headteacher-secondary

teachwire.net Navigating the ocean The pastoral is a vast ocean of sometimes perilous waters, and having a set of guidelines such as those offered by the NAPCE can help us navigate them. However, it’s also useful to have a macro view – an overriding sense of the purpose of any pastoral role. In his 2019 book Leading on Pastoral Care , Daniel Sobel writes, “Whether you are a middle leader, working as a head of year or head of Key Stage or are a senior leader responsible for pastoral care across your school, the main focus of your role is to provide effective care for the welfare, wellbeing and overall success of the students in your school.” Sobel goes on to provide this rather neat key takeaway: “The most important aspect of the pastoral leadership role is to enable students to participate. No matter what your job description says, this is your fundamental purpose and your key to success, and can only be achieved through understanding.” Like ‘form tutor’, the term ‘head of year’ yields little in searches of the academic literature. I think this probably reflects the varied nature of the role, but it’s interesting to note that there hasn’t been much work done to explore the nature, purpose and impact of this ubiquitous role. Every secondary school has heads of year, even allowing for variations in nomenclature, such as ‘year team leader’. Some schools use ‘vertical’ tutoring, with form groups made up of students from different year groups. This structure is intended to encourage social cohesion across age groups, enable older students to act as mentors and role models for younger students, and reduce workload for teachers when it comes to report cycles. Schools have reported that vertical tutoring has reduced instances of bullying, amongst other positive effects. In my own experience, however, this system creates mini-cliques or enclaves within form groups, with Y7 students all sitting together and so on. And far from reducing workload, it meant I had far more mental plates to spin with regards to the differing demands of the year groups, such as options for Year 9 and GCSE revision sessions for Year 11. In my current setting year groups are relatively ABOUT THE AUTHOR Stephen Lane has worked in education for over two decades in both subject leadership and pastoral leadership roles. Follow him at @sputniksteve This article is based on an edited extract from his book BeyondWiping Noses: Building an informed approach to pastoral leadership in schools (Crown House Publishing, £16.99) 29 S TA F F I N G MY PASTORAL LIST • Safeguarding • Academic performance • Behaviour • Wellbeing • PSHE teaching • Assemblies • Counselling • Mentoring • Safeguarding No, that’s not an error. I spent some time mithering over whether ‘safeguarding’ should be the first thing on my list or the last, and decided it should probably be both. Everyone who works with children should have safeguarding as their first and last thought. small, so the HoY role in fact covers multiple year groups. We have a head of Y5–6, a head of Y7–9, a head of Y10–11 and a head of sixth form. These are middle leadership roles, the nomenclature for which is ‘operational leadership’. Whatever this role is called in your school, it’s important to develop a clear idea about what pastoral leadership entails within your context. Once you’ve established this, you can begin to think about how you might develop an informed approach to each of the aspects involved. Inspection Framework includes very specific references to learners’ personal development. Indeed, personal development is one of the four key areas against which inspectors will make judgements.