The leadership team has maintained the good quality of education in the school since the last inspection. You have overseen the ongoing expansion of the school and the completion of extensive building work. The school now has two sites to accommodate the increasing roll. There are currently five forms of entry on one site and three forms of entry on the other. Despite these challenges, you are a consistently effective headteacher and have high aspirations for the whole school. Your, the governors’ and other leaders’ evaluations of the school’s current performance are well informed and honest. You all acknowledge that, while progress rates are in line with national figures, attainment in reading needs to rise. This is a key feature of your current school development plan, and your team is working hard to make this happen. You have successfully addressed the areas for improvement identified at the last inspection through your well-thought-out plans. Together with your leadership team, you have worked effectively to improve the quality of teaching. For example, you have established a ‘Lesson Study’ programme to develop and refine teaching skills and strategies throughout the school. You and other leaders model good teaching and learning. Staff work together in well-organised teams to focus carefully on pupils’ achievements and how to provide challenge to all learners. Pupils say they enjoy school, especially mathematics, and many take on responsibilities that help the school to run smoothly and safely. Parents and carers who spoke to me, and those who responded to Ofsted’s online questionnaire, Parent View, had positive things to say about the school’s work. They particularly appreciate the visibility and approachability of staff, the support for pupils with special educational needs (SEN) and/or disabilities, and the attention given to pupils’ welfare and safety. The governing body knows the school extremely well. Governors are proactive, regularly involved in school life, and ambitious for its future. They provide effective challenge for school leaders but also support them to focus on raising standards, as seen, for example, in their involvement in the project to refurbish the school’s libraries, which is helping to promote a love of reading in the school. The school and its grounds are well kept, and many school displays celebrate highquality work and promote worthwhile messages about respect, safety and treating others fairly. There is a sense of optimistic purpose about the school, which is evident in the calm excitement generated in lessons, pupils’ orderly conduct, and the relaxed, yet focused, manner of staff and pupils. Safeguarding is effective. You have ensured that all safeguarding arrangements are fit for purpose. Staff training is up to date. Several staff and governors have received safer recruitment training, and appropriate checks and induction procedures are thorough. You ensure that procedures are in place to ensure that new staff receive safeguarding and ‘Prevent’ duty training as part of their induction. Teaching staff are regularly updated in staff meetings. The safeguarding policy is available on the school’s website. Staff understand the important role that they play in keeping children safe. You ensure that pupils and families receive timely support when needed. You have strong links with external agencies and are tenacious in the way you pursue support for families. When this support is not available, you ensure that the school does all it can to check that children are safe. Pupils say that they feel safe at school. The parents who responded to the Ofsted online survey, Parent View, agree. Children say that bullying is rare and that adults are ‘really good’ at resolving it when it does happen. Pupils understand equality well and know that treating people differently because of the colour of their skin or their religion is wrong. Pupils shared ways that the school has taught them to stay safe online, and they have worked with the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) to protect themselves from different forms of abuse. Pupils are confident and say they would speak to a trusted adult if they were worried about anything. Inspection findings The first area of focus for the inspection was to look at the quality of teaching in the early years foundation stage (EYFS) and to check whether outcomes are improving for all children, especially boys. Children start school with skills that are just below those typical for their age. Language, speech and communication skills are particularly low. The children thrive in well-organised, caring and stimulating learning environments. Where the quality of teaching is strong, children’s independence is fostered from the start and routines established. For example, when tidying up, children emptied out water containers and hung up their aprons before sitting on the carpet. Adults know what each child can do and adapt the learning activities to help children make good progress. However, the quality of teaching is not as consistent as it could be across the early years and the accuracy of assessments varies. On both sites, adults successfully create a culture in which children learn to share, enjoy each other’s company and work well together. Adults encourage the children to persevere and not give up. They encourage children to talk. The impact of this is clear. For example, I saw children using talk effectively and interacting well when trying to order numbers. Children can make themselves understood and explain what they want. The very youngest children can link two or three words to form simple phrases. The second focus for this inspection was to review how effective leaders have been in improving the outcomes in reading for pupils across the school. Reading progress at the end of key stage 2 was lower than the national average in 2016 and 2017. Leaders identified reading as a key priority for the school following this dip in standards. You have analysed the reasons for these lower outcomes and have developed a specific reading curriculum for the school. The school’s comprehensive approach to the teaching of reading is now being embedded across the school. A cycle of daily reading lessons is helping pupils to develop and practise specific reading skills. Staff and pupils embrace the approach that focuses on developing vocabulary, inference, prediction, evidence, retrieval and summarising. It is helping pupils to develop the skills they need to be successful. The reading–teaching cycle builds in specific time for one-to-one catch-up sessions. Pupils who are new to learning English pick up techniques to pronounce and understand new words because of effective teaching. This is leading to a rise in standards. Current data shows that most pupils are making better progress in reading than previously. Pupils read well and show good attitudes to reading. They apply their knowledge of phonics to read unfamiliar words. They talk confidently about the books they have read and can summarise the key points. Their reading journals are full of high-quality, thoughtful work. Good subject knowledge in the teaching of reading is evident. The final focus was to look at how well leaders ensure that the curriculum is driving forward a range of learning opportunities and progression is being built upon. You keep the curriculum constantly under review. Skills in each subject are carefully mapped across the school so that learning can deepen and skills develop in sequence. The school’s emphasis on the development of reading across the curriculum enhances pupils’ reading skills and their subject learning. When we were looking with you at the assessment journey for your pupils, your own information told you that a proportion of pupils are working below age- related expectations across subjects in some year groups. The information suggests that pupils’ progress has slowed or stalled. You say that you are confident that, in most cases, this is due to teachers being over cautious in their assessments. We agreed that more work needs to be done to check the accuracy of teachers’ judgements and to match this with work in pupils’ books and in lessons. You agree that this will give leaders a more accurate picture of where there are any gaps in learning that need to be addressed quickly. Next steps for the school Leaders and those responsible for governance should ensure that: staff share best practice across the two sites to ensure consistently high-quality teaching and accuracy of assessments in the early years to continue to refine the internal tracking systems to ensure that pupils’ achievement is carefully monitored so that all pupils make good progress, particularly in key stage 1 I am copying this letter to the chair of the governing board, the regional schools commissioner and the director of children’s services for Barking and Dagenham. This letter will be published on the Ofsted website. Yours sincerely Michelle Thomas Ofsted Inspector Information about the inspection During the inspection, my colleagues and I met with you, the heads of school, assistant headteachers and other members of staff. I spoke with a representative of the local authority and members of the governing body. We talked with parents at the start of the day and with pupils, both formally and informally. We took account of 175 responses to Parent View, Ofsted’s online questionnaire, and the accompanying free text responses. We visited almost all classes on both school sites, where we observed teaching and learning, spoke to pupils and looked at the work in some pupils’ books. We observed pupils’ behaviour in lessons and around school. We scrutinised several documents including your school self-evaluation, assessment information and documents relating to safeguarding.