Since your appointment as headteacher in September 2013, you have provided insightful leadership which has brought about noteworthy improvement to the school. Along with the deputy headteacher and other school leaders, you have identified the school’s strengths and priorities for improvement accurately. These are clearly outlined in the school’s detailed self-evaluation and development plan. The leadership team has maintained the good quality of education in the school since the last inspection. You, your staff and governors set high expectations and aspire to help all pupils achieve the very best outcomes. The quality of teaching, learning and assessment continues to improve, following developments which are based upon research and reflective practice. For example, your leaders have investigated effective practice to develop pupils’ writing and used their findings to take actions tailored to the needs of your pupils. Similarly, the school’s recently created assessment systems have evolved through thoughtful development and refinement. Pupils’ personal development is a strength of your inclusive, harmonious and friendly school. Pupils are proud to attend. They develop good citizenship skills through your curriculum and the opportunities provided to take responsible roles from an early age. Pupils feel safe, grow in confidence and develop good learning behaviours. Parents are overwhelmingly positive about the efforts that you and your staff take to develop their children, both socially and academically. The school has largely tackled the area identified for improvement at the previous inspection. You and your staff have worked hard to ensure that pupils make consistently good or better progress in English. Pupils make good progress in developing their reading skills across the school. From the very start, they develop good phonics skills in the early years and throughout key stage 1. The proportion of pupils achieving the expected level in the Year 1 phonics screening check has been above the national average for the last three years. By the end of Year 2, the proportion of pupils working at the expected level in reading is above that found nationally. In key stage 2, pupils make significantly better progress in reading than is found nationally. As a result, a greater proportion of pupils are working at the expected level and the proportion working at a high standard matches that found nationally. Your work to improve pupils’ writing skills is paying dividends. By the end of Year 6, a higher proportion of pupils are working at or above the expected level in grammar, punctuation and spelling compared to the proportions found nationally. While pupils’ progress in writing is broadly in line with that found nationally, there is further work to be done to improve the number of pupils working at the expected standard and particularly at a greater depth. Your detailed plans are well devised to bring about the required improvement and there is early evidence that they are beginning to have a positive impact. Safeguarding is effective. You, your staff and governors give the highest priority to keeping pupils safe. Leaders and governors have ensured that current safeguarding arrangements are fit for purpose and records are of a high quality. Careful safeguarding checks are carried out for all staff, governors and volunteers. Leaders regularly update the safeguarding and child protection policies to ensure that current requirements are met and all staff understand the procedures and their own responsibilities. Staff and governors receive regular and appropriate training so they know how to keep pupils safe, including recent training about how to protect pupils from radicalisation and extremism. Pupils are well taught about how to keep themselves safe, including when they are online. They have a good understanding of the different forms that bullying can take and know that staff will help them if they ever have concerns. Pupils say incidents of bullying are rare in their school. The school’s records show that incidents of misbehaviour and bullying are infrequent and that these are quickly addressed by the staff. Pupils, parents and staff agree that the school is a safe place to be. Inspection findings Since your appointment, you have successfully identified the key priorities to address and have taken decisive action to drive forward improvement. You provide comprehensive guidance to staff about what the school’s priorities are and why they are important. Consequently, staff have a clear understanding of the goals the school aims to achieve.