The leadership team has maintained the good quality of education in the school since the last inspection. You and your team provide a warm and caring learning environment which enables the pupils to enjoy their education and achieve well. The school enjoys close links with the local community. The pupils regularly participate in services at the local church, learn to play crown green bowling at the village club and sing for different local groups as part of the festival for St. Barnabas. You develop the pupils’ personal and social skills well. The pupils are given roles of responsibility, such as toy monitors, to develop their leadership skills. Regular meetings of the pupil forum, involving all pupils, allow them to form and express their views. A recent topic focused on gender equality where both boys and girls realised that everyone has their strengths. Parents are very supportive of the school. As one parent wrote, ‘I am pleased that the school is as concerned with helping the pupils become responsible, wellrounded people, as well as their educational development.’ The pupils start school with skills and knowledge that are broadly typical for their age. Pupils make good progress through the school. Outcomes for the past three years at the end of Year 2 show that pupils’ attainment in reading, writing and mathematics is above the national standards. However, in 2016 not enough pupils made sufficient progress from their starting points to reach the higher standard in reading, writing and mathematics by the end of Year 2. The latest published outcomes showed that fewer pupils, who reached the expected standard at the end of the Reception Year, achieved highly at the end of Year 2 than other pupils nationally. You lead the school well. You and the staff are dedicated and ambitious for each child to reach his or her full potential. Governors are highly committed and visit the school regularly to check how the school is improving. They have managed the budget well during the period of declining numbers on roll to ensure that standards have been maintained. At the last inspection, the inspector praised the pupils’ behaviour and their achievement. These strengths have been maintained. However, the inspector asked you and your team to improve pupils’ writing. The pupils show great enthusiasm for writing. In the Reception Year, the children are writing their own sentences using capital letters and full stops. One child wrote, ‘I wish I had a rainbow cake. It would be lime, strawberry and orange.’ Throughout the school, pupils are writing well. In addition, the inspector asked you to improve the leadership and management of the school by checking the quality of teaching more frequently. You have increased the number of lesson observations and you have moderated the pupils’ work more frequently, both within the school and with other schools in the local cluster. This has enabled you to maintain the good standards that the pupils achieve. More recently, you identified the need to improve the way you teach phonics to support pupils’ reading and writing skills. You have had much success with this improvement. Pupils use their phonic knowledge well to read unknown words. The outcomes of the Year 1 phonics check have risen for the past three years consecutively, and are now above the national average. I have asked you to develop further the pupils’ ability to reason mathematically to help them solve more complex problems. This will enable more pupils to achieve highly at the end of Year 2. I have also asked you to increase the number of opportunities for pupils to investigate in science and write their own conclusions. The school’s website does not contain all the statutory information regarding the national curriculum. Safeguarding is effective. You and your team are committed to ensuring that pupils are safe. The staff are trained annually about safeguarding and they know what to do if a child makes a disclosure. You inform parents about the duty of care that staff provide to pupils through the school prospectus, website and newsletters.