The Harmeny Trust
Harmeny Education Trust is a non-denominational, grant-aided school in Balerno,
Edinburgh. It provides specialist education services, on both a day and residential
basis, for children of primary school age up to S2. Children have additional support
needs arising from difficulties with their social, emotional and behavioural
development. The school provides its services on a national level and has capacity
for 36 children. At the time of its recent inspection, the school provided care and
education for 30 children. Six children attended on a daily basis. Children came
from 14 different local authorities.
Inspectors noted the following features of the school’s work which contributed to the
school receiving an evaluation of “excellent” for Q.I. 5.3 in the third edition of How
good is our school? 1 Evaluations take account of the context of the school and
these features are just part of the overall approach the school takes to improving
young people’s learning experiences and achievements.
Meeting learning needs
Tasks activities and resources
The environment for learning makes a considerable contribution to meeting the
learning needs of all children and young people. Small class sizes with a very good
staff to pupil ratio, access to safe outdoor spaces and a number of additional
teaching areas, including a nurture space, allow staff to plan flexibly for children who
may need their own space at points during the day. Overall, tasks and activities are
very well planned and differentiated to meet the range of needs within each class.
Tasks are appropriately challenging for learners. Practical activities such as cooking
and outdoor learning are used well to engage young people in their learning.
Staff are skilled at adapting their approaches according to young people’s interests
and responses. Children are supported very effectively in their learning and
transitions across the day helping them to remain engaged with their learning tasks
for longer periods of time. A recent audit of how key workers are supporting and
extending children’s learning has indicated many strengths.
Identification of learning needs
Assessment procedures are very effective. All children have detailed profiles
derived from integrated assessments with care staff, therapists, specialists and
teaching staff. Baselines are established though focused observations, formal
assessments such as the Boxall profile, resilience reports and reflective discussions.
These profiles also include important information about each child’s health and
wellbeing including behaviour. The school works successfully with other agencies
involved with each child, such as the placing authority’s educational psychologist and
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http://www.educationscotland.gov.uk/Images/HowgoodisourschoolJtEpart3_tcm4684258.pdf
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social worker as appropriate. The school pays very good attention to children’s
health needs, including dental health, nutrition and sleep patterns. Staff work closely
with key members of the medical team to ensure that interventions such as
medication are closely monitored so that any negative effects are addressed quickly.
There are very good examples of innovative practice which are based on an
individual response to each child’s needs. A health assessment is undertaken on
admission and is consistently reviewed throughout the child’s stay. Staff are very
good at referring children to external specialist services such as CAMHS or speech
and language therapy. Staff have a high level of awareness of risk and appropriately
carry out risk assessments for individual children for both routine and one-off
activities. Risk assessments are detailed and identify the child/young person’s view
“what helps me”. They are updated immediately following any incidents and
changes in circumstances. Staff are very good at taking account of future
events/changes in circumstances which are likely to have an impact on the
child/young person and put in place strategies to minimise the effect.
Each child has a suitable personal learning plan. These are set out very effectively
in a way that clearly reflects the young person and his/her strengths, needs and
successes. These plans contain clear information on young people’s current level of
performance in literacy and numeracy and how young people’s care and educational
needs are being addressed. Young people are fully involved in the planning
process. School staff meet each morning to discuss children’s progress. Staff act
well on the information to adapt programmes to address changing needs. Children
also have regular dialogue with key staff about their progress. The care plans detail
the child/young person’s health and wellbeing needs and how these should be met,
including resilience targets. Following any incidents of physical intervention, in depth
analysis is carried out to identify where changes to the child’s/young person’s care
plan and risk assessment are needed. Strategies are then implemented, both
immediate (to calm the situation and help the child/young person return to class) and
longer term.
Roles of teachers and specialist staff
There are very effective systems in place to ensure continuity and consistency in
delivering support to children, such as a well-trained staff and a strong sense of
teamwork. Multi-disciplinary team meetings including the child’s key worker and
class teacher, ensure wrap around support for each young person in line with
GIRFEC best practice. The school has adopted a very positive approach to
identifying and supporting children with social emotional and behavioural difficulties
and this is evident in the positive relationships amongst staff and children. Staff are
very skilled at modelling good behaviour and developing children’s skills in self
regulation. Behaviour development plans include strategies for staff and targets for
children to work towards. Support staff are deployed flexibly and effectively to meet
individual and group need. They are skilled at providing support and intervention
and often deescalate disruptive behaviour quickly and unobtrusively. The teacher
responsible for the Nurture Space focuses on the development of positive
relationships, confidence and resilience using a number of therapeutic programmes
in a highly motivating and creative way. These interventions are well planned, linked
closely to children’s needs with progress monitored and tracked.
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Meeting the requirements of the legislation
The role of partner agencies is clear and review dates are in place. Children’s
progress is reviewed regularly and young people, parents and those involved in
supporting the young person are fully involved. Children feel that they have a good
say in planning their next steps. As far as possible, staff are successfully involving
parents in their child’s learning through review meetings, invitations to school events
and by encouraging them to observe and work alongside their child in the classroom
The school can demonstrate a number of improvements which have been brought
about through self-evaluation and improvement planning. Over the past two
sessions these have included raising expectations of what children can achieve in
school and the development of a system for tracking children’s progress in literacy
and numeracy.
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