Pastoral Care & Wellbeing | Haberdashers' Girls' School

Every adult in the school has a responsibility for the students’ welfare and security and there are many layers of care in place.

In the Junior School, class teachers and Learning Support Assistants maintain close contact with pupils and their parents. Great emphasis is placed on encouraging the pupils to be friendly, polite and caring to everyone in the community, whether adults or children, and there is strong peer support amongst the pupils. They follow a simple behaviour code devised by themselves.  We have two School Nurses, a Counsellor and two Individual Needs Specialists, all of whom are able to provide support and to ensure each pupil understands her unique importance in the school community. The Junior School Assistant Head overseas the pastoral care of all the pupils, working with the Phase Leaders of each Key Stage. All Year 6 pupils are prefects in the Junior School with responsibility for younger pupils, a duty they take very seriously. New joiners in Year 3 have a buddy assigned to them from within the class so they can quickly form new friendships. Senior School Sixth Formers regularly help Juniors in the classroom and Year 6 pupils support younger pupils in the playground.

A programme of PSHCE (personal, social, health & citizenship education lessons) covers important issues of self-development and allows pupils to reflect on their responsibilities to each other and the wider community. A House points system encourages kind and considerate behaviour.

In the Senior School we have a pastoral team led by the Deputy Head (Pastoral),  Assistant Head (Pastoral) and the Heads of Section who work closely with Form Tutors, Deputy Form Tutors, Pastoral Prefects, the school GP and Nurses, a Counsellor and an Individual Needs Specialist. The provision of pastoral care is designed to help students make decisions and to care about others within the framework of a very diverse community.

In Year 7, students are carefully allocated to form groups, loosely based around where they live as far as numbers allow. This means that they are likely to have several students in their form who live nearby, making socialising easier. These form groups are re-constituted in Years 9 and 10 to enable the students to make new friends across the school’s wide catchment area. The Form Tutors and Form Prefects play a key role in the students’ welfare. Each form becomes a family unit consisting of the Tutor, a Deputy, a Pastoral Prefect and two elected Form Captains from within the form itself.

Strong peer support also comes from the students in the year, older students, and especially from the Sixth Form. We have comprehensive pastoral, tutorial and guidance systems, which support the educational and personal development of the girls. We display the school behaviour code in all the form rooms alongside the anti-bullying policy. PSHCE is taught through a programme which is reviewed annually to ensure that it provides the best possible support.

All students are placed in one of six Houses, named after former Headmistresses of the school.  Houses offer them opportunities to work within vertical groups across all year groups.  Their aim is to promote resilience and fun, team spirit and competitive edge, and to offer new opportunities for leadership within the House structure.

Keeping children and young people safe is a key priority. If you have any safeguarding concerns about a pupil please contact the school on 020 8266 2300 and you will be forwarded to the Designated Safeguarding Lead.