You have led the school with dedication and compassion for pupils to secure an effective education that will equip them very well for their future lives. You are ambitious for pupils and aspire for them to be empowered personally and to gain accreditation that they can build upon in the future. Staff, governors and parents share your aspirations and are dedicated to the pursuit of this aim. Parents and staff speak highly of your leadership, with one parent stating that you have ‘a real passion to create a learning environment where children can flourish and feel valued and nurtured’. Governors add to the capacity of the school to improve further. They ask probing questions and challenge you when appropriate because they have the necessary skills and knowledge to do so. Governors take into account the views of stakeholders when making important decisions. They pay due regard to the financial stability of the school and have a clear strategic vision for the future. Governors share your devotion towards the school and its pupils. As a result of your leadership and that of other senior leaders, alongside effective governance, the school has continued to thrive and enhanced its effectiveness. Consequently, the leadership team has maintained the good quality of education in the school since the last inspection. You know the strengths of the school and you are clear and reflective about what could be even better. For example, following recent changes to the leadership structure of the school, you are rightly focusing on developing the ability of middle leaders to have a full impact on areas for school improvement and on enabling them to support you in raising the quality of teaching across the school. You know that this will further improve the capacity of leaders to drive improvement more swiftly and effectively. The governing body is equally evaluative about the school and honest about what still needs to be achieved. You and your staff have worked hard to meet the recommendations from the previous inspection of your predecessor school. As a result, teachers are largely using what they know about pupils to plan activities that meet pupils’ needs precisely. However, more needs to be done to make certain that information from pupils’ education, health and care plans is taken into account. In the best examples, teachers provide advice and support during lessons so that pupils are clear about how to make their learning better. You have made certain that the school improvement plan is focused on important areas for development. Yet, the improvement priorities are not widely known by all, which prevents them from contributing towards your goals for the school as effectively as they could. Nonetheless, you are continually motivated to raise standards in the best interests for pupils and have led with moral determination that the pupils in your school should have access to the best education possible. You know what needs to be accomplished to make the school even better, such as enabling the most able pupils to make the progress of which they are capable. While nearly all staff are proud to work at the school, even more could be done to ensure they are united in feeling part of the school’s onward journey towards outstanding. You have sought and welcomed opportunities to work alongside other schools in the vicinity to share good practice to further improve staff’s skills and the school’s effectiveness. This has helped you secure improvement. Safeguarding is effective. Interactions between staff and pupils are warm, empathetic and positive. Positive relationships underpin the school’s strong culture of vigilance and care. As a result, pupils feel safe. They are clear in their belief that there is a member of staff they would turn to if they were worried. Most pupils are positive about behaviour in the school and nearly all pupils feel that bullying either does not happen or is exceptionally rare. If it does occur, pupils are confident that staff would deal with it. The school’s focus on teaching pupils how to keep themselves safe is impressive. For example, older pupils learn extensively about sex and relationships and sexual health. Pupils are taught about British values, which are underpinned by the school’s own values of respect, responsibility, care and resilience, for example. The school brings these to life throughout the curriculum. For instance, pupils celebrate difference and uniqueness and learn how to care for the environment. The leadership team has ensured that all safeguarding arrangements are fit for purpose and records are detailed and of high quality. Staff are acutely aware of their duty to protect pupils from harm. They are clear about the processes and systems to follow if they are concerned about a pupil’s well-being or the behaviour of a colleague. Parents are very positive about the safety of their children and the openness and approachability of staff when dealing with any issues or concerns they might have. As one parent reflected, ‘Staff are friendly and caring and pay attention to the individual needs of each child’. This strong alliance between the school and parents has engendered trust and commitment to the school and, consequently, had a positive impact on pupils’ academic progress and personal development. Inspection findings During this inspection, inspectors focused on how well leaders have continued to improve standards at the school. We examined the progress that pupils, including disadvantaged pupils and the most able pupils, are currently making across a range of subjects. We were particularly interested to see whether the quality of teaching and learning was consistently strong across the school. We focused on how well pupils are prepared for the next stage of their education and equipped with the skills to help them be successful when they leave school. In addition, we evaluated the effectiveness of safeguarding and how well the school supports families of pupils who have too many days off school. From their different starting points, pupils make good progress in a wide range of subjects, including pupils who are disadvantaged. Effective use of pupil premium funding, alongside the school’s commitment to meet the needs of individuals, means that this group of pupils does as well as their peers. Pupils’ work shows that they are acquiring effective knowledge and skills, especially in mathematics and in their personal, social, health and economic education (PSHE). Pupils are learning important literacy skills such as punctuation and grammar, which they use effectively across other subjects, such as history. Pupils make very strong progress in reading because it is given a high priority by the school. Pupils’ spelling is equally impressive, reinforced by effective phonics teaching. Pupils typically attain entry-level certificates in reading, writing and in computing, as well as a range of other accredited outcomes, including level 1 qualifications in English and mathematics and GCSE science. Furthermore, leaders are implementing plans to introduce a wider range of higher qualifications for the most able pupils. Over time, the quality of teaching and learning is consistently strong across the school and in a wide range of subjects, leading to good outcomes. Teachers are working hard to think of creative ways to engage pupils in learning and to make activities relevant and meaningful. For example, in mathematics pupils practise using money by calculating how much change they would receive if they purchased a mobile telephone. Pupils are provided with many opportunities to rehearse their English and mathematics in a range of subjects. For instance, in PSHE pupils used a Venn diagram to illustrate what they had in common and what was different about them and their classmates.