At Foxfield Primary School in Greenwich, inclusion isn't an add-on - it's central to everything they do. With 30 EHCPs across the school and children regularly joining from other settings, co-head teacher Megan Minnett and her team have developed an approach that puts understanding before judgment.

The school serves a diverse community with complex needs. Rather than seeing this as a problem, the leadership team frames it as an opportunity to do better for every child.

"What can we do to support the family to make links with people? For me, these are children - for the parents in our school, it could be one of your children."

Five years ago, Foxfield used a traffic light behaviour system. The leadership team researched the impact and made a decisive change.

"When we looked into the research, it's just public shaming. This was about 2021. We changed our thinking."

The school achieved gold attachment and trauma school status through a systematic three-year journey. This required challenging conversations with staff about language and attitudes toward children.

"Not being afraid to have those conversations to say, look, that is a child. They're not doing it on purpose."

Instead of exclusions, Foxfield creates individual learning plans called "My Plan for Success." These are written collaboratively with the child, teacher, and inclusion lead, and reviewed every half term.

"We create an individual learning plan written with the child, the teacher, and the inclusion lead. And then they're reviewed on a half termly basis."

The school works proactively with families from the first sign of need, prioritising relationship-building over defensive reactions.

"We need to get Mum in. We need to build that relationship with Mum because longer term there's probably going to be a conversation around an unmet need, but we can't have that conversation until we've built that relationship."

The approach is reflected in Foxfield’s TEP results. In Summer 2025, staff scored the Inclusion driver as 8.8/10 (+1.0 point above benchmark), students scored their Inclusion at 9.2 /10 (+1.5 points above benchmark). This has created a school where visitors immediately notice something different.

"People say when they first walk into Foxfield, they feel that love. It hasn't just happened. It has been a lot of work on the culture of the school."

Key strategies:

• Individual learning plans ("My Plan for Success") for every child with behavioural needs

• Gold attachment and trauma school training embedded across all staff

• Proactive family relationship building from first signs of need

• Alternative provision partnerships rather than exclusions

Inspire Partnership Academy Trust

At our Trust, we use The Engagement Platform (TEP) to move beyond a single end-of-year survey, gathering staff feedback with robust benchmarks that support leadership teams throughout the academic year. Each term, we work with TEP, headteachers, and Local Community Councils to review the data, using dashboard tools and direct conversations with staff and children to deepen our understanding. As a central leadership team, we meet with TEP whenever new reports are released to interpret benchmarks and gain a Trust-wide and national perspective, while encouraging headteachers to book 1:1 sessions for a closer look at their school data. This cohesive and collaborative approach enables us to share best practice across schools, deliver quick wins that show staff and children their voices matter, and plan longer-term strategies to strengthen our foundations.

‍