The leadership team has maintained the good quality of education in the school since the last inspection. Under your intuitive and high-quality leadership, pupils continue to make good progress in reading, writing and mathematics as they move through the school. Although you and your deputy headteacher have recently been appointed to your posts, you have communicated a clear vision and have high aspirations for the school’s future. You have quickly and accurately assessed the work of the school and identified clear priorities for improvement. These are being tackled with rigour. The targets you have set in your school improvement plan are ambitious, yet achievable. You are rightly focusing your attention on raising achievement where it is weakest. This approach is making a noticeable contribution to the good progress being made by all pupils, but especially in the early years and in key stage 1. You have high expectations of staff and have recognised the importance of securing consistently high-quality teaching across the school. Both you and your deputy headteacher demonstrate the skills required to achieve this target. You have not been afraid to make difficult decisions and have challenged your staff to achieve higher standards for your pupils. The governing body is a dedicated and knowledgeable group of individuals who know the school and the pupils well. Governors are kept well informed through the detailed information that you provide and through their own monitoring visits. They have developed their roles since the last inspection and are making a valuable contribution to the improvement of the school. Pupils in the school greeted me warmly and were well mannered and polite. Pupils I spoke with were keen to tell me about their learning and to explain to me what it is like to be a pupil at the school. They told me that they enjoy their lessons because they are interesting and they feel that they learn a lot. Areas for improvement, identified at the last inspection, have been tackled with varying degrees of success. Teachers use pupil assessment information to plan work that is better matched to pupils’ abilities. Pupils sustain their interest in the activities they are set. Staff work well together and this is helping to improve still further the quality of teaching throughout the school. However, you acknowledge that there are some remaining weaknesses in teaching which need to be eliminated. You agree that there is still work to be done to improve the school’s effectiveness. You recognise that although progress in the early years is good, it could be more rapid so as to increase the proportion of children achieving age-related expectations. In addition, you realise that the new programmes, recently introduced to improve the quality of teaching, need time to be further developed and embedded into daily routines. Furthermore, you understand that the work done to increase pupils’ attendance is not yet having a sufficiently positive impact. Safeguarding is effective. Leaders apply carefully the school’s procedures to ensure that pupils are kept safe in school. The induction process for staff joining the school is thorough. Staff are kept up to date about safeguarding matters through an effective training programme and regular meetings. Staff understand how to keep children safe and are confident in the actions they take. Safeguarding referrals are made in a timely manner and concerns followed up appropriately. Records are meticulously maintained. Pupils told me that they feel safe at the school. They know that there is always someone they can talk with, including other pupils. The school’s curriculum helps pupils to develop a good understanding of how to keep themselves safe in a range of situations. Pupils receive valuable support through effective working relationships between the school, external agencies and the local authority. The overwhelming majority of parents, through the school’s own surveys, agree that their children are safe and well cared for. Inspection findings Children enter the early years with skills well below those typical for their age. Their attainment at the end of the Reception Year is below the national average. Leaders have taken effective action to improve the provision in the early years. High-quality training has taken place and programmes have been introduced to improve the quality of teaching. There is now more adult-led learning than in the past and this is effectively balanced with less formal learning where children choose their activities. Individual children receive effective targeted support when it is needed. The learning environment is stimulating and thoughtfully organised and the curriculum has been adapted to meet more successfully boys’ interests. The school has extended its provision to include two-year-olds and this is enabling key skills to be developed from an earlier age. Children in the early years make good progress and their attainment is rising. Current assessments in reading, writing and mathematics show that higher levels of attainment are being reached by all groups of children. Historically, boys in the early years have attained well below boys nationally. Boys are now making better progress and a greater proportion are showing the skills expected for their ages. Effective use of the early years pupil premium funding and the use of targeted support are helping to develop the skills of disadvantaged children. These children are making good progress towards the early learning goals by the end of the Reception Year. In 2016, pupils’ outcomes in the Year 1 phonics screening check fell below the national average. Leaders took decisive action to remedy this and introduced a new programme for the teaching of phonics. This has ensured that all staff take a consistent approach in reinforcing pupils’ phonic knowledge. Key stage 1 pupils heard reading during the inspection read with confidence. They showed fluency in their reading and made effective use of their phonic knowledge to blend words. The pupils could explain clearly what they were reading about and their books were appropriately challenging. Pupils told me that they enjoyed reading and did so frequently, including at home. Disadvantaged pupils and girls are demonstrating stronger phonic skills than in the past. In 2016, lower-ability pupils did not attain as well as they should have by the end of key stage 1 in writing and mathematics. This was especially true for disadvantaged pupils and girls. Leaders have put in place effective measures to help these groups of pupils make better progress. Teaching now more effectively meets the needs of groups or individuals at risk of underachieving. The school’s tracking system indicates that pupils are now making rapid progress and that a higher proportion of pupils are on track to achieve age-related expectations in writing and mathematics. Girls, in both Year 1 and Year 2, are making better progress than in the past. The workbooks seen during the inspection showed that pupils’ skills in mathematics and writing are being successfully developed. However, attainment in mathematics for Year 1 pupils remains a little behind age-related expectations. Pupils’ attendance has improved but remains below the national average. Leaders are tenacious in their efforts to increase attendance rates and some individual successes have been achieved. However, the rate of improvement has slowed down recently. Leaders acknowledge that there is still work to be done.