The leadership team has maintained the good quality of education in the school since the last inspection. You, senior leaders, governors, staff and pupils have worked together to achieve ‘a community of learners, believers and friends’. During the inspection, pupils were excellent ambassadors for the school. Many of them took every opportunity to convey to me and my inspector colleague a high degree of loyalty to their school. They spoke enthusiastically of their pride in belonging to a multi-cultural and diverse community. Leaders, including governors, have ensured that the spiritual, moral, social and cultural development of pupils permeates all aspects of school life. This includes opportunities and encouragement to take on responsibility and to help others. Year 7 pupils who need to catch up in reading identified help from mentors from Year 10 as the most important factor in their improvement. One comment typified pupils’ insightful and positive attitudes to taking on responsibility, ‘Being a prefect gives another dimension to our education.’ You have maintained a high level of pastoral care. Staff know pupils and their families very well and provide a nurturing environment for those who are vulnerable. Your school has a calm yet purposeful atmosphere. Mutual respect between staff and pupils is very evident in classrooms and at social times. Pupils told inspectors that ‘behaviour is good’ and said, ‘The best thing about this school is the teachers.’ You encourage all staff to learn from colleagues in your school and other local schools. Participating in subject networks that the local authority facilitates has enabled teachers and subject leaders to bring back new ideas and disseminate best practice. These networks have been particularly effective in developing schemes of work and systems for assessing pupils and tracking their progress. Subject leaders are confident that assessments are accurate because they take part in moderation activities with other Bolton schools. You benefit from having six specialist leaders in education on your staff. This enhances your school’s outward-looking and reflective ethos and contributes significantly to the continuing good quality of teaching. At the time of the last inspection, you were asked to increase the achievement of the most able pupils, diminish the differences in achievement between disadvantaged pupils and others, and improve teaching so that it is at least consistently good. You have addressed these areas with some success. However, you acknowledge that the progress of disadvantaged pupils remains a priority for improvement. You created a lead-teacher role to coordinate the Inspiring Futures programme for the most able pupils. Staff now begin this work in your feeder primary schools and there are master classes in Year 5. Every week, the lead teacher provides staff with teaching ideas designed to support higher-ability pupils across all subjects and year groups. These and other strategies have resulted in considerable improvement in the achievement of most-able pupils. In 2017, for these pupils the overall rate of progress across eight subjects was broadly the same as that made by pupils across the country who achieved similar results at the end of Year 6. In subjects other than mathematics and English, these pupils made more progress than their peers nationally. Our visits to classrooms, scrutiny of pupils’ work and information from teachers’ assessments showed clearly that this year most-able pupils are progressing even more rapidly. In 2017, in English and mathematics, disadvantaged pupils made more progress than in previous years. However, despite a range of initiatives, disadvantaged pupils still underperform in relation to their peers nationally. This is largely because they do not attend school as regularly as their non-disadvantaged classmates. You have been successful in maintaining and improving the school’s good quality of teaching. During the inspection, teachers and teaching assistants spoke highly of the positive impact of continuing professional development on their classroom practice. Teachers new to the school have very positive role models to emulate, and senior and middle leaders support them well in meeting the school’s expectations of teaching. Safeguarding is effective. Staff understand that safeguarding pupils is the responsibility of the school community as a whole. Consequently, everyone is vigilant. All staff have undertaken regular training and know how to recognise the signs of neglect, abuse, extremism and exploitation. Discussions with pupils and staff, as well as scrutiny of school records, showed that staff act quickly when adults or pupils inform them of concerns. The school does not hesitate to use external expertise if staff need it.