The leadership team has maintained the good quality of education in the school since the last inspection. In the last year, there have been significant staff changes. You and your governors have seen this as an opportunity, rather than a challenge, and have made strategic staffing appointments. You have broadened the leadership structure and have appointed two assistant headteachers. In addition, you have appointed experienced literacy and inclusion leaders to assist you in driving forward the school’s appropriately identified priorities. Achievement in reading is a clear strength of the school. Pupils make significant progress, resulting in a greater proportion leaving the school above the national standards. The progress of most-able pupils was a development point from your last inspection. You have addressed this point successfully, resulting in this group making above-average progress in reading, writing and mathematics last year. You have identified that you need to raise achievement for all pupils in writing, to match those of reading and mathematics. You are rightly proud of the learning behaviours of pupils and their engagement in learning. Staff, pupils and parents are positive about the school, in particular, the approachability of staff and their focus on pupils’ well-being. The majority of parents report that their children are happy at Margaret Roper Primary School. You appreciate that the changes in staffing have understandably caused concern for some parents. You have listened to their feedback and have increased the number of meetings to support parents and carers in helping their children at home, for example in phonics and mathematics. You are now looking at ways to increase the level of communication with parents about their children’s progress. Safeguarding is effective. Your role as headteacher representative on the local authority safeguarding board provides you with a good understanding of national and local safeguarding priorities. You ensure that all staff members receive regular safeguarding training, and you meet personally with new staff to discuss school procedures. As a result, staff are clear about what to do if they have concerns about a pupil, as reflected in their use of school referral forms. The new online recording system shows that you work appropriately with external agencies to support pupils and their families. You are well supported by governors, who monitor the single central record to ensure that all staff have been appropriately vetted. Your joint annual review of safeguarding, alongside your own regular updates, ensures that safeguarding practice remains robust. The curriculum provides a range of opportunities for pupils to learn how to keep themselves safe. ‘Safety Week’ includes visits from the emergency services and teaches pupils about aspects of safety, such as keeping safe online and bullying. The vast majority of pupils can identify an adult in school whom they can approach about any concerns. You listen to pupils’ feedback and have introduced ‘worry boxes’ to enable pupils to share their concerns. Pupils welcome this and report that if they post any concerns in the boxes, they are always addressed. School records show that the incidences of poor behaviour are low overall. You have identified, through your records and from pupil feedback, that most incidents happen at lunchtime. As a result, you have introduced a range of initiatives to address this. This has resulted in fewer incidents being recorded than at the same time last year. Inspection findings We agreed to look at writing in key stage 2 because this is a school priority. Not enough pupils made the progress required to meet the national standards in 2017. In addition, we agreed to look at the progress of pupils who have special educational needs (SEN) and/or disabilities and middle-ability pupils, as these two groups typically make the least progress. Your evaluation of writing has accurately identified the need to focus more closely on pupils’ spelling accuracy and their engagement in writing. Leaders have introduced a range of initiatives to develop these aspects. For example, the teaching of writing is now more closely linked to high-quality children’s texts. This inspires pupils to engage more with the content of their writing and to develop their own voice as writers. Pupils in Year 6, for example, were eager to share their writing of an atmospheric story opening for Macbeth. They were successfully using their knowledge of the play to influence their choice of vocabulary and writing structure. Pupils know that teachers are helping them to improve their writing and know what they must do to improve their writing. They explained that ‘teachers are pushing us more and helping us’. They say that the new focus on spelling helps them to be more accurate. Pupils are keen to be nominated as ‘superstar writers’ of the week, and particularly enjoy the writing focus arising from class texts.