The leadership team has maintained the good quality of education in the school since the last inspection. You have preserved the welcoming and caring ethos within the school throughout a period of difficulty. Governors have supported you well to unite and empower staff to drive improvements in the school. Staff are positive about the school and morale is high. They greet pupils with warmth into bright, organised classrooms. Staff act as excellent role models for pupils. As a result, pupils are unwaveringly polite. They have a positive attitude towards all aspects of school life. Typical comments made by parents and carers who responded to Ofsted’s online survey, Parent View, focus on the ‘professional but also caring and sensitive’ approach of staff. Parents are positive about the school and the supportive culture that you have established. There is no doubt among leaders and governors that, since the last inspection, the path taken by the school has been a rocky one. You have made the best use of professional development opportunities provided by the local authority to improve teaching and learning. Governors have also sought support from the local authority whose help has been central to the school’s recovery. Governors have brought energy and drive to rapidly improve the quality of governance. However, you are under no illusions that there is further work to be done. Governors’ checks on pupils’ progress are limited and as such they do not fully hold you to account for the progress of pupils in each year group. Despite this, governors have a good understanding of the school’s strengths and weaknesses. They have renewed the school’s Christian vision to place pupils at the heart of school improvement. You have ensured that the areas for improvement left at the previous inspection have been addressed effectively. The quality of teaching and learning has been improved to become consistently good. Staff have received training and development on how to provide pupils with effective feedback on how to improve their work. The Year 5 and Year 6 pupils that I spoke to value the opportunities that they have to discuss their learning with staff. You have ensured that pupils have more opportunities to read. The evidence I gathered as part of this inspection shows that pupils make good progress in writing, and particularly in reading. However, pupils’ written work shows that some of the most able pupils are not challenged to achieve the highest standards in writing. Your plans to improve the school are much clearer. They describe the impact that actions should have on the improving the quality of education in the school. Although there is strength in the leadership of a number of subjects, the recent changes in staff have stalled the development of leadership in some subjects such as geography. Safeguarding is effective. Pupils say that they feel safe because of the care provided by staff. Pupils feel that they can share concerns with any adult in the school. There are excellent relationships between pupils and staff and between pupils themselves. This is because staff engender a culture of care that runs throughout the whole school so that pupils look after each other. Pupils have an extensive understanding of how to keep themselves safe in a range of situations, including when online, because of the effective teaching that they have received. Staff understand the potential areas of risk facing pupils. They have received appropriate training and remain vigilant, despite very few concerns about pupils. Records are detailed and are kept securely. Inspection findings The first key line of enquiry for this inspection was to see how effectively leaders ensure that pupils are challenged to make good progress in reading and writing in key stage 1 and key stage 2. The English leader has introduced a new approach to support pupils’ vocabulary and spelling development. This has not only improved pupils’ enthusiasm but has enabled them to read with greater speed and understanding. In three of the last four years, 100% of pupils have met the expected standard in the Year 1 phonics screening check. Pupils in Year 2 progress to use their skills confidently to decode words quickly so that they read fluently. Older pupils use their skills to retrieve information from non-fiction texts with ease. Pupils are excited about reading because they have opportunities to read interesting texts that ‘take [them] to another world’. Pupils make very strong progress in their reading across the school. The provisional data for the end of key stage 2 in 2018 indicates high attainment of pupils, many of whom exceed the expected standards for their age.