The leadership team has maintained the good quality of education in the school since the last inspection. Since that time, you have created a school where pupils feel safe and find their learning enjoyable. You have worked effectively with senior leaders, subject leaders and governors to ensure that a good standard of education has been maintained. Your governors, many of whom are relatively new, are knowledgeable, fully involved in the school’s work and offer you strong strategic support and challenge. Pupils, staff and parents value your effective leadership. You are ambitious for your school and have an accurate understanding of what the school does well and where aspects of its work need to be improved. Senior and middle leaders are effective. Working together, you have developed an approach to teaching that encourages pupils to see clear links between subjects, which helps them to enjoy their work and to achieve well. Classrooms and open areas are attractive places for learning and are both well resourced and managed. You have capitalised on pupils’ interest and enthusiasm in learning from enrichment activities, such as music and drama. You have successfully addressed all the areas requiring improvement identified at the inspection in 2012. Your determination to improve the quality of teaching and learning has helped the school continue to improve, particularly in the early years and in key stage 2. Where teaching is less strong, this relates to teachers not providing suitably challenging activities for the most able pupils. You are already aware of this and have put support in place to develop this aspect of the school’s work rapidly. Safeguarding is effective. Leaders and governors have ensured that all safeguarding arrangements are fit for purpose and that records are detailed and of a high quality. All checks on the suitability of staff to work at the school meet the latest requirements. The designated safeguarding leaders are well known to all staff and pupils, and procedures are clearly understood and followed. Clear systems are in place for making referrals when concerns arise and subsequent actions are checked carefully. Links with external agencies are strong, including the education welfare team. Staff training is kept up to date. Your staff have a good local knowledge of potential dangers present within the community, such as the danger posed by political or religious radicalisation. Pupils report that they feel safe in school and they know they are listened to when raising a concern. This includes a secure understanding of keeping safe while using the internet, as well as how to report potential bullying behaviour while in school. Inspection findings We agreed at the start of the inspection that a priority for the school is to increase the progress made by the most able pupils, particularly in key stage 1. You told me that your leadership team had already identified this as a priority for the school. On visiting classrooms and looking at pupils’ books, it became clear that progress for these pupils is currently strong. Pupils benefit from clear advice from their teachers on how to improve. Having the ability to do work that is more practical when solving mathematical problems is helping pupils to become more confident in applying their reasoning. As a result, pupils are able to tackle work of increasing difficulty. In their English work, pupils are expected to write at greater length and with increased accuracy and you are encouraging them to pay close attention to the presentation of their work. To improve outcomes for pupils still further, we agreed on a renewed focus on ensuring that pupils’ written work in all subjects should be of the same high quality as that seen in formal English work. I then looked at the progress of disadvantaged pupils at key stage 2 in reading. The effective work of the school’s subject leader is already paying dividends. Pupils are enjoying the new approach to the teaching of reading and spoke very positively about it. The school has purchased whole-class sets of reading books, which is allowing the older pupils to focus more intensively on the work of both classic and contemporary authors. You have also enabled all pupils to access online reading homework activities, during the school day as well as after school, for those without a computer at home. We then looked at how the most able pupils are being taught. During the 2 inspection, we spoke to pupils about their work and visited classrooms. It is clear that teachers now have a greater understanding of the need to cater for the most able pupils. In many areas, this is effective. However, it is not consistent across all classes. In some cases, the progress of these pupils slows, as teachers do not spot when the work is too easy. The most able pupils grow more confident in their abilities as they get older. They told us that they feel that work is suitably difficult for them and that they ‘don’t like easy work’. However, you acknowledge that not all teachers set work that is always suitably challenging to ensure that the most able pupils make the progress of which they are capable. Finally, we looked at pupils’ attendance. The most recent published information suggested that some pupils were persistently absent much more than is the case nationally. Discussions with school leaders and scrutiny of attendance records explained quickly why individual pupils were absent. I am satisfied that the school has strong and effective strategies in place to monitor and improve attendance further. Next steps for the school Leaders and those responsible for governance should ensure that: teachers plan interesting activities that challenge the most able pupils to make consistently rapid progress across all classes, especially in English and mathematics the quality of writing improves across all areas of the curriculum so that it is as good as the work in English books. I am copying this letter to the chair of the governing body, the regional schools commissioner and the director of children’s services for Waltham Forest. This letter will be published on the Ofsted website. Yours sincerely Tim McLoughlin Ofsted Inspector Information about the inspection 3 During this inspection, inspectors held several meetings with you and the deputy headteacher. I met with governors and had a telephone conversation with a representative from the local authority. We scrutinised the safeguarding procedures with the business manager. I met with teachers with responsibility for leading mathematics and English, as well the assistant headteacher. You and your deputy headteacher accompanied us to all classroom visits. We talked with pupils about their learning; we looked at their books and listened to a range of pupils read. I also evaluated a range of the school’s documents, including school development plans, reviews, safeguarding records and information about current pupils’ achievement. Inspectors also took into account the 57 responses from the Ofsted online survey, Parent View, and correspondence from parents received during the inspection.