The leadership team has maintained the good quality of education in the school since the last inspection. Your strong and principled leadership has created a can-do culture of aspiration across the school which improves the life chances of your pupils. You are ‘committed to the mission’, as you put it, and pupils, staff and parents and carers respect you for this. You are justifiably proud of the achievements of all your pupils and of the inclusive nature of the school. Your school self-evaluation is accurate and you know the school’s strengths as well as the areas in which you still need to improve. You have implemented a range of strategies to address these areas and you have built a team of senior leaders who share your vision and determination to improve the school further. You have taken clear actions to address the areas for improvement identified at the school’s previous inspection. The progress of students in the sixth form has improved and is now broadly in line with national averages and with the progress of pupils in key stages 3 and 4. You have introduced effective systems to ensure that sixth-form students’ understanding in lessons is checked regularly and that learning is adapted through activities which keep the level of challenge high. Teachers use information about students’ achievement systematically to pitch lessons at the right level. Leaders track students’ achievement at key stage 5 closely. They are aware of areas for improvement and they take action swiftly to address underperformance. Since the previous inspection, leaders have introduced an effective system to make checks on the quality of teaching, learning and assessment which requires all teachers to use pupil-performance information to inform their lesson planning. Leaders have also established a culture across the school where teachers are observed more regularly than they were in the past. This has allowed leaders to support teachers in improving their practice through evaluating the effect upon learning within lessons. As you are aware, there is still work to be done to ensure that some teachers focus more specifically on the direct effect of teaching upon learning, particularly in English. Middle leaders are now able to hold teachers to account for pupils’ progress in their areas of responsibility in a way that they were not previously. The monitoring system which you have introduced is built into teachers’ performance management and requires middle leaders to conduct termly reviews of all aspects of the quality of teaching in their departments. This is done through drop-in observations, scrutiny of pupils’ work and analysis of progress information. Middle leaders work alongside teachers in securing improvements to the quality of teaching in most subjects. Both teachers and middle leaders feel challenged and accountable through this system. Although this approach is not consistently embedded across school, in the vast majority of departments it has led to a clear improvement in the accountability of teachers. Pupil absence and persistent absence rates across the school have been rising compared to national averages. You have been proactive in introducing effective systems to improve the attendance of pupils across the school. These have now begun to show a positive effect. Consequently, both absence and persistent absence rates are now starting to improve. You are aware of the importance of improving attendance rates further across the school and have clear plans in place to address this. Safeguarding is effective. The leadership team has ensured that all safeguarding arrangements are fit for purpose and that there is an effective culture of safeguarding. Pupils say that they feel safe in school. They know which staff to approach if they have an issue or a concern and they are confident that they will be helped to resolve it. The designated safeguarding lead is meticulous in ensuring that all staff, including governors and those who are new to the school, are fully trained in their responsibilities to keep pupils safe. As a result, staff are fully aware of what they should do if they have a safeguarding concern of any kind. The vast majority of parents who responded to the parent survey said that their children feel safe at school. Pupils have been taught about a wide range of safeguarding issues through life lessons at key stages 3 and 4 and through academic tutorials at key stage 5. These include how to stay safe on the internet and the risks of drug and alcohol abuse. Pupils are able to explain in some detail what they have learned during these lessons. Pupils say that bullying does not occur widely in school. Where it does happen, teachers generally take swift action to deal with it appropriately.