Pastoral Care 11-16

A Critical Introduction

Noel Purdy

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781441117175
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education Counseling

How can teachers deal with the growing pastoral needs of pupils aged 11-16 in schools? This critical guide explores the pastoral role which teachers play in schools, and argues that today's schools continue to offer children an invaluable source of support. This guide explores a number of serious pastoral issues, drawing on contemporary research to outline the impact which these issues can have on children aged 11-16 and offering practical strategies for providing support on a whole-school and individual classroom level. Consideration is also given to how schools can use the curriculum proactively to help pupils be more prepared to deal with serious pastoral issues. Topics dealt with include: - supporting children who are experiencing separation or divorce
- helping to prevent and deal with bullying, including cyber-bullying
- identifying and responding to possible child abuse
- understanding the impact of domestic violence
- supporting children through bereavement
- responding to self-harm and suicide This is the essential guide for those training to teach in the secondary sector and for practicing teachers who have recently taken on pastoral responsibilities.

1

Pastoral Care: Origins, Definitions and Roles

Noel Purdy

Chapter Outline

Introduction

The organization of pastoral care in schools

The role of the Form Tutor

The role of the Head of Year

The role of the Classroom Teacher

Care for the pastoral carers

Introduction

Pastoral care is a diffuse and elusive concept. Its etymology is rooted in agriculture (pascere – Latin to feed) and subsequent biblical references to Christ as the Good Shepherd tending his flock (e.g. Psalm 23 ‘The Lord in my Shepherd, I shall not want’) but also to Pope Gregory I’s Liber Regulae Pastoralis or Cura Pastoralis, written around the year 590, which outlined the responsibilities of bishops in caring for the ‘souls’ of believers. However as Carroll (2010) notes, the notion of pastoral care even within Christianity has been ‘fairly fluid’ (p. 146) through the centuries and between different denominations.

The history of pastoral care in schools dates back to the church’s role in the nineteenth century in founding church schools and in instilling Christian values of care within these institutions. This often implicit concern for the welfare of the pupils became gradually more explicit through the first half of the twentieth century with the 1904 Regulations for Elementary Schools in England encouraging teachers to ‘know’, ‘sympathize with’ and ‘touch the mind’ of the pupils in striving to help them reach their ‘full development as individuals’ (Cunningham, 2002). However as Marland (2002) notes, the term pastoral care was not used consistently in the early part of the century, even though there was a growing realization of the need to provide support for the non-academic welfare of the pupils in schools. In 1937 the Board of Education noted that ‘We realise more and more the importance of broadening the aims of education and of placing greater emphasis on the social development of children’ (Board of Education, 1937). In the post-war era, the introduction to the London School Plan 1947 (which followed the Education Act 1944) stressed that ‘It is now the duty of authorities to establish equality of opportunity for all children – a phrase that implies the provision for every pupil of a “place” in a school where his spiritual, physical, social and mental development can be properly nurtured’ (London County Council, 1947, p. 7). Marland’s account of the development of pastoral care from the fifties to the seventies is however a story of new comprehensive schools struggling to develop effective pastoral structures and where the House System (originating in private boarding schools where pupils lived in the same ‘house’ as a small group of other pupils under the personal care of a resident housemaster/mistress) failed to meet the needs of pupils in large, urban comprehensive day-schools, often becoming little more than a convenient way of organizing in-school sporting competitions.

It is far from clear when exactly the term ‘pastoral care’ was first used in relation to schools. Ribbins (1985) claims that it has been in use since the late 1940s; Armstrong (2008) dates its introduction to the 1950s; while Power (1996) suggests that it was as late as the 1960s or early 1970s before the term ‘pastoral care’ was consistently used, even though form groups and assemblies may have begun earlier. Calvert (2009) charts the evolution of pastoral care in schools over the past 50 years through 7 discernible ‘ages’: (i) Pastoral Care as Disciplinary Control characterized by hierarchical structures and a clear pastoral/academic dichotomy; (ii) Pastoral Care as Individual Need where ill-prepared Form Tutors were expected to offer a form of counselling, largely intended to bring the pupil’s behaviour in line with the school’s expectations; (iii) Pastoral Care as Group Need where Form Tutors were required, despite varying levels of skill and motivation, to meet individual needs through group activities delivered in short form periods at the start of the day; (iv) the Development of the Pastoral Curriculum, an ill-fated attempt to bring together all the school-based learning activities relating to personal and social development; (v) Pastoral Care Post-implementation of the National Curriculum when schools focused almost exclusively on a tightly prescribed range of subjects to be taught and assessed, and where non-statutory subjects had little or no value (vi) Pastoral Care for Learning, where a recognition emerged that higher grades could be achieved through the development of emotional intelligence and psychological well-being (vii) and finally, Pastoral Care, the Wider Workforce and the Every Child Matters Agenda (2003 to the present day) where there is greater diversity than ever before in England and Wales in the way in which schools organize their management structure, where year heads have often been replaced by learning managers and where there is more inter-agency working (with resulting differences of emphases) and greater dependence on paraprofessionals to perform tasks formerly associated with teachers such as in-class support, covering lessons, mentoring and careers guidance (see also Andrews, 2006; Edmond and Price, 2009). Calvert (2009, p. 276) concludes his account of the seven ‘ages’ by noting once again that ‘clarity of what pastoral care means or might mean is long overdue’.

Since the introduction of the term ‘pastoral care’ in relation to schools there have been numerous attempts to define it. Among the earliest was Marland (1974, p. 8) who noted that pastoral care ‘means looking after the total welfare of the pupil’ and suggested that the broad area of pastoral care can be broken down into the following six separate but complementary aims:

i.to assist the individual to enrich his (sic) personal life;

ii.to help prepare the young person for educational choice;

iii.to offer guidance or counselling, helping young people to make their own decisions – by question and focus, and by information where appropriate;

iv.to support the subject teaching;

v.to assist the individual to develop his or her own lifestyle and to respect that of others;

vi.to maintain an orderly atmosphere in which all this is possible (Marland, 1974, p. 10).

Marland warned against any pastoral/academic split and concluded that schools must help the individual pupil to find meaning for their studies and their life. To achieve these goals, ‘the central task of the school, its pastoral work, must be sensitive, warm, human, efficient, realistic and thorough’ (1974, p. 12).

Four years later Hamblin’s definition builds on this by highlighting the importance of pastoral care as an integral part of classroom teaching and by stressing the need for classroom ‘modification’ to support the particular learning needs of all pupils:

Pastoral care is not something set apart from the daily work of the teacher. It is that element of the teaching process which centres around the personality of the pupil and the forces in his (sic) environment which either facilitate or impede the development of intellectual and social skills, and foster or retard emotional stability. The pastoral effort is also concerned with the modification of the learning environment, adapting it to meet the needs of individual pupils, so that every pupil has the maximum chance of success whatever his (sic) background or ability. (Hamblin, 1978, p. xv)

Hamblin continues that an effective pastoral care system is ‘more than a device for providing emotional first-aid for adolescent tensions in a complex society, or a welfare activity for alleviating poor home conditions’ (Hamblin, 1978, p. 1). Instead, Hamblin argues for a carefully planned integration of the pastoral and the curricular aspects of the school, suggesting that the ‘failure’ of the secondary school lies in poor teaching and inappropriate methods in the classroom, which in turn prohibits positive teacher–pupil relationships. Like Marland, Hamblin notes the irony that while arguing for pastoral-academic integration it is still necessary ‘to isolate the pastoral task for the purposes of exposition’ (Hamblin, 1978, p. xvi).

A comprehensive definition, the result of an inspection of pastoral care in 27 comprehensive schools by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate, was provided by DES (1989) in which, rather than limiting the work to a designated team of pastoral specialists, the whole-school responsibility for pastoral care is made clear:

Pastoral care is concerned with promoting pupils’ personal and social development and fostering positive attitudes: through the quality of teaching and learning; through the nature of relationships amongst pupils, teachers and adults other than teachers; through arrangements for monitoring pupils’ overall progress, academic, personal and social; through specific pastoral structures and support systems; and through extra-curricular activities and the school ethos. Pastoral care, accordingly, should help a school to achieve success. In such a context it offers support for the learning, behaviour and welfare of all pupils, and addresses the particular difficulties some individual pupils may be experiencing. (DES, 1989, p. 3)

More recently Best (1999a; 2002) provided a more specific model in which he outlined five objectives of pastoral care in schools: (i) reactive care where, for instance the Form Tutor responded to pupils’ personal, social, emotional or behavioural difficulties; (ii) proactive care where teachers used form assemblies to educate and pre-empt some of the most commonly perceived difficulties through helping pupils to make wise choices; (iii) developmental care comprising the school’s PSHE programmes; (iv) the promotion and maintenance of an orderly and supportive environment through a positive whole-school ethos; and (v) the management and administration of pastoral care through effective systems established to monitor and support individual pupils.

A further definition is provided by the Education and Training Inspectorate of Northern Ireland whose guidance on the evaluation of pastoral care notes that:

Through its pastoral care arrangements and provision a school demonstrates its continuing concern for the personal and social development of all of its pupils, regardless of their age or ability, as individuals and as secure, successful and fully participating members of the school and its wider community. (ETI, 2008, p. 5)

Here there is a clear acknowledgement of the need to focus on pupils as individuals but there is also an inclusive concern that pupils should be fully participating within the school and wider community, irrespective of their age or (more importantly) their ability. Many would argue that there remains in schools an undue focus on attainment levels (league tables are still published annually in England though not in Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland) and on Pastoral Care for Learning whose main purpose is to facilitate academic attainment, rather than purely pupil well-being.

Finally, most recently Carroll (2010) provides a definition which resists the temptation to list multiple aspects of provision but instead draws attention to the focus on individual need:

One common element to many descriptions of pastoral care, whether in an educational context or otherwise, is that it is concerned with the welfare of the person as an individual. That is, there is an implicit recognition that each person is unique and that care, if it is to be pastoral, should thus recognise individual and not merely communal need. (Carroll, 2010, p. 147)

In relation to research in this field McLaughlin (2010, p. 257) comments on her period as Editor of the journal Pastoral Care in Education from 1999–2010 and notes that over this period there has been a ‘shift in nomenclature’ with the very terms ‘pastoral’ and ‘care’ being used less and less in the titles of published research articles. McLaughlin argues that this is due in part to the fact that, in many cultures, pastoral care is not linked to school systems of support and instead has predominantly ‘religious overtones’ (p. 257), and also due in part to international policy developments which have seen ‘the rise of specialists as opposed to generalists’ (p. 257) and emerging areas of focus such as mental health and emotional well-being. This has led to what McLaughlin refers to as the ‘atomisation of the field’ (p. 258) in relation to the research being reported in recent times (leading to greater focus and detail but less overview), and the regrettable situation where ‘It is very hard to find a substantial text on pastoral care in education beyond 1990 as well as large-scale research on it’ (p. 258).

Such a situation in which the very term pastoral care is less commonly used is regrettable. For instance it is not mentioned once in the Training and Development Agency for Schools’ Professional Standards for Teachers (TDA, 2007) and while there is a page on the Department for Education’s website devoted to pastoral care, the content is minimal – for instance, among the ten resources, there is information about managing medicines, drug use and teenage relationship abuse, but nothing at all in relation to the many different strands normally associated with pastoral care and nothing concerning the still vital roles of Form Tutor, Head of Year or Head of Pastoral Care (DfE, 2012).

Notwithstanding the confusion regarding its precise definition, the near invisibility of the term ‘pastoral care’ in recent government policy and the atomization of its field of research, the term is still very commonly used and indeed broadly understood by many schools, teachers, pupils and parents. To talk of pupil health and well-being (e.g. TDA, 2007) is important but is limiting in its scope. It is therefore time to revive the usage of the term ‘pastoral care’, a term which has an enduring resonance with the perception of teaching as a fundamentally and unashamedly caring profession.

Pastoral care thus remains a vital element in the twenty-first-century school. Indeed it is more vital than ever, and so as Jones (2006, p. 66) makes clear, despite the ‘ideological battle’ between the pressure to raise standards of attainment and the responsibilities to meet the broader needs of young people, ‘Pastoral staff should not feel guilty about having to justify the time spent on pastoral work in schools’. Pastoral care is a fundamental part of the ethos of any successful school; it is facilitated by the policies and procedures of the pastoral care system but, importantly, it is embodied above all in the person of the teacher whose relationship with an individual child or young person is at the core of the entire system, offering advice, support, guidance and reassurance on a daily basis, helping them make progress academically but also socially, providing the link between home and school, referring serious problems to experts who can help, and knowing and valuing the child or young person as an individual irrespective of background, age or ability. As one head teacher explained, ‘It all comes down to relationships; if you get those right, all else follows. If you don’t then you won’t achieve very much of anything’ (cited in Best, 1995, p. 5).

Case S...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title
• Introduction
• 1 Pastoral Care: Origins, Definitions and Roles
• 2 Child Protection in Schools
• 3 Bullying in Schools
• 4 Children and Young People Affected by Domestic Violence and Abuse: The Role of Schools in Promoting Safety, Well-Being and Protection
• 5 Separation and Divorce: School Responses
• 6 Bereavement: Challenges and Opportunities for Schools
• 7 Self-Harm and Suicide: Positive Pastoral Strategies for Schools
• Index