The pastoral care of every student is important to all staff at Thorpe St Andrew School and Sixth Form. 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.
Click here to see our Pastoral Teams for 2022-2023:Pastoral Team
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 andAttendance 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.
