Pastoral Care
The pastoral care of children at Adwick Park is an essential element in their overall life at school, and thus incorporates many aspects.
Learners' spiritual, moral, social and cultural development
This permeates all aspects of school life, in every lesson, on the playground, at lunchtimes. However, there are also specific occasions when the understanding of our learners is developed—during assemblies, circle time, personal, social, and health education sessions, religious education—and indeed the whole curriculum. In history and geography, children will learn about the cultural influences on their lives, and the lives of people in other countries— some far less than fortunate than themselves.
The behaviour of learners
We have worked very hard (and this includes the children) to develop guidance on behavioural expectations for all members of the school community. Where children do not behave, or teachers have low expectations of that behaviour, learning is lessened. Children at Adwick Park know what our expectations are—excellent behaviour at all times. Therefore, standards of behaviour are always judged to be excellent by outside inspectors and visitors to the school. We take pride in this. Of course, there will always be occasions when children need to be reminded about our expectations—we have guidelines for such occasions, that are
shared with the children.
Promoting a safe and healthy lifestyle
Adwick Park received the Healthy School Award two years ago, and we are now working towards the next stage of this. Mrs. Martin currently leads this work, and it forms a part of the curriculum in personal, social and health education (PSHE), as well as the involvement in clubs and activities. At all times, all staff will offer guidance to children when it is required—children often ask questions of staff during playtimes, for instance.
Developing social and economic well being
We teach children about citizenship—this is included in the PSHE curriculum, but is also integral to our School Council system, and in many other aspects of school life. In P.E. for example children are taught to be part of a team, and to co-operate with one another—an essential element in social well being! Economic well being can only be achieved by young people who have developed the ambition to succeed at the highest level they possibly can, and who want to work for the benefit of themselves and others. Again, we try to develop this in the children
throughout our teaching.
The attendance of learners
At Adwick Park, we pride ourselves on the attendance of our children, which is good. We encourage them to come to school to learn and have fun, and reward good attendance, both individually and collectively. Children who do not come to school are not learning. We actively discourage parents from taking holidays in term time, unless there is absolutely no alternative.
General pastoral arrangements
Your child's class teacher is the best person to address your concerns to in the first instance, because of course, this is the person who is with your child for most of the day, who has developed an understanding and knowledge of your child, and who is most likely to know what is going on, or in the case of an incident, what has happened.
If a problem has still not been solved, the Deputy Head, Mrs. Martin has overall responsibility for behaviour and liaison with parents, and again, she will talk to you further about your concerns. Obviously, if things are at this point, we may well have a serious problem to deal with, and Mrs. Martin will automatically advise the Head.
Mrs. Holt is happy to address concerns if a parent feels it is very serious and cannot be dealt with by other staff, but will usually have to liaise with all other staff in order to find out the facts in any particular case / incident / concern.
It is very helpful if you can make an appointment to see Mrs. Martin or Mrs. Holt—
unfortunately, we cannot always be available if parents just ‘call in.’ However, if an issue is very important to you and you feel you cannot wait for an appointment,
please do come into school and Mrs. Holt or Mrs. Martin will see you as soon as possible.
We do find that the majority of problems can be quickly and easily dealt with—
the above looks austere, but in practice, it really isn’t!!