The leadership team has maintained the good quality of education in the school since the last inspection. As headteacher, you are a highly effective and inspirational leader. You have secured some significant improvements since the last inspection, especially in reading. You and your leadership team continually monitor and evaluate standards across the school. This is allowing you and other leaders to evaluate the school’s strengths and areas for improvement objectively. As a result, you have a clear blueprint to make the school even better. You reflect on the findings, and act quickly to deal with any emerging concerns, helping the school to evolve and improve further. Commendably, you have accomplished this while developing staff and keeping morale high during a period of staffing turbulence. The staff survey responses were universally positive and they reflect the complete confidence that staff have in your leadership. Your mentoring and coaching programme for new leaders is helping them to become established quickly in their roles. You have created a culture where all staff are passionate that Christopher Pickering Primary School remains an inclusive, accepting and communityminded school. I noticed immediately the school’s warm, friendly and inviting feel. Your decision to share the building with a special school and a hearingimpaired hub helps to illustrate the determination of staff to meet the wide range of needs of local families. Parents appreciate this and are extremely positive about the school. Of the 23 responses to the Ofsted questionnaire, Parent View, all parents said that they would recommend the school. Typically, they acknowledged that this is a ‘fantastic school with great teachers’ where ‘my child skips to school in the morning and can’t wait to be there’. Governance is a strength of the school. The governing body is well led, and governors provide challenge and support in equal measure. Governors are ambitious for the success of each pupil. They visit school regularly, gathering evidence to inform their understanding of the school’s strengths and the improvements that are taking place. Governors use information effectively to challenge, as well as to commend, leaders on the quality of education provided. Pupils behave extremely well, both in class and around the school at break and lunchtimes. Pupils are respectful and courteous and supportive of the learning of others. They talk enthusiastically about tasks in class and share ideas to support each other’s understanding. Pupils respond well to most teachers’ high expectations. You have ensured that pupils have a range of opportunities to develop their skills, knowledge and understanding through the immersive and exciting learning areas in school. These allow pupils to explore and develop a strong understanding of the curriculum in a creative way and build excellent language skills. Pupils are very confident and welcoming. I had several conversations with pupils of all ages who were interested in me as a visitor and wanted to tell me how proud they are of their school. They were eager to share the great things they did, including all of the creative work connected to the City of Culture, as well as all their sporting activities. One pupil said, ‘Everybody gets a chance to do the things they like and find things they didn’t know they could do.’ You correctly judge reading to be a strength. Pupils make rapid progress in reading. As a result, by the end of Year 6 in 2017 standards in reading were much higher than average. The most able pupils did very well in reading. However, you acknowledge that in 2017, from their different starting points, pupils in Year 6 did not do as well in writing and mathematics. There are early signs that the interventions you have put in place to address this are helping to raise standards and speed up current pupils’ progress in writing and mathematics. Even so, you acknowledge that there is still further work needed to ensure that the most able pupils are continually challenged. This is so that a higher proportion achieve the high levels of attainment they are capable of by the end of Year 6, especially in mathematics. Following a period of turbulence and staffing changes, we agreed that the quality of teaching is strengthening. However, some teachers would benefit from additional training and support to improve their practice so that the quality of teaching continually improves across the school. In September 2017, your collaboration with local schools was formalised within the Humber Education Trust. This has allowed you to benefit from and share good practice in teaching and learning across the partnership. It has resulted in your staff joining neighbouring schools to jointly assess pupils’ work and strengthen their own practice. Safeguarding is effective. The leadership team has ensured that all safeguarding arrangements are fit for purpose. All of the checks and procedures meet statutory requirements. Child protection training is fully up to date for staff and governors, and you make sure that the training schedule is timely and well managed. The safeguarding team, which includes the pastoral and attendance leader, is thorough in all areas of safeguarding. They are very experienced in dealing with any safeguarding issues swiftly and effectively. All staff are very clear about the procedures they must follow, particularly for raising child protection concerns about pupils. Your records show that you work effectively with parents and carers and outside agencies and thoroughly follow up any such concerns. For example, the work you and other staff complete around children missing from education is exemplary. Pupils, staff and parents agree that the school is a safe and happy place. Pupils say that bullying is not a problem. They praise the friendly and welcoming family atmosphere as part of their daily experience. They understand the behaviour system, and they say that the system is fair. They also know that on rare occasions when misbehaviour occurs, you will deal with it ‘very calmly’. Pupils were keen to share how they are rewarded for good behaviour, attendance and punctuality. They love the reward of ‘Flapjack Friday’, understanding how important is to be in school. As a result, the attendance for all groups of pupils has rapidly improved and is now at national averages. You have also worked hard with those families who find it hard to get their children into school and because of this, the proportion of pupils that were regularly absent has reduced dramatically. Inspection findings During the inspection, I looked at the quality of teaching of phonics, especially for younger pupils. This is because in 2017 outcomes in the phonics screening check at the end of Year 1 dipped to below average. Inspection evidence confirms that the teaching of phonics is strong across the school. Children in the early years are making good progress in learning to read. They are encouraged to try out different words, such as referring to baby bear’s `stomach’ being full of porridge rather than `tummy’. Throughout key stages 1 and 2, pupils use their knowledge to link letters and sounds increasingly effectively. This enables them to read and understand the meanings of words. Older pupils use this knowledge to help them spell unfamiliar words. This, in turn, is helping pupils to improve their writing.