At its simplest, pastoral care is the provision a school makes to ensure the physical and emotional welfare of pupils. It is the essential foundation upon which learning can take place. The pastoral care of every student is
important to all staff at Thorpe, although we are a big school, we aim for all students to feel welcomed
and an important part of our inclusive school community.
To achieve this, every student is
placed in a form group with other students of the same age. As much as
possible, each student stays with the same Form Tutor until the end of
Year 10 allowing a good supportive relationship to flourish. In Year
11, a specialist group of Form Tutors works with students to help them
through their final GCSE year. Students meet their Form Tutor every
morning and they will engage with the pastoral curriculum during their
Form Time.
In order to deliver an age appropriate
pastoral curriculum and meet the personal development needs of our
students each year group has its own dedicated pastoral team. Each
pastoral team is led by a Head of Year who are specialists in the needs of that year group. Every year group school also has a dedicated Assistant Principal from the school Senior Leadership Team who is known as Head of School.
The year group pastoral team is further supported by non-teaching staff consisting of two members of the Behaviour for Education Support Team (BEST) (a ‘Lead’ and an ‘Assistant’), and an administrative Operations Assistant.
As these members of the team are not teachers they are readily
available and will often be your first point of contact for any issues.
Our BEST staff will often deal with issues relating to attendance and
behaviour, contacting home in the instance of difficulties at school,
arranging home visits, meeting parents and students and liaising with
the Heads of Year with regard to individual students.
To further support students the BEST has a School Counsellor, a Wellbeing Officer and Attendance Officer. These are specialised staff who are available to deal with specific school related or wider issues that students may be experiencing so that barriers to learning can be removed to enable excellence for all.
We want all our students to also feel part of the wider school community. We do this through whole school assemblies that are led by the Senior Leadership Team. This facilitates a common strong message of our pastoral curriculum and allows for collective reflection. Opportunities for students to meet and support each other in different year groups are planned into the school year so that students also feel part of the wider school community.
