The leadership team has maintained the good quality of education in the school since the last inspection. There have been significant changes in the leadership of the school since the last inspection. In 2014, you became the executive headteacher in order to support the governing body, which was unable to recruit a headteacher. Since your appointment, you have created an effective leadership team whose members share your vision and commitment to the school’s priorities. As a result, there is strong capacity to secure further improvement for the benefit of your pupils. Similarly, you have developed effective links with your partner school to further develop the quality of teaching and learning by sharing specialist teachers in English and mathematics. This has led to an increase in the rates of pupils’ progress across the school since the school’s previous inspection. Parents are very positive about the school. Their comments, and those of staff, echo your identified strengths of the school, which include the early years, the strong sense of community and the level of care provided to the pupils. One parent shared the view of several: ‘The teachers in the Nursery Year are knowledgeable and experienced, resulting in excellent pastoral care and driven young children who are eager to learn.’ Pupils are also very positive about the school. They are polite as well as eager to share and discuss pieces of work of which they are particularly proud. In the school’s last inspection report, it was recommended that leaders improve the quality of teaching so that pupils make and sustain rapid progress in all subjects. Although there have been changes to school staffing, you have successfully maintained a focus on developing and sustaining high-quality teaching. This is reflected in the significant progress made in the last two years. With your senior leaders, you continue to refine teaching and learning to secure improvements in specific aspects of writing and mathematics. Safeguarding is effective. The safeguarding culture in the school is strong. Visitors are required to read and sign detailed safeguarding information on arrival. This ensures that everyone on the school premises is informed about safeguarding procedures. Training for staff and governors is regular so that they all have a good understanding of the most recent safeguarding legislation. Recent training for parents and governors, delivered by the designated safeguarding leader, covered the sensitive but important aspects of the ‘Prevent’ duty and female genital mutilation. This has made a positive difference to parents and has resulted in further engagement to discuss these aspects in more depth. Detailed records show that staff know how to report concerns and that the school works closely with a range of agencies to support pupils and their parents. For example, the designated leader for safeguarding has worked closely with the local authority’s early help team to support vulnerable families. Pupils say that staff make them feel safe in school. The curriculum provides a range of learning opportunities for pupils to learn how to keep themselves safe. Pupils can talk confidently about how to keep themselves safe online. School leaders organise regular safety talks with the local police, for example on street safety, to help pupils keep safe when outside school. School records show that the numbers of exclusions and incidents of poor behaviour are decreasing. Pupils say that staff act quickly to address behaviour concerns. Inspection findings We agreed to look first at how effectively leaders are accelerating progress in writing at key stage 1. For the last two years, the proportion of pupils achieving the age-expected standards has been lower than for other schools nationally. You have already identified writing as a school priority, and leaders have introduced an effective reading approach, which is linked to writing, in order to develop pupils’ writing skills. In addition, senior leaders have placed a greater emphasis on the teaching of vocabulary, punctuation and grammar. Pupils now practise speaking in full sentences before starting to write. This helps them to structure their sentences correctly and record their ideas accurately. In our visits to lessons, we saw teachers effectively demonstrating wholesentence speaking using a range of grammatical features. Teachers also provided clear guidance to help develop pupils’ vocabulary. This supported pupils in making decisions about what to write to engage the reader. Work in pupils’ books shows that pupils, including the disadvantaged, are making good progress. As a result, school information suggests that a greater proportion of current Year 2 pupils are on track to achieve the standard related to their age.