The leadership team has maintained the good quality of education in the school since the last inspection. You know your community very well and you are clear about the important role the school plays in that community. Working with others across the school, you have created and maintain a culture of learning and high expectations for all. This culture is underpinned by effective systems for monitoring the quality of teaching and the progress of pupils. You use this careful assessment of the quality of teaching to improve your staff’s skills and confidence. You regularly visit classrooms and encourage staff to share their expertise across the school. Your previous inspection report identified the need to make a clearer link between staff targets for professional improvement and pupils’ progress. You have addressed this very well. There are strong and effective links between the monitoring of pupils’ progress and the quality of teaching. You use the information you gather from this to ensure that your plans for further improving the school are sharply drawn, with clear indicators of what success looks like. As a result, you, your team of staff and governors are clear about what needs to be done to improve the school further. You are clear that the quality and range of writing needs to improve further and that more has to be done to extend the opportunities that all pupils have to write at greater length in subjects beyond English. You are also aware that the most able pupils need to be stretched further so that they extend and deepen their skills as writers. You have put in place a range of strategies that are already having a positive effect. For example, you have improved accuracy in spelling across the school by ensuring that key topic- or subject-related spellings are identified and that pupils have numerous opportunities to use these newly learned words in their writing. You and your staff are also ensuring that pupils have more opportunities to make creative links between their reading and their own writing. Across the school and at home, pupils have more opportunities to read and explore the ways that professional writers use language to create mood and effects. This is having a positive effect on their own development and maturity as writers. Governors are ambitious for the school and for the community it serves. They are effective in their support and challenge of you and your team of staff. Members of the governing body are keen to improve their skills and undertake regular training to ensure that they are up to date and effective. Links between governors and particular areas and subjects at the school are developing well. As a result, governors have first-hand experience of the school and closer insights into the progress it is making. Parents and carers are very supportive of the school and of you. They are particularly pleased with the way that staff make themselves available. All of the parents whom I spoke with, and who responded to the online questionnaires, were satisfied with the service the school offers. They were particularly complimentary about you and your staff. One parent described Shade as ‘a very happy school’. Another told me that his son’s work in designing and making a model car when he was in Reception was one of his lasting memories as a parent. Many of the parents that I spoke with talked about the inclusivity and openness of the school. Safeguarding is effective. The leadership team has ensured that all safeguarding arrangements are fit for purpose. Records are very well kept and are of high quality. You have established and maintain a very robust culture of safeguarding at the school. You, your staff and the governing body take your safeguarding responsibilities very seriously. You ensure that effective, regular training is provided for all staff and governors. As a result, they are up to date in their knowledge and understanding. You, as designated safeguarding leader, have strong links with outside agencies. Your records of your dealings with these agencies show your meticulous and tenacious approach. Inspection findings Children settle well into early years. This is because the recently appointed early years leader establishes clear and open links with parents. Staff are very well deployed. Communication between home and school is very good. There is also clear and detailed communication between early years at the school and other local providers. This means that children get off to a flying start at school. They are happy and safe and increasingly independent, yet aware of the needs of others. The learning environment, both inside and out, is stimulating and attractive. Staff are skilled in ensuring that children develop their independence as learners who enjoy exploring the world. There is a strong focus on developing spoken language through questioning and exploring ideas. Children enjoy this. The proportion of pupils who achieve a good level of development by the end of the Reception Year has improved steadily over the last three years and is now above average. This is because the early years leader and her staff are expert in using their knowledge of what children can and cannot yet do, to sharpen their planning and focus their teaching. This is particularly the case for disadvantaged and most-able children who are making particularly good progress. The teaching of phonics is a strength. The proportion of pupils who achieved the standard in the Year 1 screening check has been similar to, or better than, national averages over the last three years. The new school-wide focus on reading is having an impact in key stage 1. The most able pupils in this key stage said that they enjoy reading and discussing the ways in which writers create effects for the reader. The least able pupils in key stage 1 are able to use their phonics skills to read new words accurately. Most pupils make good progress through key stage 1. You make sure that staff monitor the progress of pupils carefully. They then use the information they gather to focus their teaching on best meeting individual pupils’ needs. You make sure that this happens through regular visits to classrooms and meetings with staff to discuss pupils’ progress. As a result, the quality of teaching across all subjects continues to improve. In addition, pupils are taking more responsibility for their own learning as they move through key stage 1. For example, I saw pupils in an art lesson making considered choices about what colours to use on the necklaces they were painting. They drew on the wide range of source materials and pictures of African artwork that the teacher had provided to inform their decisions. The pupils were able to explain clearly to me why they had made the choices that they had. There is clear evidence from this inspection that your focus on improving the quality of writing is having a positive impact on pupils’ writing skills and confidence. A scrutiny of work in pupils’ books showed me that they are regularly writing at greater length. This is giving pupils, and especially the most able, more opportunities to deepen and extend their vocabulary, stamina and ideas. You are clear that there is still more to do, especially in providing more opportunities for pupils to write at greater length in subjects beyond English. I saw many examples across the school of staff using questioning to develop and extend pupils’ learning. I also saw pupils using the informative and attractive environment and displays in the classrooms to find things out for themselves. Overall, classrooms are orderly, happy places where, as a result of good working relationships and staff skill, pupils make good and confident progress. You, your staff and governors carefully monitor the progress of disadvantaged pupils. The numbers of these pupils and their differing needs change from year to year. You and your staff are diligent and consistent in your commitment to identifying and removing any barriers to learning and success for these pupils. As a result, disadvantaged pupils make generally good progress. You spend the additional funding for these pupils effectively. Your special educational needs coordinator (SENCo) is very effective. She works with staff and governors to monitor the progress of pupils who have special educational needs (SEN) and/or disabilities. Additional funding is well spent. Staff expectations for these pupils are high. As a result, these pupils make good progress from their starting points. Relationships and communication with parents are good. Pupils told me that they are safe, feel safe and know how to stay safe. They told me that there is regular training at school that helps them keep themselves safe in a range of situations, including when online. They said that they know about, and are alert to, the range of forms that bullying can take and what to do if it were to happen to them or to a friend. They said that they would tell an adult and that they are very confident that adults at the school would deal with any bullying promptly and well. Your pupils are happy at, and proud of, their school. Attendance is above average. As one pupil said to me at morning break, ‘It’s fun here!’ Next steps for the school Leaders and those responsible for governance should ensure that they: continue to strengthen the whole-school approaches to writing by further developing pupils’ understanding of the links between what they are writing and its intended audience further extend and deepen the curriculum beyond English, mathematics and science, especially in upper key stage 2, so that pupils, and particularly those who are most able, have opportunities to write at greater length and develop and deepen their understanding in subjects such as history, geography and religious education. I am copying this letter to the chair of the governing body, the regional schools commissioner and the director of children’s services for Calderdale. This letter will be published on the Ofsted website. Yours sincerely Mark Evans Her Majesty’s Inspector Information about the inspection I visited all classes to observe learning and, where appropriate, talk with pupils about their work and experience of school. I was accompanied by you or a member of your leadership team in the majority of these visits. I scrutinised a wide range of pupils’ books and folders of work. I attended a celebration assembly. I spoke with you, governors, the SENCo and a representative of the local authority. I spoke with your school improvement adviser on the telephone. I observed and spoke informally with pupils at the start and end of the day and during break and lunchtime. I spoke with parents at the start and end of the day. I met with eight Year 5 pupils, formally, to discuss their views of the school. I also listened to, and discussed, reading with four Year 3 pupils. I took into account 33 text messages from parents and the views of 36 parents on the Ofsted’s online facility, Parent View. I also took into account the views of 19 staff who responded to an online survey during the inspection. I read a range of documents about the school’s progress, safeguarding systems, monitoring, staff training and governors’ views.