The leadership team has maintained the good quality of education in Shenstone Lodge and The Brades Lodge since the last inspection. Your school motto, ‘Safe, happy learning’, encapsulates the strong ethos and culture that you, governors and leaders foster and promote to everyone’s benefit. You have developed a wellstructured, cohesive leadership team across both sites and you all work tirelessly to improve the quality of education for pupils at the school. You and your team recognise that there is still work to do, but you have secured firm foundations on which to develop further the good practice that is evident. School records show that behaviour on both sites is good and this was also true on the day of the inspection. When pupils do experience difficulties in managing their behaviour, they are supported well by capable staff. Pupils are looked after and helped to resolve their problems. The vast majority of parents are very positive about the school. They see improvements in behaviour at home as a result of the support that has been given to their child at school. Parents say that the school communicates well with them and they can see their children making progress. Parents with whom inspectors spoke said that they would recommend the school to other parents; one mirrored the views of others when she said, in reference to her child, that the school ‘knows how to get the best out of him’. Governors are committed to the school and have a good understanding of its strengths and weaknesses. They actively look for ways to improve their practice; for example, governors have worked with the school’s improvement adviser to enable them to monitor the quality of teaching and learning more effectively. They have initiated external peer reviews so that they can compare the practice of the school with similar schools. Governors have commissioned a review of governance in order to identify areas where they can build on their existing strengths. They know where pupil premium and other catch-up funding is used in the school and they make sure that they find out how this has made a difference to pupils. While governors challenge leaders regularly about practice in the school, they are not yet presented with a wide enough range of school performance information. This limits their ability to make sure that both the school’s self-evaluation and subsequent development plan are focused sharply on areas for improvement. At the previous inspection, inspectors identified that pupils needed more personalised targets in order to accelerate their learning and to encourage them to work both collaboratively and independently. In most cases, teachers now use accurate baseline information to make sure that activities are closely matched to pupils’ abilities. However, this is not yet consistent practice across the school. Inspectors saw pupils working together, helping and coaching each other in their learning, in calm environments. Pupils are supported well by other adults in class and around the school. The strong team ethos was evident on the day of the inspection. The subject leader for mathematics has introduced regular ‘pit stops’ for pupils, several times a week. These are tasks which pupils have to complete independently. It enables teachers to see if pupils have learned the concepts they have been taught or whether they need additional help. Pupils clearly feel safe and confident to be able to talk about their learning. Comments pupils wrote in their books such as, ‘I feel I can do this, I just need a bit more practice,’ reflect pupils’ resilience and honesty. Leaders have taken effective action to reduce fixed-term exclusions and improve attendance. Attendance is still not in line with the national average but you continue to look for ways to encourage pupils to attend regularly. The well-being team follows up absences immediately. Leaders know the small group of pupils who are persistently absent and are targeting work to address this. In extreme cases, you are prepared to take legal action which can result in prosecutions. Leaders have developed an assessment system which provides detailed, individualised information about the progress that each pupil is making in the core curriculum. Leaders are able to analyse the performance of different groups, including children looked after and those in receipt of pupil premium funding. This information is shared with governors so that they can see which pupils are performing well and which need additional support. However, you do not routinely analyse how well pupils are performing in relation to their key stage. As a result, you cannot yet identify any trends in information; for example, you are not able to see if key stage 3 pupils at Shenstone Lodge are making the same progress as key stage 3 pupils at Brades Lodge.