The leadership team has maintained the good quality of education in the school since the last inspection. After a term as interim headteacher, you took up the post as permanent headteacher in January 2018. You have made a purposeful start to the role. Several other leaders have also stepped up to more senior roles in recent months. Historically, there has been a positive culture of developing leaders’ skills. As a result, leaders are capable and have risen to the challenge of increased responsibility. This transitional period has been managed seamlessly. You and your senior team have a good understanding of the school’s priorities and bring about successful improvements. The school’s motto of ‘Aiming high’ is prevalent among leaders, governors, staff and pupils. You and the staff ensure that pupils’ personal development is central to the ethos of the school. Pupils love the broad range of enrichment opportunities on offer. You even monitor which activities pupils attend to ensure that all pupils are accessing something that they enjoy. The opportunities for sport and music are particularly strong. Social times are a hive of well-organised activity. For example, at lunchtime, pupils use the library for reading or for other purposeful activities. Outside, other pupils use the crazy golf course, or attend well-organised sporting activities led by a coach. Pupils talk with pride about how they take on responsibility across the school. Groups such as the school council, digital leaders and lunchtime play buddies enable pupils to feel valued. Your impressive enrichment programme ensures that pupils thrive, personally and socially. They enjoy coming to school and behave well. You and the senior leadership team have high expectations and an effective focus on improvement. Your evaluation of the school’s strengths and priorities for improvement is accurate. Improvement plans respond well to weaknesses that arise within pupil progress information. For example, you identified that phonics and mathematics are two key areas that needed boosting. Early improvements in these areas are positive, but there is still work to be done. In response to the previous inspection, senior and middle leaders have created a positive culture of sharing best practice. As a result, leaders and staff regularly reflect and improve their teaching. Teachers join into groups to observe each other’s teaching. Support staff have also been involved in this. Leaders check the quality of teaching regularly and give precise feedback to teachers on how they can improve. This culture is of great benefit to any new staff that join the school, including newly qualified teachers. Teamwork and morale are high among staff. Good teaching secures good progress for pupils across a range of subjects. Another area for improvement from the previous inspection was to improve communication with parents and carers, so that they are more regularly informed about the progress their children are making. You have responded very well to this. Successful new strategies have been introduced, such as: parent workshops; improved communication; sharing useful assessment information; and use of pupil planners. Parents are overwhelmingly positive about the school. Almost all parents would recommend the school to others. Governors provide strong capacity to the school’s leadership because they are knowledgeable and astute. They are absolutely committed to getting the best for the community. They use their good knowledge of the school to provide an effective blend of challenge and support. Governors’ visits into school and meetings demonstrate where probing questions are asked of you and your leadership team. Governors and leaders have also ensured that the school website is an excellent source of information for parents. You have worked with staff to develop an exciting curriculum. Pupils were animated and excited when describing their ‘learning journeys’, where a range of subjects are explored through an engaging theme. Staff match part of the classroom environment to the theme. For example, when discussing their ‘servants area’ for a ‘Victorians’ theme, comments included, ‘It helps us to imagine what it would be like to live in those times.’ Pupils’ work in their ‘learning journeys’ shows that they develop appropriate knowledge and understanding across a range of subjects. The provision for physical education (PE) and school sport is very strong. Staff receive high-quality professional development. For example, a gymnastics specialist worked with several staff to develop their subject knowledge. There are also a range of activities to hook pupils into physical activity from an early age. Skipping workshops helped pupils understand the importance of keeping fit and healthy. Extra-curricular clubs have high attendance rates. Traditional sports are blended with alternative choices such as tri-golf, yoga, skateboarding and table tennis. Safeguarding is effective. Leaders have ensured that arrangements for safeguarding are organised and thorough. Concerns are followed up quickly and external services are involved in a timely manner. The designated leads for safeguarding check that staff understand their responsibilities through regular training opportunities. Consequently, a culture of keeping pupils safe is prevalent across the school. Staff are absolutely clear about the procedures and their statutory responsibilities. You have ensured that pupils have a good understanding of how to keep themselves safe. Pupils articulated the importance of anti-bullying week and how it helped them to understand the meaning of bullying. The computing curriculum enables pupils to learn about online safety on a regular basis. Pupils know that they must speak to a trusted adult if they are concerned about something on the internet. The school’s website is a rich source of information to support parents with online safety with their children. Inspection findings A key priority on your school improvement plan is to improve the proportion of pupils who achieve the expected standard in the Year 1 phonics check. You now assess and track phonics more precisely, so that you can target pupils who are falling behind. The early impact of this work is positive. Additional support for particular pupils is helping to accelerate their progress. However, the teaching of phonics is not consistently strong enough. Sometimes, pupils are not shown or expected to demonstrate the precise pronunciation of sounds. This has most impact on those pupils who are struggling to grasp phonics. Teaching needs to be stronger, so that the proportion achieving the phonics check at Year 1 improves. We looked at the teaching of reading across key stage 1 for those pupils who were low attaining at the end of Reception. Over the last two years, a low proportion of pupils have gone from working below the expected standard at the end of Reception to working at the expected standard by the end of Year 2. However, when we analysed this small group of pupils, there were valid reasons that they did not make the expected standard. Many of the pupils had special educational needs (SEN) and/or disabilities. Strategies for teaching reading are thoughtful. You monitor how much pupils read at home and school, and then provide more opportunities for one-to-one reading for those pupils that need it. In 2017 at the end of key stage 2, the proportion of pupils who achieved the higher standard in mathematics was below the national average. You recognised that this needed improving by making it a key priority in your school improvement plan. The work in pupils’ books demonstrates that pupils are gradually being given more challenging work. Pupils’ calculation skills are efficient and they receive regular opportunities to apply their skills into problems. The number of pupils achieving the higher standard is gradually rising. However, the level of challenge for the most able pupils is not consistently high. Sometimes, they tackle calculations that are too easy or problems that are not sufficiently demanding. The provision for pupils who have SEN and/or disabilities is effective. Some pupils have particularly complex needs and they are well supported. The special educational needs coordinator works productively with teachers to monitor pupils who are finding aspects of learning difficult. You are patient with pupils’ development and do not put them on the special needs register until it is absolutely necessary. Interventions are targeted and effective, enabling pupils to make good progress in their learning. In 2016, the levels of persistent absence for pupils who have SEN and/or disabilities were too high. However, you monitor attendance well and provide good support to families to improve pupils’ attendance. As a result, persistent absence for this group reduced in 2017. Next steps for the school Leaders and those responsible for governance should ensure that: phonics teaching is of a consistently high standard, so that more pupils achieve the expected standard in the Year 1 phonics check mathematics teaching provides sufficient challenge for the most able pupils, so that more achieve the higher standards by the end of key stage 2. I am copying this letter to the chair of the governing body, the regional schools commissioner and the director of children’s services for Dudley. This letter will be published on the Ofsted website. Yours sincerely Matt Meckin Her Majesty’s Inspector Information about the inspection During the inspection, I held meetings with you and other leaders. I also met with five governors. I spoke to pupils informally and formally. I made short visits to seven lessons with you and looked at pupils’ books. I spoke to parents at the start of the day and considered 103 free-text responses to Parent View, Ofsted’s online questionnaire. I also considered the responses from the online questionnaire completed by pupils and staff. I scrutinised various documents including the school’s self-evaluation, the improvement plan and the documents that you use to check the quality of teaching. You shared with me the most recent assessments of pupils’ attainment and progress. We discussed the national test results and assessments undertaken by pupils in 2016 and 2017. I also looked at the school’s published information on the website, as well as minutes of governing body meetings and information about attendance, behaviour and safety.