When I took up the role of Assistant Head Pastoral (AHP) eight years ago, I knew a lot of my time would be spent helping young people to make sense of teenage life and cope with its challenges, risks and mistakes.
The teenage years have always been difficult to navigate, however happy and confident a young person is, and I knew from being a parent of three children how important it is that a school offers robust and caring pastoral support to every child.
I anticipated there would be children struggling with friendship issues, and with working out who they want to be and how to fit in; that there would be unkindness and bullying both face to face and online; that there would be problems with self-esteem, low confidence and unhappiness stemming from hormones and puberty, fall-outs with friends, problems at home, and failures to cope with the expectations of their peers, teachers and parents. Young people also always have and always will struggle with “being different” and with their behaviour towards others who “seem different” – whether that be due to appearance, race, religion, sexual orientation or just behaviour that does not fit the ‘norm’. I knew that some of our children would be balancing many commitments, while others would need encouraging to get involved more, that for some perfectionism would be a problem and for others quite the opposite!
What I find, eight years on, is a very different pastoral landscape from the one I expected. All the issues mentioned already are still there of course, but now we have a level of concern about teenage mental health that was only beginning to rear its head back then. As is the case in all schools now, our pastoral team is dealing daily with young people who suffer from anxiety and depression, who self-harm and take risks on the internet, who are confused by questions of gender identity and sexual orientation, and whose understanding of what respectful and happy relationships consist of is confused by what they have viewed online.
After my first year as AHP, I gave a presentation to our Board of Governors, expressing my concerns about the mental health issues among young people. I began by showing them the data for the UK and then gave them some data from BGS. As a result of this, they approved the appointment of a full-time School Counsellor, Jo Rutter, a move which has made an enormous difference to the support available here. Our students know that they can speak to Jo in confidence, and many of them do. In addition to her one-to-one work, Jo delivers sessions within the PD programme, promotes engagement with national events like Mental Health Awareness Week and works with me to coordinate the work of our pastoral prefects in their mentoring of younger students.
My ambition, as I settled into the role of pastoral lead, was to ensure that every student at our school:
- Knows that it is okay to not be okay
- Understands more about poor mental health so that they can spot the signs and have a vocabulary to identify and express what is wrong
- Knows who they can talk to in school and outside school
- Is educated about techniques and strategies for coping, and to build their resilience.
So why has the pastoral landscape changed so much and so quickly? I have absolutely no doubt about the answer here. The wonderful advantages of the internet age have been accompanied by a vast range of problems for the young people navigating it. Their daily lives are battered by the constant noise of interactions with other people; they are hooked up to their phones for hours every day, and in many cases are checking them through the night too. The fear of missing out (FOMO) is a real issue and many children struggle to get through the school day without their phones and will be glued to them all the time when not at school. They can be hurt and upset if they are left out of conversations on social media or don’t get “likes” on their photos and posts. The pressure goes on beyond the school gate, into the evening and through the night. Self-confidence is eroded by the Insta-lies which make other people’s looks and lives seem cooler and more enviable than your own. Children take risks talking to strangers who are not who they seem to be, on gaming platforms or through apps like Omegle. Dreadful mistakes are made, such as sending or sharing “nudes”, leading to bullying and misery. Online pornography distorts young people’s understanding of respectful relationships and consent. Racist and homophobic bullying escalates because it goes unchallenged online where the thresholds for what is unacceptable are different from real life and lines are crossed.
Parents and teachers are tasked with keeping pace with the risks and pitfalls of online behaviour of our young digital natives. We need to be constantly vigilant and watch out for behaviours or moods that show something is wrong with a child, but it is hard to monitor this.
So, how can this school rise to the challenge of keeping our children happy and safe? Most important of all is making sure they know they have someone they can trust, and feel able to talk to, when they are unhappy or have made mistakes. It may be their form tutor, the Nurse, the Counsellor, their Head of Year, a trusted teacher or a pastoral prefect. We can help them make sense of their problems, offer reassurance, advice and help them with strategies to make things better.
We need to educate our children too. There has been a radical overhaul of Personal, Social, Health and Economic (PHSE) provision at BGS over the past seven years. Under the leadership of Debbie Chalashika, our Personal Development Programme has been transformed. A substantial Mental Health and Wellbeing strand runs through the programme for every year group, and our Relationships, Sex and Health Education curriculum is contemporary, relevant and developed with input from parents and students. Our Nurses and Counsellor are involved, as are speakers on addiction, online safety, radicalisation and more. BGS alumni return to talk to students about their own experiences of gender identity and sexual orientation. The police come in to talk about drugs, alcohol and online safety. We identify topics which need attention in particular year groups and are continually refreshing and adapting the programme to equip our students for life in 2021 and beyond. National focuses on Safer Internet, Mental Health Awareness and Anti-Bullying are marked by the whole school and assemblies cover themes like Respectful Relationships, Gender Equality, Discrimination and Resilience.
Although it has never been more challenging to navigate the choppy waters of childhood and young adulthood safely, working in partnership with our families, and learning all the time, we are committed to supporting the young people in our care and doing all that we can to help them when they are struggling and to equip them so that they have the skills and understanding to look after themselves and one another.
“… we are committed to supporting the young people in our care and doing all that we can to help them when they are struggling and to equip them so that they have the skills and understanding to look after themselves and one another.”
Be Social!