In my last post I wrote about some of the key principles we explicitly consider as part of our head of year roles. I’d like to follow up with the second blog but before I do I thought it would be good to share something similar we share with our pastoral support leads.

These wonderful staff are non-teaching  pastoral staff whose role includes admin, behaviour and, in the time of covid, support with transitions and the protection of the  integrity of the bubbles. We are lucky to have a wonderful team of committed staff, and we are able to build on their strengths with an explicit list of principles or “ways of working” we call “The Knowledge”. 

The Knowledge 1: The Big Picture

We ask  our pastoral support leads to keep in mind at all times the big picture. This is  especially important as the role naturally involves a great many details which must be noticed and followed up- so it’s easy to get  bogged down in those details and lose sight of the bigger picture. When we lose sight of the big picture however, we can make poor decisions or take actions that impede the progress of the school. Examples of big picture considerations are: what will be happening across the school at that time? What staff do we have out and what will the effects Be? What will the effects of x be on teaching staff? Who needs to know x and how will I make sure they know? What are the values and ethos of the school and how can I reflect them in x?

The Knowledge 2: Prioritisation

This is super – important but can only be done well when (1) is well -understood. In any given moment, a pastoral leader may have any number of demands on their attention – things that need doing, chasing up, etc. All of these things are important, but not all are highly time-sensitive. The skill in being an outstanding pastoral leader lies in being able to identify what must be done at a certain time – that time might be now, as soon as possible, or at 12:25 when we go to dinner. We have some highly time-sensitive responsibilities now in our school, even more so now that we are dealing with Covid. We have doors that must be staffed at a certain time otherwise they present a safeguarding concern. We have other doors, that must be opened at a certain time to allow the canteen to be cleared and cleaned ready for the next year bubble. We have lots of other things like this throughout the day and they must be prioritised over other things because if they don’t happen at precisely the right time then there are a lot of repurcussions, both for the year group involved but also for other year groups that are waiting to use the area, and for other staff that may be impacted, possibly being late to lessons or having to deal with a bottleneck of students in a corridor as they wait to go in somewhere. As you can see, the link here to “Big Picture” is key. You can’t prioritise unless 1) you have an understanding of what is happening across the whole school and 2) you are in the habit of asking yourself about it.

The Knowledge 3: Identify High Stakes

This is closely related to prioritisation and the big picture: to be a great pastoral leader you need to be able to see what is high-stakes/inflexible and what has some more flexibility or wriggle room. At uni, if you get 80% right, you get a first. In engineering, if you design a bridge 80% right, the bridge falls down and everyone dies. We need to be able to identify which of these models applies to the things that arise in our pastoral role. If a kid’s lunch is dropped off by a parent and we are a couple of minutes late to collect it, nothing disastrous will happen. This is the uni scenario.  If we are a couple of minutes late to a duty, we could have a safeguarding issue. This is your bridge scenario. If you don’t identify these as different, things will fall down.

The Knowledge 4: Precision

A related point is the need for precision. We have bells that go at odd times at our school, like 8:54, 9:53 etc. – This needs everyone but particularly pastoral staff to be very precise with timings, to have their watches set with the school clock on the computers and so on. Likewise, we have designated rooms for things like pastoral intervention, detentions etc., and these rooms must be stuck to, so that everything functions as it should do.

The Knowledge 5: Organisation

If you’ve read this far, you’ll have noticed that there is a lot to get your head round. Smart pastoral leaders use concrete tools to help them with their organisation: lists, routines, and checklists. We have checklists for new starters (equipment, timetable, lunch account, buddy), phone calls home, and detention, and we encourage our pastoral team to suggest items for checklists and things that would benefit from a checklist. We’ve been influenced by Harry Fletcher Wood’s book “Ticked Off” here. We need our pastoral leaders to have the right stuff with them at all times – whether this is spare masks for students, a copy of the year group timetable, or signs for registration – preparedeness is an expectation but there are things we can do to make sure it always happens.

The Knowledge 6 : Reliability and Availability

This job requires not only that you are on time for lots of high-stakes things, but also that you are available for ad hoc things that arise as and when. Balancing reliability with availability is a key part of the role, and we make it work in our school by having a radio system so that pastoral staff can be contacted throughout the day. The expectation is that all staff have their radio switched on and respond to it unless they are in a parental or external body meeting, or assembly. This means we can run a responsive team and deal with issues as they inevitably arise.

The Knowledge 7: Systems

We row together at our school, and part of that is enabled by all staff using the same system. When we issue a detention, we all log it on SIMS, and this includes our pastoral leaders who have no personal reason to log it on SIMS, since they pick up students for detentions. However, by logging it on SIMS it becomes part of a wider conversation that tutors, teachers, parents and SLT can all join; it allows monitoring to be done effectively, and it means that as a school we have an accurate picture when communicating with parents. As such, it is a pastoral responsibility to use the systems even when there is no direct individual requirement.

The Knowledge 8: Consistency

We pride ourselves on our high expectations at our school, and a key component of that is our clear, explicit behaviour policy and our consistent application of it. This is both in what we give in the way of merits, demerits and detentions, and in what we say. We never make up extra levels in the system, we never give warnings (a demerit functions as a warning in itself) and we never threaten consequences outside of the system. This way all the children know they can trust us and they know exactly what to expect and what the boundaries are – we can’t underestimate the value of this.

The Knowledge 9: Warm-Strict

In addition to our high expectations and our policy it is so important that we are always warm-strict. We smile. We use our body language to express enthusiasm. When we need to impress upon our students the severity of a situation or the extent of our disappointment, it is always because we believe in our students as individuals, and because we are committed to the well-being of the team. We never do anything that could cause children to think that we don’t like them. We exaggerate our enthusiasm and make it obvious how happy we are to be working with our pupils.

The Knowledge 10: Reading the Room: Backing up in Style as well as substance

Our pastoral leaders often work as part of a team with other leaders in the school: heads of year, SLT, etc. They are often in assemblies or lineups, and often needed either as support or to give messages. It’s really important to read the room on these occasions, and provide backup to the main speaker not only in substance but also in the style. For example, if a head of year has just given a stern message to a group, a pastoral leader needs to either echo that tone or reflect it in their announcement, or at least not contradict it with a completely different tone. This is not to say that if they are coming in to make a positive announcement that they must be stern about it, but that they must structure the transition by saying something like “here’s an example of how good you can be Year 10 – this is what we need to be seeing”. If the deputy head has just settled a lively group with a low voice and powerful body language, it’s important that the next speaker strengthens this effect with a similar tone, rather than a frantic or agitating tone. These techniques do not happen by accident: they are the result of careful watching and asking the questions internally: what voice, body language, manner and message is this person using? Why are they doing it? How can I strengthen this messaging when I speak to the group?

Of course we are all learning all the time but we are really confident that our pastoral leads start from a position of real strength, because we make explicit the knowledge that they need in order to do a great job. What do you think?

This blogpost is the first of two, summarising the principles that underpin our development of heads of year at our school. We are a research-informed school serving a catchment area with high levels of deprivation; we believe in high expectations and a knowledge-rich curriculum as an entitlement for our students. The pastoral team is absolutely crucial to our delivery of this vision, and these are the twelve things we focus on in order to make sure our pastoral leaders are everything they can be.

1. Be clear about your principles and your rationale

There must be an underpinning core to pastoral work, otherwise we are just going through the motions and our actions fail to be really impactful. Heads of year must be passionately committed to the school values – at our school these are ambitious curriculum, excellent manners and soft skills, success for everyone regardless of their background, stoicism, community, kindness and responsibility. These aren’t just a set of words – they are headlines from the wealth of reading that the team have undertaken – from “The Power of Culture” to “The Chimp Paradox” to “The Courage to be Disliked”.

We know what we do and why we do it: we do detentions because it is our responsibility to teach students how to behave well. We set homework because it is our responsibility to teach students good habits. We narrate the positive because we want a warm, happy school. Etc. Heads of year need to be motivated by these ideas and live them every day in the details and big pictures of their work.

2. Steep yourself in these ideas

It’s not enough to just agree with these headlines – really great heads of year immerse themselves in thinking about personal development, behaviour, and values. They read. They didn’t always read in the past – but it’s a part of their job now. The school buys books and they read them: Michaela, Tom Bennett, Stephen Lane, but also Marcus Aurelius, Ryan Holiday, and Cal Newport. They listen to audiobooks and podcasts. They follow great pastoral accounts on Twitter – people like Barry Smith and Amy Forrester. They ask these people questions – often in direct messaging since pastoral matters can be sensitive. The richness of the knowledge gained from these pursuits cannot be equalled. Having this wealth of background means that our pastoral leaders are wholly committed to these ideas, they understand the details, the intricacies, the paradigms and parables. It gives people the courage and the confidence to act, to persist in the face of adversity, to notice things, to think of effective solutions and to plan intelligently for the future. It is a privilege to live in these times, of unprecedented access to so many great thinkers – and this immersion is a professional responsibility for our pastoral leaders.

3. Establish and use a shared language

So much of pastoral work is about messaging. Pupils need to know lots of things – expectations, consequences, values. We need to overcommunicate these and we need to make them easy to understand. For this we need a shared language that everyone uses consistently and persistently. We have a list of them – many are from Teach Like A Champion. We use SLANT, SHARE and STAR. We say “Tracking me”, “Perfect lines” and “Silence for Success”. There are lots more. We’ve written a list and we add more as our circumstances change and we need new messages. It’s important to establish these messages, to explicitly teach the pupils what they mean (and what the rewards and consequences attached are), and it’s really important too that staff use these messages and almost all of the time nothing else. It weakens the message if Mr Smith says “321 SLANT” and Mrs Jones says “321 Silence”. In consistency lies strength.

• 4. Step up and take initiative

At our school we have a policy of whenever a new pastoral leader joins the team (this has not happened often but we want to make sure we do it right when it happens) that a member of SLT leads the Year group for several months alongside the HOY. This is because we are aware 1) of how much there can be to learn in a new school and 2) we are determined not to let any uncertainty lead to the pupils believing there may be a drop in our expectations. We are very particular about how we line up, speak to staff, behave at lunchtime, and so on, and we would rather our heads of year have time to absorb it all so that they can take over with complete consistency. It’s really important, therefore, for heads of year to be intentionally pro-active and to step up to the role, with their own ideas, suggestions, and contributions. This means looking at behaviour, in data and in observations around the school, and identifying things that need addressing, and in putting forward a proposed solution for discussion. It means having an internal dialogue, every day, around “What is currently happening in my year group? What needs to be developed? How can we go about this?” and then sending the emails, asking the questions, taking the actions needed to drive these things forward. Of course, this is all made a lot easier by points (1) and (2) above.

• 5. Larger than life

We are back to communication again. We say this to all teachers at our school, but for heads of year it’s even more important: you have to be an exaggerated version of yourself. You have to perform. It’s a pantomime. You must be larger than life. You may be a really reserved person, you may be cooler than Demna Gvasalia, you may hate the pantomime – all of these things are fine – but to be a head of year you have to throw yourself into body language, facial expressions, the use of your voice. This is so that the children will notice you and understand and remember all of those important messages we have discussed. If you can’t put aside your laconic or dour self for the sake of your year group, you shouldn’t be a head of year at our school. Sorry. That’s how we do things here. We’ve got a headteacher who hates doing spreadsheets. I hate getting up at 5am. We do these things because they make our school run better and improve children’s lives and their futures.

• 6. Sweat the small stuff

New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani famously drastically improved crime rates in his city by adopting a “broken windows policy”: by targeting minor crimes such as vandalism, loitering and public drinking, major crimes were significantly reduced as a result. In short, by sweating the small stuff, the big stuff is (largely) taken care of.

Societal norms are so so powerful. Teenagers will always want to rebel. That is a law of nature. They will rebel wherever your line is. If your line is impeccable uniform, they will try it with that trainer-like shoe. If you don’t have a line on uniform, they will look for another line to cross – and that line could be disruption, rudeness or violence. We are not saying that schools must have uniform – we are saying it makes it easier to have high standards of everything else when you give students their rebellion line in their uniform. Not that they won’t rebel elsewhere – but if you keep your standards high then all of the natural teenage rebellion stuff will happen at those boundaries. Let them rebel by turning round in class, not by telling a teacher to fuck off. This is better for everyone, for so many different reasons.

So a head of year must issue a demerit for every single infraction. Every trainerish shoe. Every turn-around in class. Every whisper in line. We owe it to our children to give them these safe spaces for their boundary testing. If we don’t give the sanctions then the boundaries slide and the rebellion will be of a different, more serious nature. Some teenage rebellions can be very dangerous, and some can drastically damage learning or happiness. If we don’t issue the sanctions consistently, the students lose trust in us, and that is a sad way to run a school. Our students deserve to know they can trust us, to know we will always respond in the same way. That doesn’t mean we don’t lend out school shoes every day because families are struggling, or sit with students and help them organise their homework, and all the other ways we support students to get better – but we never let them off, because we refuse to let them down.