The leadership team has maintained the good quality of education in the school since the previous inspection. You are very ambitious for the pupils in your school and you are passionate and determined that every child should receive the best education possible to be able to leave Year 6 fully ready for the next stage of their education. ‘The John Perryn Way’ is the golden thread that runs through the school, binding a very diverse community of children and families together. Its ethos of good manners, excellent behaviour and respect for all has created a calm, purposeful and harmonious environment in which children learn and thrive and where staff enjoy working. Yours is a truly inclusive school. Governors and staff said that the school has improved significantly under your leadership, with rigorous self-evaluation accurately identifying areas of the school’s work that need improvement. The school responded to the points for improvement in the previous inspection report. You have maintained the good quality of teaching. You have also greatly improved the achievement of the most able pupils, particularly in mathematics. A significant number of children enter your school with skills, knowledge and understanding well below that which is typical for their age. The vast majority of these pupils achieve in line with national standards by the time they leave at the end of Year 6. Mathematics is a strength of the school, and most pupils make above-average progress and half the pupils achieve at above national standards. You and the school’s governors have identified rightly the need to ensure that children in the early years make stronger progress so that they are fully ready for the Year 1 curriculum, particularly in their development of language skills. Safeguarding is effective. The leadership team ensures that all safeguarding arrangements are fit for purpose and that records are detailed and of high quality. The record of checks on staff meets statutory requirements and is fully compliant. It is well organised and checked regularly by the headteacher and the safeguarding governor. Staff are given a thorough induction and training in safeguarding and know what to do, should they have any concern about a child. Senior leaders deal swiftly and effectively with any safeguarding concerns that arise. Safeguarding is a real strength of the school because the safeguarding lead, who also leads on supporting pupils who have special educational needs and/or disabilities, works closely with the families of children who may be more vulnerable. Inspection findings This inspection focused on the strategies introduced by the school to raise standards by the end of Reception. You and other senior leaders identified that improving the language and communication skills of the youngest children would help them to read and write more fluently. Leaders now expect all adults to model language for the children, demanding in turn that they speak in full sentences. This is achieved, for example, by correcting any errors in their speech and supporting children to repeat accurately what it was they had wanted to say. The early years leader has followed your lead in the development of language, but there is not yet a complete strategy for this in place. Early years teachers have worked on developing the questions they use to encourage children to think, speak and write more confidently. Classrooms and the outdoor area in Reception also provide lots of prompts and questions to which the children can respond. Teachers provide many opportunities for children to write independently, both inside the classroom and outdoors. A significant amount of work has been done to engage the families of the children in the early years. There are now drop-in sessions, phonics workshops and reading workshops for the parents to both see how reading is taught and learn ways in which they can help and support their children at home. Reflecting these initiatives, there has been improvement in the proportion of children achieving a good level of development. The proportion of children achieving the standard expected for their age in language and communication has increased significantly. You are now focusing on teachers’ planning to stretch the most able children. This has been particularly effective in improving their mathematical skills. You are also taking steps to improve Nursery provision, which is currently less effective than that of Reception. The inspection also focused on the teaching of phonics and early reading. This has improved over the last year. Teachers work with children from Reception and Year 1, grouped according to their starting points, so that teaching can be sharply focused on the learning needs of each group. You are monitoring the programme systematically. The proportion of pupils achieving the national standard has risen. All pupils who failed to reach the required standard at the end of Year 1 last year have now met the standard. Leaders have introduced guided reading across the school at the start of every day. The emphasis is on developing pupils’ skills in comprehension and inference that, as you have accurately identified, are the main barrier for pupils’ learning. Pupils’ good concentration and engagement support their learning, whether working in a group with a teacher, or independently. Pupils who have not reached the national standard by the end of key stage 1 are given additional sharply focused support and are monitored carefully. Your precise progress checks show that, over time, pupils’ progress accelerates towards the standard expected by the end of year 6. You recognise that to enable pupils to make even better progress from early years into key stage 1, key stage leaders need to improve their work in raising standards. Currently, there is a lack of coordination between the curriculum in early years and that of Year 1. Finally, the inspection focused on pupils’ attendance. This has improved over the last year. The weakest attendance in the past has been that of children from Traveller families; this year it has improved but is still below the national and school averages. The improvement is because of the intensive work that has been undertaken with all families to help them to understand the importance of regular attendance and the value it adds to the educational chances of their children. This includes visits to the Traveller community to discuss their children’s learning and the work of the school. Other effective strategies to boost attendance have included the use of fines to reduce the number of holidays taken in term time. Next steps for the school Leaders and those responsible for governance should ensure that: middle leaders support pupils’ good progress across the curriculum through more effective collaboration and accountability, particularly in the development of language skills a culture of language development is embedded in the early years so that children are ready to learn to read and write more easily, fluently and in greater depth as they move through the school. I am copying this letter to the chair of the governing body, the regional schools commissioner and the director of children’s services for Ealing. This letter will be published on the Ofsted website. Yours sincerely Susan Ladipo Ofsted Inspector Information about the inspection I met with you, senior and middle leaders and four governors, including the chair of the governing body. I spoke with a representative of the local authority. You joined me to observe teaching and learning in ten classes. I spoke to pupils in lessons and around the school. I heard children from Years 2 and 3 read. I looked at a sample of pupils’ work and took account of the school’s information about progress and standards. I reviewed a wide range of documentation, including the school development plan, the school’s self-evaluation, minutes of governors’ meetings and safeguarding information and records. I took account of 22 responses to the online survey, Parent View. I also reviewed 23 responses to the questionnaire completed by staff.