The leadership team has maintained the good quality of education in the school since the last inspection. You promote a caring culture in which every pupil is highly valued. You know your pupils and families very well. Pupils are happy in school and parents are very supportive. Parents speak highly of the care and quality of education their children receive. For example, one parent stated, ‘The staff are incredibly friendly and thoughtful and they embrace all individuals. There is a real sense of community at Perrymount.’ You lead a united team, which carefully identifies strengths and tackles areas of weaknesses. Leaders demonstrate a firm commitment to improving the quality of teaching and learning across the school. Your evaluations of the school are accurate, and the priorities identified for improvement are the right ones. Your professional and thoughtful approach to leading school improvement is praised by the local authority that describes the school leadership team as proactive and keen to seek advice when necessary. Since the last inspection, you and your team have successfully addressed the areas for improvement. For example, you have developed an agreed list of writing skills for each year group. You refer to this as writing ‘toolkits’. They serve as guidance for pupils to aspire to when producing different types of writing. For younger pupils, this is complemented by opportunities to express ideas orally before they write. These strategies have resulted in improvements in pupils’ writing. In 2017, progress in writing at key stage 2 was above the national average. You have replicated this success in reading and mathematics. However, you acknowledge that there is still work to be done to address the needs of most-able pupils, including the most able disadvantaged, in these areas. Governors provide leaders with effective support and challenge. They are knowledgeable and regularly check the actions taken by leaders to secure improvements. They fulfil their strategic role effectively. Records of the work of governors show good examples of where leaders are challenged and held to account. Governors who are linked with subject leaders demonstrate a strong understanding of specific areas of the school. This knowledge contributes to your school’s accurate self-evaluation. Safeguarding is effective. Leaders have ensured that all safeguarding arrangements are fit for purpose. Records are detailed and of high quality. Leaders know individual pupils very well. This allows staff to be vigilant and provide effective support, as required. Staff training and induction are thorough and up to date. Governors take their safeguarding responsibilities seriously. For example, they regularly undertake checks to ensure that pupils are helped to be kept safe and secure. Governors also attend training regularly to make sure that they understand the latest statutory guidance. Pupils said that they feel safe and spoke confidently about how they can help to keep themselves safe. They told me how to stay safe online and they know what to do if they encounter cyberbullying. They told me that bullying is rare and that adults are very quick to deal with any bullying, should it occur. Inspection findings In our initial discussion, we agreed to look at the achievement of the most able pupils, including the most able disadvantaged pupils, in reading. Across all year groups, there is a wide range of reading activities that support the development of comprehension skills. Pupils have access to high-quality reading material and this is introduced skilfully to extend pupils’ reading choices. Because of the many reading opportunities available, pupils develop more sophisticated reading skills such as making inference and deduction. This enables them to become more confident and fluent in their reading. You have also identified the need to develop pupils’ vocabulary to help them improve their reading. You addressed this by incorporating vocabulary work across the curriculum. For example, pupils write new words they encounter in their reading on bookmarks. They said that they then look up the meaning of these words using a dictionary. Some pupils said that they simply read on and try to work out unfamiliar words using clues in the text. This ensures that pupils make strong progress in their reading. When I listened to pupils read, they displayed genuine pleasure in reading. They talked about the books they are reading with enthusiasm. Older pupils offered their insights about what they think of the various books written by the same author. Pupils’ work, however, shows that the most able pupils, including the most able disadvantaged, are still not challenged enough to achieve greater depth in their reading.