The leadership team has maintained the good quality of education in the school since the last inspection. You and other senior leaders, including school governors and executive leaders of the multi-academy trust, have a clear understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of the school. You and the executive headteacher have worked effectively to establish a united and skilled middle leadership team. Your continuing ability to bring further improvement is clearly evident in the increasingly rapid progress made by most pupils, with a range of needs and starting points, across the school. Pupils behave well and are keen to learn. They value the supportive relationships they enjoy with their friends and with staff and say that this boosts their confidence and helps them to learn. At the previous inspection, you were asked to improve the quality of teaching, learning and assessment. Your diligence in addressing this issue is evident in the positive way that pupils clearly demonstrate their understanding of what is expected of them and engage well in their learning. You and senior leaders have also helped teachers to improve the way they plan the curriculum so that pupils develop their literacy and numeracy skills to equally good effect across the range of subjects. You have worked effectively since the previous inspection to involve parents more fully in supporting their child’s learning at home and at school. This has had a positive effect in helping to raise pupils’ interest in learning and especially their skills in reading. Your determined efforts to work closely with parents to reduce absence are also beginning to improve pupils’ attendance, but there is more to do to bring it in line with the national average. The large majority of parents who responded to the Parent View questionnaire would recommend this school to another parent and value the way staff respond to their concerns. Safeguarding is effective. You and your leadership team ensure that keeping pupils safe at school is given the highest priority. You ensure that all safeguarding arrangements and training requirements are fit for purpose and kept up to date. When questioned, staff demonstrated a good understanding of the agreed procedures for keeping pupils safe, including, for example, protecting them from cyber-abuse and radicalisation. You and your staff are diligent in identifying and supporting those pupils considered vulnerable. Your actions and child protection records show that you are not afraid in questioning the support from outside agencies when you feel their actions fail to meet pupils’ needs effectively. Pupils told me that they feel safe because they are well supported and know what to do to stay safe. Pupils said they would have no hesitation in telling staff about any worries and that ‘adults take what we have to say seriously and deal with it quickly’. A very large majority of parents who responded to Ofsted’s online questionnaire, Parent View, agreed that their children are safe and well looked after at school. Inspection findings We agreed that a key line of enquiry should focus on how leaders develop the curriculum in the early years and key stage 1 classes so that boys and girls achieve equally well. This was because the attainment of boys and girls has varied widely at the end of both these key stages in recent years. We identified that in recent years effective leadership and teaching have enabled an above-average proportion of children to achieve a good level of development in the Reception class. This academic year, the early years leader is more specifically ensuring that boys and girls make equally good progress. She has accomplished this by working more closely with pre-school providers and parents to secure an accurate picture of the children’s starting points and needs. The early years leader, with guidance from specialist colleagues across the multiacademy trust, uses this information to ensure that planned learning experiences meet the children’s needs well. As a result, teaching and activities capture boys’ and girls’ interests and engagement in learning to equally good effect. This is especially the case in successfully extending their communication and language skills and readiness for future learning in Year 1.