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“Piece by piece, we improved all of our policies in all of the stated areas and they became more and more contemporary, robust, suitable and indeed professional as external agencies also moved forward for the times as all the stated areas became rightly a “concentration area”. We developed a policies’ booklet which was for all the staff, students, parents and guardian parents of students. This was distributed at the beginning of every academic year and included consultation with all audiences on what we needed to improve. Moreover, the staff manual continued to develop and improve in its application over the years. Every school always needs to improve even in 2020. Recognition of where we needed to improve came from our self-evaluation leading to improvement processes as in SELTI.”—Andrew Hunter, SCAI Witness Statement (17 November 2020)

“Essentially, in 2013 onwards, since we received directives from The Registrar for Independent Schools, in tandem with the regulators, and with a link inspector, we went through a wholescale review of important care and welfare improvements related to child protection, health and well- being and leadership for improvement. The directives included areas like safeguarding and child protection. The full audit of this is at Merchiston Castle School.—Andrew Hunter, SCAI Witness Statement (17 November 2020)

“I was absent from the school from October 2009 to March 2010 for a major operation for bone cancer and I returned to hospital for another major operation, related to the first one, which necessitated absence from school from November 2013 to January 2014.”.—Andrew Hunter, SCAI Witness Statement (17 November 2020)

“We always endeavoured to be a highly reflective school but we were learning to do this in a more structured way, crystallising the School Improvement Plan, underpinning it with the School Leadership Team, Quality Assurance Calendar and the Self Evaluation leading to Improvement (SELTl) pro-forma and ensuring that this process was cyclical and annual , thereby enhancing our rigour and vigour in our improvement programme.”—Andrew Hunter, SCAI Witness Statement (17 November 2020)

“I do not think that the school was not operating well in terms of child protection and safeguarding prior to 2015. We always thought about the interests of the pupil. However, we were inconsistent for a period of years in automatically seeking advice from regulators outside of the school and external agencies such as social services, HMIE or the Care Inspectorate. If there was an incident then why did we not automatically place such a member of staff in the staff disciplinary process? I do not really have an answer to that except that the leading team of staff, running this school, to start with, was very small. Looking back, possibly, I took too much on my plate and my P A did as well. She was my executive P A and she was also in charge of HR. At that stage, we could not afford the extra function of HR.”—Andrew Hunter, SCAI Witness Statement (17 November 2020)

“Essentially, in 2013 onwards, since we received directives from The Registrar for Independent Schools, in tandem with the regulators, and with a link inspector, we went through a wholescale review of important care and welfare improvements related to child protection, health and well- being and leadership for improvement. The directives included areas like safeguarding and child protection. The full audit of this is at Merchiston Castle School.”—Andrew Hunter, SCAI Witness Statement (17 November 2020)

“Wherever possible, I tried to watch every new member of staff at Merchiston teaching and doing his or her activities outside the classroom.”—Andrew Hunter, SCAI Witness Statement (17 November 2020)

“It was inevitable that our policies became even more sophisticated. We also appraised anyone who was in a new position of responsibility who had been promoted from outwith the school or within the school. Wherever possible, an internal appointment involved the candidate applying and an interview process. This was to try and ensure that we had “checks and balances” on any internal appointment. We felt that was professional and due diligence. Members of staff also preferred that.”—Andrew Hunter, SCAI Witness Statement (17 November 2020)