The leadership team has maintained the good quality of education in the school since the last inspection. You are reflective and dynamic. You recognise where you need to strengthen the school’s quality of education and you devise effective plans to secure continuously improving progress for pupils. You take action promptly and ensure that your staff implement the strategies with consistency. Along with governors and other leaders, you are ambitious to ensure that there are constantly high standards across the school. You and your staff have created a welcoming school that you maintain to a high standard. You are constantly finding ways to enhance the environment for pupils and staff alike. For example, you have invested in an all-weather football pitch so that pupils have access to a good quality playing surface at any time of year. You have developed an outdoor learning area as a stimulus for pupils to improve their writing skills. You have also provided staff with a quiet room that they may use for their planning, preparation and assessment. You have successfully addressed the areas for improvement which were identified in the previous inspection report. You have improved the progress of all groups of pupils, particularly in reading in key stage 1. The vast majority of current pupils across the school make strong progress in reading, writing and mathematics. In key stage 1 in particular, you have ensured that teachers assess pupils more thoroughly when they begin Year 1. They then provide extra support for pupils, depending on the needs they identify. You have taken deliberate action to create a more structured approach to the teaching of reading, including in key stage 1. Strategies include daily reading sessions, both for individuals and for groups. You now give more opportunities for pupils to use their inference skills. You and your staff have devised your own questioning techniques, so that pupils become accustomed to exploring the books they are reading more thoroughly and deepening their understanding of them. You have also brought about improvement in writing since the last inspection. Evidence from the school’s assessment information and from pupils’ books shows that current pupils make strong progress. Teachers now tackle misconceptions about grammar and spelling more consistently, which has contributed effectively to the progress that pupils make. Pupils in Year 1, for example, develop the ability to write with a considerable level of complexity for their age. The most able progress to constructing sentences such as, ‘I’m so comfy and warm because it is so soft,’ when writing in the character of a cat finding a place to sleep. They show that they know how to engage the reader and write with more sophisticated sentence structures. Almost all current pupils make considerable progress in reading, writing and mathematics. However, the proportion of pupils who achieve higher standards is typically below average, using the most recent national figures for key stage 1 and key stage 2 for comparison. Members of staff with whom I spoke said they appreciate the training that you provide for them. You plan it carefully so that it supports the targets you set as part of the management of their performance. It also relates closely to the school’s own priorities. Staff find the training helpful in improving their skills, which is consistent with the effective teaching and learning that is evident in school. They also acknowledge that you do all you can to manage their workload. For instance, you have introduced less time-consuming ways of tracking pupils’ progress. Pupils’ absence rate has recently reduced and is now fractionally below the national average. You have also reduced pupils’ persistent absence. You have done this by using strategies such as presenting awards in school to high attenders and sending letters of concern to parents of frequent absentees. However, you accept that the rate of persistent absence is still too high, being currently above the national average. The local authority has a clear understanding of the strengths of the school and areas for development. It provides effective support, while recognising the capability and effectiveness of senior leaders.