The leadership team has maintained the good quality of education in the school since the previous inspection. Parents, carers and pupils appreciate the warm and caring ethos that staff and leaders are proud of. The environment is vibrant and displays in the school celebrate the work of pupils and the many engaging hands-on experiences pupils have to widen their understanding of the rich curriculum the school provides. You and your senior leaders have the support of staff, governors and the wider school community. The school’s ethos is celebrated and promoted. It guides the work of staff in promoting the development of pupils. Parents, staff and pupils who completed Ofsted’s questionnaires were highly positive about the school. The vast majority of parents and pupils who offered their comments would recommend the school to others. A minority of responses from parents indicated that they would like more precise information about the progress of their children. All staff are proud to work at the school and feel that it is well led and managed. Pupils behave very well. They are polite and friendly to visitors. They listen to their teachers and to each other. They can talk confidently about the subjects and activities they enjoy most. They focus in lessons and try hard to do their best. You and your leadership team are focused and determined to continually improve the school. You have made good progress in addressing areas of improvement from the previous inspection. Key stage 1 pupils’ attainment in the phonics screening check has improved to above average. The provision for pupils who have special educational needs (SEN) and/or disabilities pupils is now more focused and checked carefully for its impact on increasing the rate of progress for these pupils. Pupils’ attainment in reading and mathematics is above average at the end of key stage 2. You know that progress and attainment in writing across the school does not match the very positive outcomes in reading and mathematics in key stage 2. This is high priority in your school improvement plan. Governors understand the school’s strengths and weaknesses. They hold you and other leaders to account in their meetings. Visits to the school are focused on gathering information about the school’s progress in governors’ areas of responsibility as well as for the school’s priorities for improvement. Governors have a range of relevant skills and experience. This means they are well-placed to ask challenging questions and to support school improvement. Safeguarding is effective. You have ensured that all staff have the relevant training to ensure they are vigilant and proactive when they have concerns about pupils. Timely referrals are made to you and your deputy leaders for safeguarding. You review these regularly and take appropriate actions, including further referrals to local authority agencies when necessary. You keep well-organised records of concerns and actions. You have identified risks in the local area and ensured that staff are aware and know what actions to take to keep pupils safe. Pupils say they are kept safe at school. They know what bullying is. They talked to me about their definition of bullying which is ‘several times on purpose (STOP)’. Pupils also understand what they can do to help if they were to witness bullying. The school finance manager ensures that the necessary pre-employment checks are made to ensure that staff are suitable to work with children. These are recorded carefully on the single central record. The safeguarding governor checks the record to ensure that it is up to date and accurate. Inspection findings Pupils achieve less well in writing than they do in English and mathematics. You and other leaders have focused on improving pupils’ writing both at key stage 1 and key stage 2. You have implemented an approach to the teaching of writing over recent years and this is working well in some year groups. However, you recognise that some staff are yet to be trained in the school’s chosen approach. This is planned to happen soon. When you reviewed the impact of your work to improve writing, you found that pupils did not have enough opportunities to practise writing extended pieces. To resolve this, you and other leaders have ensured that pupils have further opportunities to write at length, for instance as part of science and history tasks. This is working well and pupils now have more opportunities. However, in some classes there is inconsistency in the quality of writing for topic work compared to work in English lessons. Some pupils do not typically apply what they have learned in English lessons to their writing in other subjects. Your assessment information shows that progress in writing still lags behind reading and mathematics. You have worked in the school and with other local schools to look at pupils’ writing to check the accuracy of teachers’ assessment and also to look for what else teachers can do to improve the standard of pupils’ work. This has resulted in a helpful action plan which you are implementing with teachers. The plan sets out what teachers can do better to improve progress in writing. You have also focused recently on improving the standard of handwriting and pupils’ presentation of their work. This is paying dividends for many pupils but remains too inconsistent. We also looked closely at children’s progress in the early years. Your early years leader assesses children when they enter the school in the Reception class. She has found that around half of the children enter the school with skills below those typical for their age. Most children make good progress from their starting points. The proportion of children who achieve a good level of development is broadly average. However, the proportion of children who exceed the early learning goals is below average, including in developing their writing skills. Children in the Reception class are confident and appear to be happy. They maintain interest in their tasks and enjoy the activities on offer. The teaching of phonics and early reading skills is focused and regular, therefore children make good progress in reading. The learning environment is vibrant and wellorganised. You have improved the outdoor area so that it can be better used to extend learning outside. You and other leaders are passionate about providing a rich curriculum that gives pupils many opportunities for hands-on learning. During my visit, pupils were enjoying their work in drama to re-enact the story of the Gunpowder Plot. There are frequent visits to places of interest as well as visitors into the school to bring learning to life. Pupils say that they enjoy these activities and that this makes learning fun. Many subjects are taught through topics and this helps pupils to see the links in their learning. It also ensures that pupils learn in a range of subjects. However, some of the activities provided for pupils are not challenging and they do not make the best use of learning time to maximise pupils’ progress. This was evident during my visit and in some of the work recorded in pupils’ books. Pupils make good progress in science. This is because they have regular opportunities to predict and to investigate. Pupils record their predictions and the outcomes of their investigations well. Their work now indicates that they are making better progress than their outcomes last year at key stage 2 showed.