The leadership team has maintained the good quality of education in the school since the last inspection. Your school is welcoming and inclusive, your pupils feel valued and are rightly proud of their school. You and your senior leaders ensure that the learning environment is vibrant and celebratory. Pupils access a rich and broad curriculum where they experience many engaging activities that deepen their understanding of the world around them. Pupils’ behaviour is exemplary, they are polite and friendly towards each other and to the adults who work with them. They listen carefully in their lessons and try hard to do their best. Pupils are confident and articulate. They talk positively about their time in school and the activities that they enjoy most. Your kind, caring and happy pupils are a credit to the school and community. Parents are positive about the school. They praise the curriculum and the ability of the school’s staff, who they recognise as approachable, friendly and responsive to concerns. Parents feel very included and particularly value the recent mathematics and internet safety share sessions that the school has organised. The overwhelming majority of parents and pupils would recommend the school to others. You and your team are uncompromising in your drive to raise standards across the school. Your ‘follow-up, follow-through’ approach ensures that staff are properly trained to deliver the improvements that the school’s leadership knows to be necessary. Your skilled and effective governing body is well informed and very supportive of the decisions you have taken to improve the quality of education throughout the school. It has supported your changes to the school’s leadership structure and staff training budget to ensure that more teachers have the opportunity to develop their skills and progress their careers. As a result, staff are effective and reflective practitioners, who are improving outcomes for your pupils. Your school has made good progress in addressing the findings from your previous inspection. The development of writing is a considerable strength. Inspectors saw evidence of good-quality work throughout the school. However, on occasion, pupils do not make the progress of which they are capable in reading and mathematics. You are aware of this and are now using more carefully chosen teaching strategies to make sure that these pupils make progress more rapidly. Safeguarding is effective. You and your team have made sure that all of the school’s staff understand their responsibilities regarding safeguarding. They are vigilant and proactive. Your record-keeping is careful and detailed. Governors regularly check safeguarding procedures. Recruitment processes are secure and all statutory requirements are met. Your pupils feel safe in school, the premises are maintained as a secure environment and pupils are appropriately supervised at all times. Parents and pupils say that bullying is very rare and that teachers always respond rapidly and sensitively to problems when they arise. Pupils have a good understanding of issues such as online safety and the importance of mutual respect. You risk-assess appropriately so that pupils who may need additional help and support with medical or emotional needs understand and fully engage in the process. This works well. As a result, there is clear evidence of improvements in behaviour and attendance resulting in better learning and increased safety for individuals. Inspection findings I explored a number of lines of enquiry in this inspection. The first of these was to do with English teaching and how you are bringing about meaningful improvements in reading and writing. Published key stage 2 school data indicates strong pupil progress in writing in 2017, but this was not the case in reading. The teaching of phonics in key stage 1 and in the early years is a growing strength. Pupils’ progress in phonics is regularly and rigorously checked so that teachers can be sure that work is at the right level. The result of this is that a greater number of pupils now achieve the expected standard by the end of Year 1. The school’s analysis of pupils’ reading has led you to develop strategies for improvement. Teachers are asked to ensure that the books children read are pitched at the right level and are age-appropriate. Pupils from Year 2 and Year 6 read expressively and with enjoyment. They were able to discuss their books with confidence, showing good understanding. Pupils in Year 3 were developing inferential skills in a guided reading session by exploring fact and opinion, and their learning was effective. However, you have identified that the quality of teaching for reading varies in some year groups. Teachers now provide more opportunities for pupils to write at length across the school. Inspectors observed many examples of good-quality writing in pupils’ work books and on display. Progress for pupils in Year 6 was evident: many were using mature and varied sentence structures in their work and there were plenty of examples of extended writing for a variety of purposes. We also saw examples of improved writing in those year groups whose overall progress had previously been a cause for concern. My second line of enquiry was to review the provision for disadvantaged pupils. The number of disadvantaged pupils in the school varies year on year, and published information often pertains to very small numbers, so does not give a clear picture of the progress that these pupils make. You keep thorough records on the progress of all your disadvantaged pupils, which means that you and your staff have a good understanding of their needs and any barriers to their learning. Leaders acknowledge the difference in progress made by this group of pupils and other pupils in the school. You have introduced a sharper focus on the performance of this group of pupils that requires teachers to take more responsibility for their outcomes. You are using additional funding well to provide more targeted intervention and pre-teaching activities to those pupils who need a boost or support to catch up with their learning. During the inspection, we met pupils from this group who confidently discussed their learning and were proud of their achievements. You have also given careful consideration to pupils’ emotional and social needs and have allocated funding for nurture activities and family liaison. This work has resulted in increased self-confidence and improved attainment for many pupils and stronger relationships between home and school. The inspection team also looked at the school’s provision for pupils who have special educational needs (SEN) and/or disabilities. This was because published assessment information indicated that these pupils made less progress than their peers. The inspection team needed to test whether this was actually the case. There is an acknowledgement that expectations for pupils with SEN and/or disabilities had not been sufficiently high. This is no longer the case and the school’s team is active in providing the best possible support, with regular progress review meetings and monitoring from governors and school leaders. Finally, we wanted to check on curriculum development since the last inspection so that we could be sure that improvements were meaningful and lasting. Progress in mathematics had not been consistently strong, particularly for the most able pupils. More recently, good subject leadership has played an important role in improvements in this subject. Staff training for the introduction of a new scheme has been thorough. Pupils enjoy their mathematics lessons and they cite the level of challenge as an important factor in this. Pupils are becoming increasingly resilient to tackle new challenges in their learning. For example, a Year 1 pupil commented that ‘you keep trying’. Leaders know that there is work still to be done to ensure that pupils make consistently good progress in every year in key stage 2. In other subjects such as science, history and physical education, subject leaders monitor progress, inform senior leaders on areas for improvement and develop action plans. They give feedback to colleagues and provide specialist training as necessary. This is high-quality subject leadership that holds staff accountable and produces a rich and stimulating curriculum. Governors have reviewed how they check on curriculum progress. They schedule presentations in their meetings and are aware of the importance of developing consistency throughout the school. These activities ensure the sustainability of curriculum developments. Next steps for the school Leaders and those responsible for governance should ensure that: they bring greater consistency in the teaching of reading and mathematics, and share the effective practice in the school, so that pupils make rapid progress equally throughout their experience in key stage 2 they continue to develop strategies to support the small numbers of disadvantaged pupils so that they make the progress of which they are capable and attain well. I am copying this letter to the chair of the governing body, the regional schools commissioner and the director of children’s services for Suffolk. This letter will be published on the Ofsted website. Yours sincerely James Richards Ofsted Inspector Information about the inspection This inspection was carried out by a team of two inspectors. Our inspection activities included meetings with curriculum subject leaders, the SEN coordinator, the members of staff with responsibility for safeguarding and four governors. We carried out joint learning walks with senior leaders in all areas of the school, briefly visiting most classes. We looked in depth at a range of pupils’ books and listened to readers from Years 2 and 6. We were able to refer to a range of the school’s documents. These included development planning and documentation relating to assessment, SEN, behaviour, attendance and safeguarding. We spoke to parents and pupils in the playground and met the school council. We also took note of the responses to Ofsted’s online questionnaires, 47 responses to the pupil survey, 40 staff responses and 89 from parents. I held discussions about the school’s self-evaluation and development plans with you and your deputy, and we discussed the key lines of enquiry for the inspection. I also spoke to a representative from the local authority.