The leadership team has maintained the good quality of education in the school since the last inspection. Working closely with the chair of the governing body, you provide a clear vision and very strong leadership. You and your senior leadership team enthusiastically strive towards achieving an outstanding education for all pupils and sixth formers. With your resolutely high aspirations at the forefront of the school’s plans, senior leaders focus sharply on pupils’ welfare and achievement. As a result, pupils feel safe and happy at your school and become fully involved in school life. Senior leaders’ impact is demonstrated in the overall standards, which are consistently above those found nationally, and by the large proportions of pupils making and exceeding expected progress in English and mathematics. Hazelwick School is a warm and welcoming place to be, there is a clear sense of teamwork and community spirit. The schools’ inclusive ethos and shared core values nurture excellent working relationships between staff and pupils. Consequently, all pupils’ pastoral and welfare needs are given careful support, alongside their academic requirements. Pupils were keen to share with inspectors that they feel that staff care for them and understand their needs. You have managed the recruitment of staff well by developing innovative approaches to recruiting high-quality candidates and ensuring that you retain the best staff to work at Hazelwick. Senior leaders and governors are ambitious to improve the school further and oversee a suitably rigorous approach to managing teachers’ performance. Regular opportunities for staff to work with colleagues from other schools, and strong partnerships with local primary schools, support improvements to the curriculum. A clear programme of teacher coaching and professional development is in place, although you recognise that more needs to be done to ensure all teaching is of consistently high quality. Staff are overwhelmingly positive about working in the school and about you and your leaders. As one member of staff commented, ‘We are a cohesive community … led by a motivational headteacher to live out the school’s vision for every student to maximise their potential’. Staff morale is very high and their sense of pride in the school’s improvement over recent years is shared by pupils and parents. Pupils confidently welcome visitors, are proud to discuss their work and clearly enjoy working with their teachers and each other. At breaks and lunchtimes, they gather in friendship groups to eat and talk together which contributes to the school’s calm and orderly setting. Overall attendance has been above the national average for some time. Although proud of this achievement, you rightly recognise the attendance of pupils eligible for the pupil premium and those with special educational needs is not as strong. You have introduced a range of successful initiatives to narrow these gaps and raise overall attendance still further. You, together with governors and the senior leadership team, have an accurate understanding of the school and use this to identify strengths and respond well to any areas for development. Since the last inspection, the school has continued to focus on the areas of teaching and learning identified for improvement. Consequently, nearly all teaching is good across the school with particular strengths in mathematics, history and geography. Improvements to teaching have ensured that standards have risen and all groups of pupils make increased progress from their starting points. The standard of teaching and learning in the sixth form has improved since the previous inspection. Students make consistently good progress across the wide range of academic subjects on offer. In 2015, the overall progress made by pupils by the end of key stage 4 placed the school in the top 11% in the country. However, although disadvantaged pupils made progress above others nationally, the gaps between them and their peers in school widened significantly last year. Leaders have ensured that effective interventions have been put in place in key stage 4 and currently these gaps are narrowing, although there remains work to do to completely eradicate them. Most teachers deliver interesting lessons and many use highly effective, probing questions to promote deeper thinking and reflection. Where this happens, for example in Year 10 history, teachers ensure a swift pace of learning. Pupils’ highquality work evidences the exceptional progress they make towards their targets. However, in a small minority of lessons, mainly in key stage 3, teachers offer less challenge and the tasks they set do not sufficiently meet the needs of the pupils in the class. This, together with less precise feedback, means that learning is slower in these lessons. Effective systems and training are in place to support these teachers to improve.