The leadership team has maintained the good quality of education in the school since the last inspection. You focus effectively on improving the quality of teaching and learning within the school. Your motto of ‘deep roots for future growth’ is borne out in the good and improving start pupils make in the early years. Staff say they are proud to work at the school and share your ambition for further improvement. Parents say their children enjoy coming to school, and they appreciate the strong moral values staff instil in their children. They feel that the school helps their children to be inspired to find out more about the world around them and that the school community is strong and welcoming. Pupils enjoy their learning at school and work hard in lessons. They develop a love of learning because leaders ensure the curriculum provides enriching experiences through relevant visits to places of interest and inspiring visitors. Leaders show a strong commitment to developing pupils’ care, concern and respect for others. The characters linked to your core values, such as ‘Ivy’ who rises to challenges and ‘Goldie’ who encourages respect for all, positively influence pupils’ attitudes towards others. Pupils show a desire to learn and behave well both in and out of lessons. They are able to articulate strong levels of care and concern for others. You and other senior leaders use the information you hold about what children know and can do to develop the teaching that pupils receive. You tailor additional support effectively to meet a range of needs. There are a small number of disadvantaged pupils in the school, making it difficult to draw valid national comparisons regarding their performance. In 2015, these pupils achieved well. You have tackled the areas for improvement identified at the last inspection well so that pupils know what they need to do to be successful in their work. They use the prompts teachers share with them to make their work more accurate. Pupils’ punctuation and grammar is practised and reinforced in all their writing activities. In the early years, teaching has ensured that a high proportion of pupils start key stage 1 well prepared in reading, writing and number because activities focus closely on the skills with which pupils need the most support. Although pupils’ overall achievement is good at the end of key stage 1, teaching does not always build quickly enough on the strong start pupils make in the early years, particularly in phonics (letters and the sounds that they make), to enable pupils to make rapid progress in reading and writing. There are a number of new governors this year. They have challenged leaders appropriately to secure swift improvements to aspects of the school’s performance such as phonics in Year 1. However, governors do not always have all the information they need about the current performance of pupils to hold leaders fully to account for the impact of their actions. Leaders’ evaluations are sometimes anecdotal or lack precise measures to gauge impact. Safeguarding is effective. Leaders ensure that safeguarding training is updated and that practice in school reflects the latest national guidance. All staff follow the agreed procedures if they are concerned about any pupil. The leadership team has ensured that all safeguarding arrangements are fit for purpose and records are detailed and of high quality. Concerns are addressed quickly and leaders liaise well with the other professionals to reduce any risk of harm. Pre-employment checks on staff meet requirements, although during this inspection some paper-based checks had not been fully transferred onto the electronic single central record. This was a slip-up rather than being indicative of any shortcoming in the checking procedures. Attendance is above the national average and very few pupils are persistently absent. Inspection findings Your commitment to improving the quality of education further at the school came through clearly in my discussions and work with you. You have ensured that pupils learn in a safe, happy environment and are well cared for by the staff that teach them. Parents are pleased with the education their children receive during their time with you, with very few exceptions.