The leadership team has maintained the good quality of education in the school since the last inspection. Your hard work and that of the staff has ensured that the school continues to improve under your leadership. The governing body provides unwavering support and rigorous challenge. This has enabled you to establish the right direction for the school and make the necessary improvements quickly. Staff are proud to work at this school and fully support the initiatives that have been introduced over the past year to strengthen teaching. You have an accurate and realistic understanding of the school’s current performance. As recommended in the school’s previous inspection, you have strengthened development planning. Your plans clearly set out what needs to improve further with specific and measurable targets. For example, you identified that progress in writing was not as strong in 2016 as that in reading, where standards were above national figures. As a result, you took prompt action. You have, through focused teaching each day, successfully improved pupils’ ability to write in a lively and engaging way. Consequently, a greater number of pupils are achieving higher standards than previously, though you are aware that there is still more to do in this respect. Following the dip in performance at key stage 2 in mathematics in 2016, you have provided extensive training for staff to extend their skills and develop effective practice. Increasingly, teachers set work that improved pupils’ ability to reason and solve problems, especially using their calculation skills, and standards have risen across the school. You acknowledge that this work needs to be extended to ensure that pupils deepen their understanding in other aspects of mathematics. Parents are overwhelmingly positive about the school’s work and believe that the school lives up to its mission statement – to imbue pupils with a love of learning. This is because you ensure that teachers have high expectations of pupils and a deep understanding of their individual needs. You provide a rich and varied curriculum that includes many opportunities for pupils to excel in all subjects, for example in sports and art. As a consequence you lead a happy school where pupils behave very well and love attending. Safeguarding is effective. You and your governors have created a strong culture for safeguarding within the school. Your safeguarding arrangements are fit for purpose and records are detailed and of good quality. You get to know the families of children who attend Broad Hinton well and keep a close eye on their welfare, especially any whose circumstances make them vulnerable. Events such as anti-bullying week and internet safety training ensure that pupils are well prepared to face risk in society. Pupils confirm that they feel safe and secure in school and are very supportive of each other. Staff receive regular training in the latest requirements for safeguarding, enabling them to be clear about reporting concerns about pupils. Recruitment and vetting procedures for appointing staff follow the statutory guidance stringently. Most pupils attend regularly and are seldom late for school. Leaders work effectively with other professionals, such as the parent-support adviser, to help families sort out any worries and to promote regular attendance. Inspection findings During the inspection I met with you to discuss the school’s progress since the previous inspection. We agreed the following lines of enquiry: how successful leaders have been in improving standards in writing at key stage 2, how well reasoning skills are taught in mathematics, the effectiveness of the school’s curriculum in promoting high achievement, and how well the school keeps pupils safe. In response to the decline in progress in writing across key stage 2 in 2016, you have taken prompt action to strengthen teaching and raise expectations of pupils’ achievements. The introduction of the assessment overview sheets that enable pupils to see clearly what they have achieved and the next steps in their learning is having good impact on raising standards. You ensure that their skills in grammar, punctuation and spelling are developed systematically. Pupils write at length across subjects because teachers present them with interesting tasks. During my visit, we looked at a range of pupils’ books and agreed that, increasingly, pupils write in an engaging and entertaining way. For example, in religious education, Year 6 pupils wrote biographies of famous people, such as Gandhi and Mother Teresa, to good effect, using sophisticated vocabulary. However, pupils do not demonstrate consistently a mastery of grammar and punctuation and few pupils are writing at greater depth. Last year you were disappointed with the results in mathematics at key stage 2. Leaders wasted no time in implementing a new approach by providing additional teaching sessions to ensure that all pupils are suitably challenged. Teachers reorganised their teaching to meet pupils’ needs more precisely. As a result, pupils have developed their fluency in calculation well and have regular opportunities to apply their skills to solve problems. Increasingly, the most able pupils are presented with challenging work that extends their thinking. For example, Year 2 pupils were observed in lively discussions, developing their reasoning skills effectively when deciding where to place different measures of time on their timeline. Also during my visit, we looked at a range of pupils’ work and established that the most able Year 6 pupils are on track to achieve a high standard. However, you and your leaders recognise that there is more to be done to embed this approach, in order to deepen pupils’ reasoning skills and mastery in all aspects of mathematics. You have created a lively and varied curriculum that engages the interest of pupils and inspires them to be successful. Careful consideration is given to individual pupils’ needs and these are well met. Parents praise the extensive range of extra-curricular activities. There is a wide range of opportunities for pupils to learn new skills and excel in areas of particular interest, for example in sports such as ice hockey. You ensure that tasks capture pupils’ imagination and inspire them to achieve well, and I observed some delightful art work completed by pupils throughout the school. Pupils state that learning is fun and enjoy recalling their experiences. An instance of this was the ‘missions to Mars’ challenge in design and technology where pupils had to use their mathematical skills to design and make model rockets. A comment from one pupil summed up pupils’ views on the curriculum: ‘This school has a really good way of linking subjects and making you think hard about your learning.’ Next steps for the school Leaders and those responsible for governance should ensure that: teaching consistently extends pupils’ writing skills so that they achieve the highest possible standards pupils continue to develop their mathematical reasoning skills to enable them to solve more complex problems across all aspects of mathematics.