The leadership team has maintained the good quality of education in the school since the previous inspection. You, your leadership team and the governors believe strongly that the social and emotional well-being of the children comes first. As a result of your investment in this aspect of pupils’ development, they also want to learn. A new parent wrote, ‘My son is happy and excited with his new school and I have already seen improvements in his learning and his enthusiasm for school.’ You are extending pupils’ knowledge of their lives beyond their own community through special learning activities and visits such as the trip to the steam railway. A strength of the school’s leadership is the way in which responsibilities are shared between senior and middle leaders. Together, since the previous inspection, you have continued to develop the quality and consistency of teaching across the school. This has resulted in improvements in pupils’ progress. Through robust selfevaluation, you and the leadership team identify any areas of underperformance. You routinely reflect upon and evaluate the effectiveness of the school’s approach to further improvement. You have identified the need for further work on improving attendance and continuing to diminish the difference in attainment between disadvantaged and other pupils. Staff nurture and challenge pupils to help them to achieve their best. Senior leaders hold pupil progress meetings with the staff which result in providing extra help where it is needed. The impact of this work can be seen in the rise in the number of children in the early years reaching a good level of development, an improving trend of results in the Year 1 phonics check and an improvement in pupils’ attainment at the end of key stage 2. The school is an inclusive community. Staff work hard, using their own expertise and that of other agencies, to ensure that all pupils can participate in classroom activities and extra-curricular opportunities. However, the leaders who oversee special educational needs have identified that staff need more training on meeting the needs of pupils who have autistic spectrum disorder. Safeguarding is effective. You and the governors ensure that all statutory requirements relating to safeguarding are met. You keep the governors and staff up to date with the latest requirements, as outlined in the Department for Education document ‘Keeping Children Safe in Education’. The requirements are reflected in your policies and procedures. When recruiting staff, you make and record all checks on their suitability to work with children, in line with current guidance. Your records are comprehensive, and governors check them regularly. All staff are trained in safeguarding and this includes training in the risks of extremism and radicalisation. Staff are vigilant in their work to keep pupils safe and secure in school and within the wider community. Where you have concerns about pupils, you make appropriate use of external agencies and follow up the outcomes robustly. Displays around the school reinforce key messages to help pupils understand how to keep safe. A parent who answered the online questionnaire, Parent View, commented that ‘My daughter comes out telling us about the safeguarding that they have learnt.’ Inspection findings My first line of enquiry focused on teaching phonics for reading and writing. On reviewing your latest school data, visiting classrooms and talking to pupils, it was clear that the steps you have taken to improve progress and attainment in phonics, reading and writing are having a positive impact. More pupils are reaching the expected standard for their age in reading, writing and mathematics and more are reaching the higher standard at the end of key stage 2. Leaders have established clear and consistent systems for teaching phonics, which the pupils understand well. They are actively using and developing the strategies they have been taught, both within phonics sessions and in their reading and writing. In teaching reading, writing and phonics, teachers skilfully use questioning and other effective strategies to extend the pupils’ understanding. The new approaches to phonics and reading have resulted in pupils who can sustain their concentration when they are working independently. Pupils have a good understanding about editing and improving their work and respond well to the feedback that the teachers give them. However, staff are not fully consistent in using the new methods and extending pupils’ learning effectively.