Lees Primary School, SCARF school since 2023, 10.90% free school meals, West Yorkshire
“SCARF is at the heart of everything we do and children are making cross-curricular links all the time.”
Teachers at Lees Primary School have been using SCARF since 2023. We spoke to their Leader of Learning, Lucie Harker, to find out how SCARF became so quickly embedded into their school values and positive behaviour policy.
Why did you choose SCARF?
The teachers at Lees Primary School wanted a PSHE scheme that was comprehensive, up-to-date and met their pupils’ needs. Lucie Harker tell us “We felt that the SCARF content was really high quality and had been really well put together. We have a lot of confidence in Coram and can trust that the content is thorough and regularly reviewed and updated. The issues we cover in PSHE lessons evolve so quickly and we want to make sure that what we teach is as relevant and up-to-date as possible for our children.”
SCARF’s Healthy Harold mascot is popular amongst the children as well “I like that the SCARF programme has a mascot, the children really like Harold and the way the programme links to his stories, helps them to make connections with real-life scenarios.”
Lees Primary School also decided to invest in SCARF workshops for every year group and felt that they were of great value. “The children loved meeting Harold and it was amazing to see how skilfully Juliet delivered the content. I would recommend the workshops not only as a brilliant learning opportunity for the children but for teachers and support staff too, who were able to watch Juliet model the delivery.”
How do you use SCARF?
Less than a year since implementing SCARF, Lees Primary School has already fully integrated it into their school values and positive behaviour policy. Lucie says “SCARF is at the heart of everything we do and children are making cross-curricular links all the time. We reward SCARF behaviours every week in our celebration assemblies and children earn ‘SCARF points’ throughout the week to contribute to our house teams’ competition. As per our school rules – ‘every member of our school community must wear their SCARF every day’. Children understand what it means to wear their SCARF and live by their SCARF values. We use restorative practice to support negative behaviours and this is really effective. Since embedding SCARF into our values and positive behaviour policy we have seen a massive improvement in behaviour. ”
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The bank of high-quality SCARF resources also allows teachers to use SCARF outside of the classroom, to support children and their families. “Our pastoral team use SCARF in their one-to-one and group activities. We are able to sign-post parents and families to the SCARF resources when they reach out for support and it helps that they all tie in consistently with our values and approaches within school.”
SCARF’s whole-school impact
Lucie shares that SCARF has helped to create a strong and positive ethos across their school “Using SCARF has really promoted PSHE and has helped to fine-tune how we make sure the safety and wellbeing of each child is at the forefront of everything.”
Teachers have also informed Lucie that they value how the SCARF content encourages pupils to voice their concerns, leading to more chances for staff to offer assistance and support. “The content of the lessons in empowering children with the knowledge they need to keep themselves safe and well, is helping them to feel confident to speak out when something is wrong.”
