I don’t blog very often; more than anything it’s a time issue as I have a very demanding 3 year old in my life, but also now I’ve entered the pastoral side of education, it’s quite difficult to write in any detail about things because more often than not we are dealing with confidential situations. Recently though I’ve had a few people ask whether I like what I do more than leading teaching and learning and being curious about how it differs, so here’s just a few thoughts for anyone considering a career in pastoral and what it is we actually do.

I’ll start by saying I absolutely love it! Even though I discussed a move with my Head (I’d been leading on T and L for many years and our current AHT has brought so much more to the role than I ever dreamed of) I never expected to enjoy it so much. Don’t get me wrong, it is demanding, both physically and emotionally and you need resilience by the bucket load to deal with some of the issues that we as a pastoral team are presented with on a daily basis. I’m really proud of the behaviour in our school and it’s great to have this confirmed by our external visitors but that doesn’t means it’s perfect and we constantly strive to reduce our behaviour data figures and make our school a place where everyone feels safe and proud to be a part of. The world of pastoral is also fickle, it means that you can have a fabulous day followed by a one where it feels like the wheels are falling off. I think a part of me secretly loves this challenge and unpredictability though as it means there’s never a dull day….

Without a doubt, in my opinion, pastoral staff have the hardest job in the school. I can say that with my hand on my heart having been a teacher, a HOD, an AHT and now a Deputy Head with a strong pastoral focus. When students are upset and anxious, who do they turn to? The pastoral staff; when they’re in trouble (although our curriculum areas pick up issues in the first instance) who picks up these problems? The pastoral team. They are the ones who liaise with the external agencies such as the police, social workers, nurses, counsellors etc etc and they are the ones who deal with (sometimes very difficult) parents on a daily basis. They support staff when things go wrong, they lead a team of tutors trying to ensure a level of consistency across the team and they deal with a million other things on a daily basis- arranging TAF meetings, attending online care team meetings, chasing attendance, checking uniform, speaking to our young people about where they got it right and where it went wrong, as well as teaching their own classes. In short I think they are absolute heroes.

Over the last few years we have remodelled our pastoral team and spent a significant amount on the refurbishment of our pastoral area so that all Heads of Year have their own office and are accompanied by their own non teaching Pastoral Manager. Prior to this they all shared an open plan space! I honestly look back now and think how did they ever manage to function and make phone calls in such a chaotic area! We’ve changed a lot though so I thank Andy for supporting my plans to develop and add capacity to the team.

Our team is made up of five teaching Head of Years and five non teaching Pastoral Managers so there’s always at least one person available throughout the day to support our young people. In addition to this, we have just appointed a new Designated Safeguarding Lead who is also based in our pastoral area and offers brilliant support to the team. We also have a Director of Behaviour who works with our more challenging students, a Family Liaison Manager who works with our persistent non attenders and an attendance officer who knows our attendance patterns and issues inside out. I am lucky to have such a brilliant team and I really can’t sing their praises highly enough. The team is lead by myself and I’m strongly supported by one of our Assistant Heads. We work in tandem and support each other by picking up issues dependent on caseload.

We live by our ‘pastoral bible’ which is basically our clear outline of rewards and sanctions. As well as teaching students what this means to them, all of our staff and parents have a copy. All of our students know the consequences of misbehaviour and we teach them to make the right choices. We have a removal room which can be used by our staff as part of our in class staged warning system. If students continue to disrupt the learning of others, they are removed from the room for the remainder of the day and have a separate lunchtime to others. This enables this class to work effectively and them to have some time out to mull over how they could have made better choices. Students complete work in the removal room and this is followed up with a restorative conversation with the classroom teacher and support from the year team. On average we have 3 students per day who make the wrong choice and are sent to the removal room. In a school of over 1200 students, although we are proud of this figure, our aim is always to improve further and we will constantly strive to bring these figures down further. Our rewards system takes the form of stamps in a planner which are totalled up at the end of the week as achievement points and these lead to various certificates, badges and prizes. We also have additional awards such as tutee of the week, gold zone attendance draws and praise conversations from myself.

I have to be honest and say that it’s the sense of team, camaraderie and bucket loads of chocolate that sometimes keeps you going! There’s not a day goes by when we aren’t laughing about something. Beneath it all though there burns a sense of righteous indignation that we have to fight to get the best for our young people and we all have our dark days and sleepless nights. As I write this, even though its a day off, the pastoral team group chat has been alive with ideas about how we should and could help our free school meal students after the government’s decision to not fund these during the holidays. We don’t always get everything right, but I believe the team are honest enough to say that when we do get it wrong, we reflect and talk it through and determine to do even better at the next given opportunity.

I thought it might be interesting to give anyone considering a pastoral role, a flavour of what we have dealt with this half term. I don’t think anything can adequately prepare you for the role until you live and breathe it:

-Providing support for struggling families and those who have lost their job because of the current situation.

-Dealing with highly emotional young people who often have complex needs.

-Dealing with increasingly complex SEMH (social and emotional mental health) needs exacerbated by the pandemic

-Unpicking ill thought out social media comments/issues (often instigated by parents and students) way after school hours.

-Making sure uniform standards don’t slip on a daily basis (those skirts should not be rolled up!)

-Planning extended tutor sessions

-Carrying out tutor drop ins to support standards.

-Ensuring work is sent home for students who are isolating.

-Taking phone calls from members of the public who what to know why our young people aren’t wearing masks on the public buses (the majority do and although we try to instil the right values in them, we draw the line at getting on public buses with every single child to ensure that they are doing the right thing!)

-Liaising with the school bus companies about behaviour on the buses.

-Making a trip up to the local Greggs or newsagents to check behaviour in the community pre school!

-Visiting the ‘smoker spots’ in the local community (Thankfully we have a very small minority who choose to smoke)

-Trying to placate angry parents who deliberately choose to contravene the school uniform rules and then wonder why a student is placed on uniform report (They may not agree with our policy, but we ask them to support it because it is simple and makes our lives easier to monitor. And really it’s not radical and we’d much prefer to spend our time on educating our young people.)

-Investigating the use of firecrackers in school (This took an inordinate amount of time but we thank parents and police for their support with the culprits.)

-Supervising the transition zones every transition (6 times per day, although at least this burns off the chocolate! By the end of term we have sugar running through our veins!)

-Responding to emails about low hanging rose bushes near our school site! (Yes really)

-Meeting parents for reintegration meetings after an exclusion

-Making home visits to support families.

-Sourcing and ordering uniform essentials such as tights, underwear, deodorants, shoes etc…

-Holding student council meetings.

-Responding to parental queries about school meals or school toilets.

And probably so much more.

So to my team- a huge thank you. You are all legends! Enjoy your break and I know you’ll rise even more to the next set of challenges I have planned…

To our parents- we appreciate any support that you can give. We see our partnership as being crucial to the success and development of your child. We never knowingly make decisions to make children miserable and upset so we just ask for you to give consideration to your communications with us. You might not agree, but please don’t shout at us. We are only human and we only ever want the best for your child. We appreciate those taking the time to thank us and telling us when we do get it right (We don’t get those emails very often) and we appreciate those who make all of the donations of school uniform and food for our food banks to make the lives of our children a little easier.

To our staff- thank you for your patience and understanding that although the pastoral team appear to be superheroes, they’re not.

And finally thank you to Andy, our Head who believed in me when I thought I couldn’t possibly lead a pastoral team; it seems it’s not too bad after all!