The leadership team has maintained the good quality of education in the school since the last inspection. Since your appointment, you have focused on improving the quality of teaching and learning to good effect. Pupils are making good progress in their learning and are achieving well. Pupils’ outcomes at the end of Year 6 have been significantly above the national averages for all subjects for the past three years. Last year, the school was congratulated by the Department for Education for all Year 6 pupils achieving a Level 4B or above in all subjects. Pupils display positive attitudes to their learning. In the Reception class, children have enjoyed learning about the life cycle of frogs and have written good explanations in their books. Pupils in Class 3 were inspired by their second world war topic and presented their work to parents in a class assembly. Relationships between adults and pupils are very positive, which leads to a warm and inclusive learning environment within school. Pupils enjoy the positions of responsibility that the school provides and they carry them out diligently. The sport leaders organise games at lunchtimes and the digital leaders ensure that no illegal games have been downloaded on the school’s computers. The house captains motivate their teams to collect team points to see which house will earn the party at the end of term. Pupils take pride in these roles and show real commitment to the school. At the previous inspection, inspectors asked leaders to accelerate pupils’ progress at key stage 1 and to improve the provision in the early years. The school has had much success tackling these areas. Outcomes at the end of key stage 1 have been rising since the previous inspection; however, they have not been significantly above the national average for the past three years. The provision in the early years is good and the children thrive there. The number of children who achieve a good level of development by the end of the Reception Year is much higher than the national average. I have asked you to continue to work on improving the pupils’ writing to enable more pupils to achieve above age-related expectations. In addition, I have also asked you to provide more opportunities for pupils to plan their own investigations in science, to record their results, and to write conclusions to develop their scientific skills further. Safeguarding is effective. You and your deputy lead safeguarding well in the school. If there is a concern involving a child, you take swift and appropriate action to address the concern. Records are detailed and securely stored. The safeguarding policy contains the latest government guidance, which the school follows. Some governors have attended safer recruitment training to enable them to make the appropriate checks before appointing a member of staff. The school building and grounds are clean, well kept and secure. Pupils have a good understanding of e-safety and know not to pass on personal details online. Pupils say behaviour is good in school and school records show that there have been no incidents of bullying in the current academic year. Pupils’ attendance at school is consistently above the national average. Inspection findings You have led the school well in your first year at Empingham. Your focus has been to improve the quality of teaching and to raise standards. Through the delivery of tailored training and development, together with regular checks on teaching and learning, the quality of teaching is now at least good and sometimes better.