The leadership team has maintained the good quality of education in the school since the previous inspection. Approximately 18 months ago, trust leaders recognised that weaknesses in the school’s provision were undermining the quality of education in the school. As a result, trust leaders took appropriate action to arrest the decline by making necessary arrangements to improve teaching, particularly in key stages 1 and 2. Your appointment to head of school in March 2018 was a key part of the trust’s improvement strategy. You have added further impetus and increased rigour in holding teachers firmly to account. Your determination and focus immediately started to challenge teachers to raise their expectations of pupils. While you recognise that there is more still to do, you have been instrumental in getting the school ‘back on track’. Most parents and pupils also understand this. They are effusive in their praise of your work. Under your leadership, the school is being revitalised and is highly valued by the local community. Following your arrival, you set about overhauling systems to ensure that vulnerable pupils are better identified and tracked. You hold challenging conversations with teachers about their professional development and performance. You also implemented appropriate school improvement plans, correctly identifying the main priorities. Your ongoing work is continuing to have a discernible impact on raising pupils’ achievement, including for pupils with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND) and disadvantaged pupils. However, this is not without its challenges and some improvements are still fragile. You are fully aware of this and are continuing to use effective support from the trust to tackle weaknesses. The weekly visits from a school improvement partner of the trust are continuing to provide high-quality mentoring and support from an experienced colleague. This partnership is proving to be beneficial to you and effective in improving the quality of teaching, learning and assessment. You have taken effective action to address most weaknesses identified at the last inspection. You have been successful in implementing strategies to improve pupils’ fluency and understanding of number, especially in Years 5 and 6. Again, this requires further consolidation but is beginning to see tangible improvement. You have been explicit in identifying weaknesses in teaching and learning. Consequently, the weakest teaching has been tackled and teachers are implementing agreed systems and approaches to raise achievement. However, during the inspection, I noted that there remain some key challenges to sustaining improvement. Firstly, teachers are not consistently identifying precise targets or steps for vulnerable pupils. Secondly, teachers do not have consistently high enough expectations of pupils across the range of subjects, particularly in writing. This leads to some variability in the quality of work seen in different workbooks. Thirdly, other leaders, including subject leaders and the school monitoring council (SMC), despite making increasingly valuable contributions, are not yet making the most of their roles and responsibilities in the school to have even greater influence in building leadership capacity. Safeguarding is effective. You have taken effective action to review safeguarding procedures and practice in the school. You work well with others, including SMC representatives, who check that the school is complying fully with current safeguarding requirements. Consequently, staff are well trained and know what to do to keep pupils safe. There is a strong culture of safeguarding. You ensure that any concerns are well logged and swiftly responded to. For example, you work in a timely manner to ensure that pupils receive the early help they need to stay safe at home and to improve their attendance and well-being. Pupils enjoy coming to school. Attendance is improving well. In addition, the proportion of those with persistently high absence is reducing rapidly. In fact, the current figure is now better than the national average. Pupils say that they feel safe and trust staff. Pupils, staff and parents typically agree that behaviour is good. Staff are approachable and help to resolve issues quickly. Pupils say that bullying is not a problem at Ladock. Leaders also seek pupils’ views of safeguarding and make plans to address any concerns that pupils may have. Pupils show a good understanding of current safeguarding matters, including online safety, and can explain clearly what to do in the event of a fire or school evacuation.