highly effective actions to address aspects that were less than good. ‘We never let the grass grow under our feet’, was a phrase used many times by leaders, including governors, in discussions held and this is evident in the work undertaken. You are not complacent and you recognise that there is room for improvement in developing the self-regulation skills of a very small minority of pupils, particularly younger boys, in less-structured school times. You also accept that there is scope for your already rich curriculum to be enhanced further to ensure the highest possible outcomes in all curriculum areas. Indeed, you already have clear plans in place to address this. Collectively, governors have the necessary skills and expertise to monitor and evaluate rigorously the effectiveness of school leadership and the school’s performance. They are passionate and rightly proud of the school, as well as being astute in their evaluation of the school. They discharge their duties diligently. They know the school well and are committed to, and ambitious for, the school. They have produced a clear action plan with the onus on strategically supporting and challenging the school’s ongoing development. As a consequence of the school’s success, the local authority has only needed to offer light-touch support; indeed your school is viewed as a real strength in the city. Collaborative work undertaken has centred on some bespoke review and moderation activities around writing following the 2018 results. You are keen to continue the work with other local partners in supporting middle leadership development, something which the governors also value.