The leadership team has maintained the good quality of education in the school since the last inspection. Your analysis of the school’s effectiveness and what it needs to do to improve further is accurate and realistic. You and your governors reacted promptly and effectively to the sharp decline in the progress made in writing during last academic year. You moved to address the issues that had led to this decline and there is clear evidence from this inspection that the strategies that you have put in place are having a positive impact. You and your governing body are confident that the actions you continue to take will ensure that outcomes improve and that results will be much better next year. One of the strategies you have employed to improve writing is to strengthen further the links you enjoy with your ‘cluster’ of local schools. You are now working even more closely together through, for example, a joint project to improve boys’ writing. You are also continuing to work with cluster colleagues to check the quality of children’s work and share examples of good practice. You have sought effective support from North Yorkshire local authority. Officers from the local authority have worked with you and early years colleagues to evaluate the quality of the provision and check the accuracy of your assessments of children’s progress. They found these to be good and accurate. Local authority officers are also supporting you effectively in your work to improve writing across the school. Your staff are very positive about your leadership. They are proud to work at Giggleswick Primary School. The large majority of parents agree that the school provides a good education for their children. Parents with whom I spoke at the start and end of the day were very positive about the school and spoke of its careful, ‘family’ approach. Their comments about the provision in early years were particularly positive. At the previous inspection in December 2011, you were asked to improve the quality of teaching further by setting clear lesson objectives and sharing these with pupils so that they knew how well they were doing and what they had to do to improve. When I spoke with pupils and looked in their books, it was clear that, on the whole, they know what they are doing and the progress that they are making. You provided evidence of the way that you check the work of the school and monitor pupils’ progress. However, although improved, leaders’ analysis of pupils’ learning and progress is not consistently detailed enough. Safeguarding is effective. There is a culture of safeguarding at the school. You, your staff and governing body take these safeguarding responsibilities very seriously. There is regular and effective training for all staff and governors to ensure that they are up to date in their knowledge and understanding. You, as designated safeguarding lead, have strong links with outside agencies. Your records of engagement with these agencies are detailed and show your careful approach to this aspect of the school’s work. You make referrals to the local authority promptly and follow them through effectively. You and your leadership team have ensured that all safeguarding arrangements are fit for purpose. Records are detailed and of high quality. Inspection findings Children settle well into Reception Year because the school develops strong and open links with parents. Children are happy at school and look forward to it. There are clear routines that children quickly understand and follow. These routines, along with the care that staff take in their work with children, ensure that children are safe. Children, on the whole, develop independence and pleasure in their learning both indoors and outdoors. This is because the environment overall is carefully designed and maintained to support learning and exploration. Staff monitor the progress that children make and use their observations to plan next steps for each child. The school’s own information, supported by inspection evidence, shows that those children who need more time to reach a good standard of development do so during Year 1. Most pupils make good progress from their starting points in key stage 1 and reach good standards in reading and mathematics. Progress in writing is less secure. However, inspection evidence shows that pupils are making much better progress in writing. This is because staff identify gaps and misconceptions in pupils’ learning more quickly and address them effectively through additional support. The teaching of phonics is a growing strength. The proportion of pupils who achieve the standard in the Year 1 screening check on phonics has improved over the last three years so that it is now above average. Least-able pupils in key stage 1 are able to use their phonics skills to read new words correctly. The most able pupils in this group enjoy reading and are able to discuss books with enthusiasm, inferring meaning from cues in the text. The school has a broad and balanced curriculum. This ‘formal’ curriculum is supported by a wide range of extra-curricular clubs and activities, including access to a range of instrumental music lessons. Science is a strength of the school. Pupils are developing effective skills as scientists: collating, analysing and setting out information with increasing confidence as they move up the school. French is also a strength, with high levels of oral engagement from key stage 2 pupils. You are successfully tackling last year’s weaker performance in writing through a range of strategies. For example, there is more emphasis on writing at length in subjects other than English. In science, for example, pupils’ books show that they are using language effectively to describe the results of their experiments. They are also using subject-specific language in their writing with growing confidence. In our conversations about this and other initiatives, it was not clear how you were monitoring their impact. Nor was it clear how you proposed to share, with others across the school community, the success of these initiatives or areas where they needed further refinement. Staff know their pupils well. They identify promptly those pupils who are falling behind or those who need additional work to ‘stretch’ them. When we observed teaching across the school, we agreed that we saw, when it was at its best, both teachers and teaching assistants focusing carefully on and developing what pupils needed to do to move on and develop. This was often through careful questioning that encouraged pupils to think for themselves and develop their resilience. Teaching, although good overall, is more variable in key stage 1. In mathematics, for instance, we saw examples where misconceptions were not promptly tackled. The number of disadvantaged pupils at the school is similar to the national average. Their books and the school’s own information show that this group of pupils is making good progress in mathematics and reading. Their progress in writing is in line with that of their peers. Pupils who have special educational needs and/or disabilities make generally good progress from their starting points. This is because you, as the coordinator for this aspect of the school’s work, ensure that staff are well trained and aware of the needs of these pupils. You also work carefully with outside agencies, including the local authority, to ensure that these pupils receive appropriate support.