Leaders have maintained the good quality of education in the school since the last inspection. Since your appointment as headteacher, you have worked tirelessly to raise expectations of what pupils can achieve and have instilled a shared ambition among the school community to be outstanding. You are thoughtful in your decision making and ensure that any changes you introduce are well thought through and based on extensive research and best practice. Following the last inspection, leaders were asked to raise pupils’ achievement in mathematics. Despite organising staff training, leaders’ actions were not effective in accelerating pupils’ progress and pupils’ attitudes to mathematics were poor. You recognised the urgency with which you needed to make a difference and wasted no time in establishing a new approach to the teaching of mathematics. This is consistently applied across the school and is now accelerating pupils’ progress effectively. Importantly, you embedded a can-do culture among your pupils. The Riccall ‘PETS’ serves as a kindly reminder to all pupils of your expectation for their perseverance, enthusiasm, teamwork and success. This resonates with all pupils, who talk confidently and positively about their learning and who are prepared for the next stage of their education successfully. You have established a clear, regular and rigorous approach to the assessment of pupils’ learning, which is consistent across the school and accurate. Assessment outcomes are analysed effectively to identify gaps in pupils’ achievement and to inform your priorities for improvement effectively. Your school development plan is a detailed working document, which you evaluate regularly. You set aspirational targets against which you measure your success, for pupils’ achievement at the expected standard. However, they are not directly linked to pupils’ outcomes at the higher standard or to outcomes for disadvantaged pupils, which you acknowledge. Since the last inspection you have established a new senior leadership team. Although only recently formed, team members demonstrate good subject knowledge and are clear about what needs to improve. They are enthusiastic about their roles and welcome the opportunities you have given them. They are equally determined to support you in raising pupils’ achievement further. Several new appointments have strengthened governance in school. Governors know the school’s priorities for improvement and welcome your honest and detailed reports. They share your vision for future success, with great resolve. Their responsibilities are completed with due diligence and they offer you increasing levels of challenge and support to raise pupils’ achievement. This bodes well for the future. Safeguarding is effective. You have ensured that safeguarding arrangements are fit for purpose. Thorough checks are made on adults employed to work with children, to ensure they are fit to do so. All staff receive appropriate and regular training, so they are up to date with the most recent legislation. They are clear about the procedure they must follow if they have any concerns. While your record-keeping is detailed and chronologically accurate, some of the commentaries checked are more descriptive than factual. Pupils say they feel safe in school and demonstrate a good understanding of what constitutes bullying. They are confident that ‘it doesn’t happen at Riccall’ and if it did, an adult would deal with it swiftly and sensitively. Parents endorse this view. Pupils behave well and are respectful of others. On the rare occasion that a pupil falls short of your expectations, you use it as a learning point to strengthen pupils’ awareness and tolerance of others effectively. Consequently, the school is orderly and purposeful and pupils demonstrate good manners. Inspection findings The school’s published data indicates that pupils’ outcomes in writing were in the bottom 20% of all schools nationally for 2016 and 2017 for pupils with middle prior attainment. Upon closer analysis, this applied particularly to boys’ outcomes. I wanted to know what actions leaders were taking to improve this. You and your subject leaders have introduced a systematic approach to the teaching of writing for different purposes, including: handwriting, spelling, punctuation and grammar. It is clear pupils are demonstrating greater confidence in constructing their writing accurately and with greater complexity. Although pupils’ progress is improving rapidly, there is less evidence of pupils, particularly boys, working at the higher standard consistently, especially in their writing in subjects beyond English.