Leaders and governors have maintained the good quality of education in the school since the last inspection. You have successfully created a culture where high academic standards are supported by good-quality pastoral care. Staff and governors share your ambition and work hard to achieve it. Parents are very positive about Enstone, one commenting, ‘Teachers demonstrate a genuine care for their pupils, encouraging them to strive for excellence’. The school is a vibrant, happy place where pupils display great enthusiasm for learning and are keen to share their achievements. They are rightly proud of the good progress that they are making and are keen to discuss it. For example, a Year 4 pupil excitedly explained to me that he had found the ‘tricky bit’ in a mathematics investigation and had solved the task. This is something he had not been able to do previously. Years 5 and 6 pupils spoke to me with passion about their very successful performance of ‘Macbeth’. They discussed the characters with insight and demonstrated a detailed knowledge of the text and the issues it covers. They showed me the high-quality written work they had completed and confided that Shakespeare’s language is, ‘not that difficult’ when you work at it. You have maintained and developed the strengths identified in the previous inspection report and made very good progress towards achieving the recommendations for improvement. In particular, teachers have thorough knowledge and understanding of their pupils’ current skills and knowledge. They use this to plan the next learning steps effectively. You track each individual pupil’s progress closely and evaluate the success of the different tasks and support provided. However, you are rightly developing a clearer method of recording your tracking of pupils’ achievement. This will enable you to evaluate progress more effectively. Governors know the school well and meet with you and other school leaders to further develop their understanding. As a result, governors effectively hold you to account. For example, they ensure that additional funding, including that for disadvantaged pupils, is spent effectively. Governors are planning to evaluate their work formally to ensure that they are providing the most effective levels of challenge and support. They are aware of the need to check statutory aspects such as the single central record more regularly. The school’s self-evaluation is accurate and you use it to lead school improvement effectively. Your plans are well judged, with clear strategies. You make good use of the support from the local partnership of schools. You are determined to provide the best for all the pupils in your care. You challenge and support staff to continually develop their skills. A current focus of school improvement is to bring all teaching up to the high standards of the best. Staff are proud to be part of Enstone and work hard to develop their practice. Your approach is successful and pupils make good progress and enjoy their learning. One parent commented: ‘This school is making sure that children start their educational life with a smile.’ Safeguarding is effective. School leaders have ensured that safeguarding arrangements are fit for purpose and that records are accurate. Staff are well trained and display a secure understanding of safeguarding processes and their importance. They know how to take action if they are concerned. You work effectively with external agencies to support pupils and families when needed. Pupils are confident that school is a safe place and told me that they can speak with any member of staff if they have worries. They told me that bullying does not happen because everyone is friendly and ‘the teachers will stop it’. Parents are also confident that their children are safe and well looked after. There are secure systems for checking and recording the suitability of adults, before they are allowed to work with pupils. Inspection findings During this inspection, I considered how well pupils are supported and encouraged to attend school. This line of enquiry arose from historical information showing that not all pupils attended school as often as they should. We found this was due to unavoidable individual circumstances. You had supported the pupils concerned and their families by sending work home and providing extra help when the pupils returned to school. You have a wide range of attendance rewards that effectively encourage pupils to aspire to high attendance. You are in close communication with parents of children whose attendance is not as good as it could be, and are providing effective support to improve this situation. I also looked at how different groups of pupils, including disadvantaged pupils and those who have special educational needs and/or disabilities, are supported and integrated into the full life of the school. You and your team have a good understanding of individual pupils’ needs. Disadvantaged pupils make good progress in line with other pupils nationally. Teachers and teaching assistants are highly trained and provide well-judged support. You have made thoughtful and effective adaptations to the school environment so that these groups of pupils are fully integrated into the life of the school. Parents are extremely positive, one commenting, ‘The staff have been exemplary in accommodating my son.’ Another said, ‘I have been very impressed with the way the school makes use of expert advice to support my child’s learning, and always implements strategies to help improve progress. I have complete confidence that they will always do whatever they can to improve my child’s progress.’ Pupils at Enstone achieve well and their progress and attainment is at or above national levels. I looked at how pupils of different abilities are supported and challenged to achieve well from their starting points. Teachers know pupils exceptionally well and provide interesting work that challenges them effectively. You make good use of the mixed-age classes to provide a range of tasks for pupils, tailored for their learning needs. As a result, pupils are making rapid progress and achieve well. Pupils enjoy the work and persevere with morestretching tasks, for example the most able pupils in Years 2 and 3 were successfully working with negative numbers. They showed delight when they identified the answers and could prove that they were correct. Pupils like the target lists in their books and use these to evaluate their own learning and identify their next steps. You track pupils’ progress closely and know how each individual is doing, as well as the impact of interventions. You are now working to develop your recording of this tracking to allow you to identify common trends. I looked at the steps you have taken to improve the quality of teaching, especially of writing. Your team are highly motivated and work closely together to continually improve and develop their teaching. You make good use of support from the local schools’ partnership group. You have improved teaching through an effective mentoring system. You have successfully improved pupils’ handwriting. Pupils are proud when they achieve their pen licence and were keen to show me the difference in their work since the start of the year. You have also improved pupils’ writing through developing their vocabularies and improving their accuracy in spelling and punctuation. You effectively support pupils’ planning and writing by providing real experiences for them to write about. Pupils who had been more reluctant to develop their writing are proud of their wellcrafted responses in their books. Pupils’ books also show that they transfer their writing skills successfully when writing in other subjects. You are passionate about enriching pupils’ knowledge and understanding of the wider world. I considered how effectively leaders ensure that the curriculum is broad and balanced, and prepares pupils for their next steps in modern British society. Alongside discrete lessons for the wider curriculum, such as art, computing and humanities, you have developed a successful series of special topic weeks. During these weeks pupils apply their knowledge and skills to solve specific tasks. An example is the entrepreneurs task, where pupils use their mathematics, technology and computing skills alongside speaking and listening abilities to design and present a new product to visiting ‘investors’. Pupils enjoy applying their learning as well as the competitive nature of such activities. You have also successfully developed pupils’ understanding of the wider world through your global-learning focus. Pupils are very proud of Enstone’s democratic nature. They eagerly explained the responsibilities of house captains and ecowarriors, and how elections operate. You successfully promote fundamental British values through these leadership opportunities. In addition, pupils are equipped for the wider world through the ‘peer mediator’ training they undertake in their social and emotional aspects of learning lessons. This work helps create the strong community in the school so that pupils from different year groups play together happily. The wide range of extra-curricular activities successfully enriches the curriculum and you make the most of local opportunities, including visits by groups, such as charities. Next steps for the school Leaders and those responsible for governance should ensure that: the school’s assessment system is developed further to enable leaders to evaluate pupils’ progress effectively governors complete their rigorous self-evaluation and the steps that follow all teaching is as good as the strongest. I am copying this letter to the chair of the governing body, the regional schools commissioner and the director of children’s services for Oxfordshire. This letter will be published on the Ofsted website. Yours sincerely Lucy English Her Majesty’s Inspector Information about the inspection I met with you, other members of school staff and members of the governing body. I also held a telephone call with your school improvement adviser from the local authority. Together, you and I planned the key lines of enquiry for this inspection. We jointly visited all classes in the school to observe pupils’ learning, speak with them and look in their books. I also spoke with pupils and staff during break and lunchtime. I took account of 10 responses to Ofsted’s online pupil questionnaire and 12 responses to the online staff questionnaire. I spoke with parents at the start of the school day and took account of 41 responses to Ofsted’s online questionnaire, Parent View, including 26 written contributions by parents. I looked at a range of documentation, including information about safeguarding, attendance and the work of governors. I also scrutinised and discussed the school’s tracking of pupils’ progress and attainment, and the school’s self-evaluation and plans for improvement.