The leadership team has maintained the good quality of education in the school since the last inspection. You provide effective leadership and are determined to continuously improve the school. Leaders use precise and honest analysis of information when evaluating the school’s strengths and areas to develop. This approach is leading to better consistency in the quality of teaching and subsequently improving pupils’ outcomes. The governing body and board of trustees are highly effective and provide you with the correct balance of support and challenge. Governors know the school well and carry out their statutory duties strategically. During our visits to classrooms, pupils participated positively in their lessons. The behaviour around the school created a calm and purposeful atmosphere. Both staff and pupils are keen to learn and improve their skills. The school promotes an inclusive environment that encourages pupils to be respectful and to have positive attitudes. The dialogue between pupils and their teachers, regarding their progress, is frank and open. Consequently, pupils’ learning is deepened in many lessons and their ability to pursue their own studies and learn well is improving. Since the last inspection, you have rightly focused on addressing the identified areas for improvement. These areas included increasing the level of challenge for the most able pupils and encouraging pupils to read more widely. You have prioritised the development of reading and given pupils many more opportunities to read than in the past. Across subjects, school staff are robustly tracking the most able pupils and offering timely intervention to support the learning needs of these pupils. Individualised e-learning packages encourage pupils and offer challenging tasks, helping pupils to review their learning and identify areas where greater support is needed. Pupils increasingly appreciate and understand what they need to do to improve. Internal assessment information shows that currently the most able pupils are making good progress and performing much better than their predecessors. You demonstrated to me how this improvement has been achieved through leaders’ careful and tenacious actions. With other leaders, you also have a sound understanding of the isolated areas where weaknesses in teaching and learning remain. The senior leadership team’s comprehensive action plans accurately identify areas for improvement and outline appropriate steps to tackle them. Safeguarding is effective. Leaders and governors have ensured that all safeguarding arrangements are fit for purpose. Regular, effective training keeps leaders and staff well informed and up to date. Staff adhere consistently to the school’s thorough policies for keeping pupils safe. Pupils report that they feel safe and know who to approach should they have concerns. Pupils’ attendance has improved since the previous inspection as a result of effective strategies and the high quality of pastoral care. However, attendance remains below the national average. Inspection findings During this inspection, we focused particularly on how well leaders identify and address areas of relatively weaker performance, disadvantaged and most-able pupils, safeguarding and attendance. Leaders have improved attendance over time. In particular, significant gains have been made with the increased attendance of pupils who have special educational needs and/or disabilities. Effective use of pupil premium funding is evident with the introduction of a girls’ motivation group, which has improved the attendance of disadvantaged girls. Overall, disadvantaged pupils perform in line with their peers and in a few subject areas these pupils perform better than other pupils. Leaders monitor and review the expenditure of pupil premium funding routinely to ensure that it is being put to best use. Senior leaders monitor the consistency of the quality of teaching and learning routinely. We observed some highly effective questioning in lessons during our learning walks with senior leaders. The school’s leaders act effectively to support the emerging and differing needs of learners. For example, kinaesthetic tasks were observed in key stage 4 mathematics and were adapted to meet the needs of the most able pupils. In addition, leaders have built effective assessment systems across the school, for example in the sixth form. Sharing good practice is actively encouraged and outcomes have improved as a result.