Seafield School in Ardrossan, North Ayrshire, is just yards from the sea, with postcard views of Arran out of the windows. Principal Mary Moran does not mince her words when describing her far from idyllic pupils, 28 boys aged between seven and 16 who board at the school and another 25 boys who attend daily. She talks of some of them first arriving behaving “like wild animals, head-butting, biting and spitting”.

These are the “bad boys”, the pupils who have been through the discipline system which starts with warnings and letters home and moves on through exclusions and assessments, featuring therapists and psychologists along the way. For some that process ends here with the chance of a new beginning, instead of an end to meaningful education.

“The whole agenda has changed,” says Eddie McCaffrey, Seafield’s head of education and formerly a principal teacher of English at a mainstream secondary. “Kids used to be dumped in places like this. Now, with the social inclusion agenda, we are the guys with expertise. You can’t buy that experience anywhere.”

Mrs Moran agrees. “We were always second class. Now you’ll find headteachers coming here for advice on how to run their behaviour support unit. We’re getting recognition for what we can do.”

The staff at Seafield seem buoyed up by the emphasis on their work but is has not been plain sailing. “The school has been through turmoil,” says Mrs Moran. Having been run by Strathclyde (before the 1996 local authority reorganisation), it lay empty for two years. Then, seven years ago, the care charity Quarriers took over. The school is now owned by North Ayrshire Council but still run by Quarriers.

“It grew up very quickly and became too big for the old thinking,” says Mrs Moran. A new management team and fundamental changes to the school structure have transformed the environment. “We’ve had a massive input into staff training, so they now feel empowered rather than vulnerable. And the changes have been led by staff groups, so they feel part of the process.”

The establishment of the day unit is notable. Currently six of the 25 day pupils are on reintegration programmes to get them back into mainstream schools. “It’s a big change for us,” says Mr McCaffrey. “Normally people come and they stay.” He cites of Duncan, who came to Seafield at the age of five and is still here, eight years later. “Now, with the new care plans, cases shouldn’t be allowed to drift like that.”

The new spirit is exemplified by Simon, aged eight, who came to Seafield in October last year. “They were considering locking him up. He was outwith control,” says David Hutton, the depute principal. “Now he is reintegrating into a community special resource. He has blossomed here.”

Part of the process of reintegration involves forging strong links with mainstream schools and other professionals. In fact, the kind of community thinking which the Scottish Executive is promoting throughout children’s services is intrinsic to the Seafield regime.

Mrs Moran says: “Many of our children have been so abused - physically, sexually, emotionally - that they’ll never fit into the world without serious work and support. We have to be in a position to provide that.”

At Seafield, social carers and education staff work together to make sure that what happens downstairs in the cosy classrooms is underpinned by what goes on upstairs in the corridors of single bedrooms, dining rooms, quiet rooms and television lounges.

“Education through to social care is one programme. It’s about these children achieving success in whatever tiny or enormous way they can,” says Mrs Moran.

“We want as good a service for these children as you have for your own kids,” says Mr Hutton. “We want them to have bedtime stories. We want to make sure that if they lose their glasses they get replaced right away. We want to do everything we can to get their interest.

“It’s a 24-hour curriculum; with personal and social development, that’s something the care staff can buy into. We can grade it and feed back progress to the care staff. We can show them the difference they’ve made.”

There is a strong belief at Seafield that its pupils are not worth any less because they are in a residential school. Having struggled for resources for years, the staff feel the pound;2,500 payment per residential child announced by Jack McConnell when he was still the Education Minister is their overdue chance to invest in books and computers. When Mrs Moran talks about raising attainment, the buzz words heard in mainstream education over the past few years sound fresh and meaningful here.

It is part of the attraction to her of working with such disturbed and difficult children. “I can definitely make a difference to each of the children. I can give them a future and equip them for life as much as I can.

“It is tangible here because the children are so extreme. When you see a child who was biting and spitting, who is now transformed, to say we’ve been part of that is special.”

It is the end of the school day but a few of the day and residential pupils are still in the classrooms, waiting for taxis to take them home or finishing off bits of work. In the reception class, three boys are crowded around a computer game, but a request for someone to show me around gets an instant positive response.

Jamie shows me the library corner and his drawer spilling over with jotters and worksheets. “It’s a mess,” he admits, shamefaced.

Throughout the long tour of the school (every boy seems to want to show off his bedroom) we meet nothing but politeness and good humour. Admittedly Donald shows a hole in the wall which he kicked in a temper, and there is a lot of banging and ringing going on somewhere (the boy responsible later comes to apologise), but the boys seem relaxed and happy and more communicative than some 10 and 11-year-olds.

Their rooms are comfortable and personalised. They can pick their own duvet covers and some have chosen the paint for the walls. They have computers, videos, posters and books. However, my 11-year-old guide admits he misses “everything” about home.

Family problems are a major part of the reason many of these boys are at Seafield and the school recognises that communication with the family is vital, for both the residents and staff. “There are all sorts of stories around these children,” says Mrs Moran, “but at the centre of it is this family, which is all they’ve got.”

Every effort is made to ease the early meetings between school and each family with small but thoughtful details. In the meeting room, a glass-topped table is full of snapshots of the boys and staff on outings and in the school. It can be a useful prop for getting sticky conversations going.

The boys’ admission to the school is done at the family home and parents are invited to the school to look around. Visits are never turned down. Some boys go home every weekend; others less frequently. They can telephone their family at any time, day or night, although a few have to use a hands-free phone so that care staff can monitor what is said.

The expertise developed at Seafield and schools like it could make a huge difference to mainstream schools struggling with inclusion, yet Mrs Moran detects a residual reluctance to acknowledge their contribution. “We still don’t get invited to conferences where we could talk people through real examples,” she says.

However, the management team at Seafield is keen to diversify and expand. “Part of our work is to look to the future,” says Mrs Moran. They are looking at developing supported tenancies and other services for young people moving on from care situation; at providing part-time residential care and at caring for young teenage girls in serious moral danger who have been in secure units. For Seafield, it seems, every challenge is an opportunity.

(Some names have been changed.)