Wellington College in Berkshire has long been considered at the forefront of pupil wellbeing. So much so, the most recent Good Schools Guide review suggested it be renamed 'Wellbeington College'. Tom Wayman, Deputy Head Pastoral explains in this GUEST BLOG his school's culture and its approach to pastoral care.
Trying to define the scope of pastoral care, where its limits and its centre might lie, is a diverting parlour game for any educationalist: is it in a school’s Wellbeing or PSHE programme? The safeguarding team? The health centre? The school food? The Chaplaincy team? The house structure? The counselling service? The head of student emotional health and wellbeing? The parent mental health committee? The SEN Department? The therapy dog (Coco, here at Wellington)? And if these are places where pastoral care is most visible, does that mean the chemistry lab, the LAMDA lesson, the squash match, the exam hall and the school Assembly are where pastoral care is not to be found? Perhaps, like Los Angeles or Bracknell, pastoral care’s centre is found everywhere – or, at least, it should be.
In very loose terms, the past 20 years have seen schools evolve from places where it was ‘brain first’ to spaces where body and mind are recognised as needing equal developmental attention. Before anything else, a school should be a centre for care. For parents, it will provide the context for your child to unfurl themselves in ways which, possibly, they have not yet revealed to you or, indeed, themselves. Children have an immediate and lasting influence on those around them and will shape the wellbeing of their peers in ways they cannot always predict or intend. The immersion of being at a school like Wellington is such that a child’s greatest education will be to grow into a fuller realisation of what it is to live caringly with others and how responsibility, kindness and a respect of the needs of others are all central to life-long growth.
Education is now so much more articulate about the biological, neural and relational journeys that young people go on than it was when I started teaching late last century. Adolescence is a messy process and one which schools such as Wellington are equipped to help not just the child but also their parents navigate. Central to this capacity is for pastoral care to be understood as the prime role of absolutely every person in our community. Not just the adults, but the children as well. In order for a sense of belonging to flourish we want our young people to ‘learn to lean’ on each other and be confident in understanding the responsibilities of care. Our peer mental health ambassadors are one example of this, but so is the time taken by staff to really recognise and explore the competing and complementary needs of the young people we see day in day out. The complicated knot of personal and social issues affecting a child as we encounter them will be their overriding sense of self. The pastoral starts at eye-level and goes from there.
Historically, the core of pastoral care in schools such as Wellington is the house structure. While these remain units for the organisation of amiable and occasional inane rivalry, the house is above all a pastoral node where security, sanctuary, structure, stimulation and social sustenance converge. For our pupils, this will afford them with daily occasions where their capacity to lean on each other can be exercised. Central to this is to foster diversity within houses – of background, outlook and interest. Difference makes social space for everyone and avoids the curdling coagulations if everyone is angling to sit on the same social seat.
Parents are, of course, a critical part of ensuring the pastoral needs of the child are met. But parenting is complex and the precision and competence that comes from a successful career are futile attributes in the face of the seemingly uncontrollable directions your offspring spring off in. Schools where pastoral care is foregrounded will have the confidence to collaborate with parents in robust and trusting ways. In our Year Ahead and Transfer talks to new parents, it is remarked that it can be tempting, when receiving a call from an upset child, to immediately take their pixel of the story as the whole picture and, like an exasperated football manager, in an arm-waving frenzy on the sidelines, unable to actually run onto the pitch and kick the ball how you would, create a host of secondary issues where the voice of the child – and their ability to help manage their own issues – gets lost. Equip and empower your child through encouragement - but also trust them to work with the pastoral staff at the school, in the live network of relationships they are living in, using moments of difficulty as moments of development.
Such difficulties are always on the move but always with us, so parents should ask how any school goes about managing these: (a) The smartphone social media life (b) The need to embolden the child’s authentic voice. If we want our pupils to flourish, the contexts and cultures we create must be ones where everyone belongs and dominant postures that intimidate are recognised and challenged at every stage and level; (c) The sense that perfection is attainable or desirable; (d) Where the power and purpose of consent in all its forms is recognised; (e) Where anxiety (the overriding and expanding mental health issue nationally) is managed and addressed. Any school which says it does not recognise a problem in these areas has a massive problem.
So, pastoral care, fundamentally, is the culture of the school: how it lives its relationships, how it teaches, how it protects and how it is proactive, how it listens and how it learns. Pastoral care is less of a ‘what’ thing and more of a ‘how’ thing: it is a campus-wide culture of lived wellbeing.
Wellington College is the place where a fusion of originality, innovation and 160 years of tradition and history produces an education unlike any other. The College is a co-educational day and boarding independent school in the village of Crowthorne, Berkshire, England. Wellington is a registered charity and currently educates around 1,100 pupils, between the ages of 13 and 18, per annum. It was built as a national monument to the first Duke of Wellington (1769–1852) in honour of whom the College is named. Queen Victoria laid the foundation stone in 1856 and inaugurated the school's public opening on 29 January 1859.
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