The leadership team has maintained the good quality of education in the school since the last inspection. You are a consistently effective headteacher and have high aspirations for the school. You are skilled at identifying areas that are in need of further improvement and have put effective approaches in place to address them. The high-quality, bespoke professional development that you have provided for your staff and your ongoing direct involvement in developing teacher practice have established a strong capacity for further improvement. 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. For example, you recently appreciated their involvement in the management of improvements to the school premises. Pupils’ behaviour is delightful. They are keen to learn, happy and work cooperatively together. I enjoyed listening to them sing their mission statement, which they are clearly very proud of. Parents are very positive about the school. One parent on the Ofsted free text said, ‘this is a wonderful school’. Another appreciated how quickly their child had settled, and others shared the good progress that their children are making. Safeguarding is effective. You and the safeguarding leader have established a strong culture of safeguarding in the school. You and your leaders, including governors, understand your roles and responsibilities well and ensure that procedures are robust. Staff and governors have regular training and, consequently, have a clear understanding of what constitutes effective safeguarding practice. All staff are vigilant, and there is a clear collective responsibility for keeping children safe. Governors are proactive in checking practice and ensuring that all the necessary recruitment checks are carried out on adults prior to employment. You and the governing body have ensured that the website provides a range of detailed information about child safety to support parents. Pupils are extremely knowledgeable about how to keep themselves safe, particularly with regard to online safety. All staff and parents, both in the Ofsted questionnaire and internal school questionnaires, said that they are confident that their children are safe and well cared for. The promotion of British values is intertwined with the school’s values and promoted around the school. Inspection Findings For the first line of enquiry, we agreed to look at the extent to which you and your leaders ensure that the very youngest children progress well from their starting points in the early years. This is because the number of children achieving a good level of development at the end of Reception has been below the national average for the last three years, and attainment in English has been well below the national average. Most pupils transfer direct from Nursery to Reception, and robust assessment on entry procedures is used in both classes to ensure that children are well catered for. The early years leader makes effective use of moderation across local schools to ensure that assessments are secure. Children are tracked regularly across the areas of learning, and appropriate interventions are put in place where needed. The early years leader ensures that children’s next learning steps are clearly identified and followed up through a structured key-worker system in the Nursery and through weekly team meetings in Reception. The allocation of funding to improve the outdoor learning environment has resulted in open, welcoming and high-quality spaces in both Nursery and Reception. I observed adults engaging well with children and using questioning and modelling effectively to develop children’s learning further. The children’s learning journals evidence a wide range of interesting learning experiences over time. We observed that activities inside the Nursery and Reception classrooms have a clear focus, but we agreed that further work needs to be done to develop the same opportunities for challenge in the outdoor environment. The early years leader has a clear vision and detailed action plan for further improvement. She appreciates, and is making effective use of, the professional development opportunities that you have provided, which include visits to outstanding provisions. As a result, pupils make good progress from starting points that are typically very low for their age. In-school performance information and my observations in Reception do indicate, however, that overall the proportion of children attaining a good level of development remains below the national average.