The leadership team has maintained the good quality of education in the school since the last inspection. You lead the school very effectively with energy and vision. This academic year, your close partnership work with the deputy headteacher has energised the school’s strong leadership. Representatives of the Hamwic Education Trust have worked effectively with you to provide additional challenge and help you to raise standards. Your focus on improving pupils’ progress, especially this academic year, continues to good effect. You have noticeably raised pupils’ interest and confidence in reading. Pupils are now willing to express and explain their ideas in mathematics. Consequently, pupils across the school are enjoying their learning and making good or better progress in these aspects. Pupils are also progressing well in writing. However, at times, pupils’ spelling and ability to write for different purposes have not been taught and learned well enough. You are now targeting these features strongly in your development plan. You and your staff ensure that the school’s inclusive, community ethos is reflected in all aspects of school life. This is evident in the strong support given to pupils with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND) and to those with emotional difficulties. Throughout the inspection, I met polite and courteous pupils enjoying school and relating respectfully to each other and adults. The pupils’ exemplary behaviour, evident in all the classes I visited and during the assembly, underpins their successful learning. Staff, parents and carers appreciate your commitment to promoting the achievement of pupils through a wide and motivating curriculum. One parent typically wrote: ‘The school provides a friendly, nurturing environment that is skilled/unique in providing education in an inspiring, well-thought-out and often fun way.’ Teachers and teaching assistants benefit from effective training. You value the support from the trust and partner schools in providing some of this training. Consequently, teachers have good subject knowledge and use assessment effectively to meet pupils’ different needs. You strongly expect all teachers to get to know each pupil well. These features secure successful learning and were evident in all the classes we visited. Governors work effectively with you and with leaders of the trust to oversee the strategic direction of the school. They have contributed well to the carefully planned changes in staff and leadership. Governors have also ensured the effective use of additional funds, for example to support disadvantaged pupils. However, they recognise that some of their work has not been focused closely enough on securing the improvements prioritised in the school development plan. Consequently, they are now establishing monitoring procedures that more strongly promote improvement. Safeguarding is effective. There is a strong culture of safeguarding across the school. Staff and governors complete regular safeguarding training. They keep their understanding up to date, for example of how to keep pupils safe from extremism and radicalisation. As a result, all staff are well aware of what they should do if they have any concerns about a pupil’s welfare. Staff and representatives of the local governing board and Hamwic Education Trust ensure that safeguarding procedures meet statutory requirements. They undertake regular checks to make sure that records are completed effectively and pupils are kept as safe as possible. Members of the school’s pastoral team are proactive in identifying and strongly supporting pupils’ needs. Staff work closely with parents and outside agencies to keep pupils safe. Leaders are tenacious and challenge external partners if they feel that actions to protect vulnerable children are being taken too slowly. The vast majority of parents, members of staff and pupils who expressed a view agreed that the school keeps children safe. One parent typically represented the views of others when writing, ‘The school provides a friendly nurturing environment.’ Pupils know how to keep themselves safe, including when online. When asked if they feel safe at school, pupils reacted with surprise, instantly replying, ‘Of course we do!’ Inspection findings The first line of enquiry examined the effectiveness of efforts to improve the progress of disadvantaged pupils. National and school assessments of the progress of disadvantaged pupils show year-on-year improvement since the school became an academy. However, given the often lower starting points of these pupils, your reviews rightly identified that their progress did not lead to them reaching the standards of their peers. Therefore, you have placed a strong focus this academic year on raising attainment and reducing this difference. Teachers make early checks of pupils’ starting points and progress. This enables them to set work that secures the relevant next steps in pupils’ learning. Consistently strong teaching in class is supported by additional intervention that meets pupils’ individual needs. During the inspection, for example, pupils in Year 3 benefited from additional support out of class to advance their knowledge and comprehension of ‘tricky’ technical words, such as ‘amplified’. Pupils in Year 6 received similarly effective teaching to widen their vocabulary and ability to write descriptively. Your pastoral team complements closely targeted teaching by addressing other barriers to learning, such as pupils’ absence and emotional needs. Currently, the strengthened focus on raising the attainment of the most able disadvantaged pupils in writing has not been sustained long enough to have had a full impact. However, across the school, most disadvantaged pupils attend well and achieve as well as their classmates in reading, writing and mathematics. The second line of enquiry evaluated the effectiveness of leaders’ and teachers’ efforts to increase the proportion of pupils working at greater depth. Your determined work, particularly this academic year, has established consistently good or better teaching across the school. Within each year group, this has increased the proportion of pupils demonstrating at least expected skills for their age in reading, writing and mathematics. Strong teaching is also increasing the proportion of pupils working at greater depth. This is especially the case in mathematics. Teachers’ improved subject knowledge has supported the successful development of pupils’ basic numeracy and reasoning skills. When questioned, pupils say they are doing their best in mathematics and ‘want to get even better’. Your strengthened focus on boosting pupils’ confidence and interest in reading at school and at home is also effective. This was clearly apparent as I listened to pupils read and witnessed their ability to infer and to predict outcomes. Pupils have also improved their writing skills, especially their handwriting and their ability to construct meaningful sentences. Pupils show good skills in writing expressively and independently and are using a wider vocabulary to write more descriptively. Currently, some previously higher- and middle-attaining pupils, including some who are disadvantaged, lack accuracy when spelling words. Some are still learning to adapt their writing for a particular audience or purpose. These features are restricting pupils’ ability to write at the high standard that they are capable of achieving. You and your colleagues are currently addressing these writing skills but acknowledge that this is not yet having a full impact. My final line of enquiry considered how well leaders and teachers are using and extending pupils’ reading, writing and mathematical skills across other subjects. This academic year, you and your leadership team have reviewed and updated the curriculum. It is now enriching and stimulates pupils’ interest in learning. Teachers provide a range of opportunities for pupils to use and advance their writing in other subjects. For example, pupils in Year 6 wrote with sensitivity about ‘How the Blitz affected Britain’. However, pupils’ written work in other subjects varies in presentation and quality. Inconsistency in teachers’ expectations leads to some pupils not maintaining the good writing skills they exhibit in English. Teachers provide some opportunities for pupils to extend their mathematical skills across the curriculum. For example, pupils in Year 4 studied Roman numerals within their topic on Ancient Rome. Pupils in other year groups have used climate graphs and maps with scales to support their work in history and geography, respectively. However, insufficient use of this information in pupils’ written work restricts further development of their mathematical skills. Next steps for the school Leaders and those responsible for governance should ensure that: actions to increase the proportion of pupils, including disadvantaged pupils, working at greater depth, particularly in writing, are sustained so that pupils achieve their full potential pupils’ literacy and mathematical skills are further used and developed across the range of subjects governors continue to strengthen their work by more specifically linking their monitoring of the school to the priorities identified in the school improvement plan. I am copying this letter to the chair of the governing body and the chief executive officer of the multi-academy trust, the regional schools commissioner and the director of children’s services for Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole. This letter will be published on the Ofsted website. Yours sincerely Alexander Baxter Ofsted Inspector Information about the inspection During the inspection, I held meetings with you and other school leaders, including local governors, and with representatives of the Hamwic Education Trust. I visited classrooms with you and the deputy headteacher and, together, we collected and scrutinised samples of pupils’ work in books. I talked with individual pupils during breaktimes and visits to classrooms, and observed them reading and checking their work. I listened to selected pupils reading and talked with them about their reading at home and school. I checked a range of documents relating to safeguarding with you and your administrative staff. We also examined details of pupils’ progress and the school’s self-evaluation and improvement plan. I took account of 67 responses to the Ofsted online survey, Parent View, and 25 written comments from parents. I also took account of 47 responses to the staff survey and 68 responses from pupils in their questionnaire. I talked informally with several parents as they brought their children to school.