The leadership team has maintained the good quality of education in the school since the last inspection. You set high expectations and have a clear idea of both the strengths of Church Vale and those aspects that require most attention. The staff are a close and united team who work together well, sharing and exchanging good ideas and supporting each other to improve their practice further. Pupils who I met during my visit told me how they enjoy coming to school to learn, and that teachers make learning exciting. Pupils follow instructions, cooperate well and concentrate hard on their work. Relationships are positive and pupils’ behaviour is polite and friendly. Pupils’ overall attendance is currently above the national average. Parents’ responses to both your most recent questionnaire and to Ofsted’s online survey, Parent View, are unanimously positive. As one parent explained, ‘My children make excellent progress. Staff are extremely supportive and are always available if I need to discuss any aspect. The headteacher is strong and has an invaluable connection to parents. I consider it a privilege that my children attend Church Vale.’ Children enter the school in the Nursery class with considerably lower levels of skills than are typical for their age. This is particularly the case in communication and language. You therefore ensure that staff continually model language for children, asking them probing questions that develop their ability to express themselves and to make appropriate choices. As a result, children quickly settle in and make good progress through the early years. Overall standards have historically been in line with those of other pupils nationally, and were so last year in writing, but you are fully aware that results in 2016 from the tests in reading and mathematics at the ends of key stages 1 and 2 were not good enough. Published data indicated that pupils made significantly less progress in these subjects, compared with that of other pupils nationally. The subject leader for English explained to me how, last year, too many pupils in key stage 1 did not complete their work at sufficient speed, and how the levels of comprehension skills of pupils in key stage 2 were not consistently high enough. In addition, pupils did not read often and widely enough. The leader for mathematics told me how, although teachers worked successfully to fill pupils’ gaps in their knowledge of number and of shape, space and measure, the curriculum did not focus sufficiently on the application of these skills. As a result, not enough pupils were able to demonstrate effectively that they could reason mathematically. You wasted no time in implementing rapid adjustments to ensure that these shortcomings were addressed. As a result, the overall quality of teaching across the school is now good in the early years and in both key stages. During my visit, I looked at an extensive sample of pupils’ work in these subjects. This confirmed convincingly, that pupils in all groups are making good progress, with most pupils, including disadvantaged pupils, set to achieve at least the expectations for their age by the end of the school year. Progress is not yet rapid, however, because a very small minority of teachers still do not ensure that pupils receive regular opportunities to undertake comprehension work in reading, and to build their skills in mathematical reasoning. You are ensuring that the changes you have made to the curriculum are proving effective by checking very closely the progress that pupils are making. You and subject leaders look very regularly at pupils’ workbooks, and visit many lessons to ensure that pupils are now learning well. Pupils who are falling behind, including in the phonics screening check at the end of Year 2, are being given good support to help them catch up. Teachers make thorough assessments of their pupils’ work, and check that these are accurate by discussing examples of it with colleagues in a number of other local schools. The school’s governing body is effective because, like you, it has a good understanding of how well pupils are doing, and what more staff need to do so that pupils’ progress continues to accelerate. You ensure that governors receive extensive and regular information on standards in reading, writing and mathematics from different groups in all year groups. They use this to hold you and other leaders rigorously to account and to ensure that, now pupils are making good gains once again, these are being sustained.