The leadership team has maintained the good quality of education in the school since the last inspection. You and your staff work well together to maintain a school about which one parent typically commented, ‘I cannot speak more highly of this school! A wonderful gem.’ All the members of staff who responded to the questionnaire expressed similarly positive views, particularly praising your strong leadership. Adults form warm, caring relationships with pupils and have high expectations of their behaviour. Pupils respond very positively, behave extremely well and appreciate the strong teaching and close attention they receive. Pupils across the range of ability, including those with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND), enjoy learning and are proud to attend the school. Governors are highly supportive of the school. They visit the school frequently and have a good understanding of the school’s strengths and areas for development. Governors work effectively with you to secure consistently good teaching and drive improvement. You and your staff work diligently to enlist the full support of the very large majority of parents and to improve attendance so that it matches the national average. With additional assistance from the diocese and local community, you enrich pupils’ education across a stimulating range of outdoor sports and environmental learning facilities. You have successfully tackled the areas for improvement identified at the previous inspection. One of these was to ensure that pupils receive clear guidance on how to improve their work. You were also asked to make sure that the most able pupils in key stage 1 are challenged to improve their writing. Observations of teaching and learning and a scrutiny of work in books show that pupils know what is expected of them, respect the helpful guidance they receive from adults and work hard to improve. Pupils across key stages 1 and 2 benefit from the teachers’ strong focus on extending their vocabulary. This is helping all pupils, including the most able, to improve their descriptive writing. You were also required to improve the expressive arts and design skills of children in Reception. Your strategic decision to take over the pre-school and merge this provision with the Reception class has created a wellequipped and effective early years unit. The increased space now available promotes children’s good achievement across all areas of learning. These include children enthusiastically developing their fine motor, art and design skills when cutting and pasting materials to make Chinese dragons. Safeguarding is effective. There is a clear culture of safeguarding in the school where everyone is committed to securing pupils’ welfare. All staff take care to get to know the pupils. This helps staff to provide timely and reassuring assistance when pupils need individual support. Consequently, pupils say they feel safe and are well looked after. A pupil commented, ‘The teachers listen to what we say and are quick to help us.’ The very large majority of the parents who responded to the online questionnaire or communicated with the inspector fully support this view. One parent typically wrote, ‘Our children feel happy and safe at Thorner’s.’ The leadership team ensures that all safeguarding arrangements are fit for purpose. The school promotes strong links with community groups and welfare agencies and appropriate referrals are made when needed. Staff know how to use the wellorganised systems to report any concerns. Leaders and the school administrator make detailed checks to ensure that all adults working in the school are safe to work with children. Governors assist in checking that this information is kept up to date and fully recorded on the school’s single central record. Leaders have drawn up detailed risk assessments to secure pupils’ safety and well-being when using the school’s wide range of stimulating outdoor learning areas and accessing the adjacent village hall. Inspection findings The first line of enquiry considered the effectiveness of actions taken by leaders and teachers to improve pupils’ progress in reading across key stage 2. You monitor pupils’ progress in reading and ensure that pupils receive extra adult assistance should they show signs of ‘falling behind’. Pupils make a good start in developing their early reading and phonic skills through early years and key stage 1 classes. You ensure that teachers use assessments of pupils’ developing skills effectively to provide the right level of challenge. Teachers provide pupils with reading books that are at the right level for their developing reading ability and which capture their interest. For example, the pupils I heard reading were not put off by books that were too hard, but were encouraged and suitably stretched to tackle new and more complex words. Teachers build on pupils’ good speaking and listening skills consistently well.