Pastoral Care

The health and wellbeing of our pupils is central to life at Queen’s. Our PSHE programme forms a key part of the College’s pastoral care, giving pupils the knowledge, confidence and understanding they need to live healthy, fulfilling lives.

Through open discussion and thoughtful guidance, pupils explore important topics including relationships, wellbeing, identity, decision-making and life in the wider world. The programme helps pupils develop the personal skills needed to make responsible choices, build respectful relationships and navigate the challenges of modern life.

Our approach is always safe, supportive, inclusive and pupil-centred, ensuring that every pupil feels able to participate, ask questions and share their views.

The curriculum

The PSHE curriculum is built around three core themes:

• Relationships
• Health and wellbeing
• Living in the wider world

Content is informed by the PSHE Association, statutory guidance and the needs of our school community. Topics are taught sensitively and in an age-appropriate way, respecting the backgrounds and beliefs of pupils and families.

All year groups have one single (55 minute) lesson of PSHE per week which is taught by their Form Tutor, Year Tutor or the Head of PSHE. Visiting speakers supplement the curriculum, especially in the Senior College, and include external speakers or members of staff with specific expertise, such as the College Nurse. Supplementary talks form part of the wider pastoral curriculum.  

What our pupils say

Student voice plays an important role in shaping our provision. In our most recent survey, nearly 300 pupils shared their experiences of PSHE at Queen’s.

• 94% of students say PSHE lessons are appropriate for their age.
• 94% of students have opportunities to discuss their ideas.
• 90% of students feel comfortable asking questions.
• 85% of students say PSHE helps them make good choices in everyday life.
• 83% of students say they are learning valuable life skills.

When asked the best thing about PSHE, students said: 

“The kindness and supportive nature of the lessons and classroom environment.”

“The depth in which things are discussed enhances our understanding.”

“It’s a safe space where we can share ideas and listen to each other.”

“I feel comfortable asking and answering questions.”

“The topics are relevant to today’s world.”

Inspection feedback

“The PSHE curriculum is well planned, age appropriate and adapted to meet pupils’ needs. Pupils gain a clear understanding of the importance of making appropriate life choices and developing healthy relationships. The emphasis on kindness permeates all aspects of school life.”

Further resources for parents

Open dialogue and collaboration with parents is an essential aspect in ensuring effective learning in PSHE and holistic child development in line with the ethos and values of the College.  Parents are informed of the topics their child will be studying in PSHE at the start of the school year, and have access to Tooled Up, a research-based website, which provides guidance on topics complementary to our in-school provision.

Our Peer Mentor scheme offers sixth formers external training on supporting their Peer Mentee. This scheme, similar to a ‘big sister’ programme, has helped many junior pupils resolve friendship and other issues. 66% of our sixth formers are now trained Peer Mentors.

“Being a Peer Mentee has made me more social: it helped me become more comfortable in school life, confident and happy. It gives me a chance to open up; it’s good to voice my stress to someone who is not a teacher.”

^{Feedback from Peer Mentee (Junior Pupil)}

We train pupils in every year group to be Anti-Bullying Ambassadors; our leadership on this issue has been recognised externally by The Diana Award, who have had us host Anti-Bullying Ambassador training for around 100 other schools, as well as awarding us their prestigious ‘Well-being Badge’.

Resolve is a pastoral programme that helps younger pupils in Classes 3, 2 and 1 (Years 7, 8 and 9) resolve their own friendship issues in a constructive and successful manner. The scheme builds resilience among pupils, as well as cultivating leadership skills, communication skills, cooperation skills, confidence and tolerance. If pupil-led resolution does not work to resolve a friendship issue, or our teachers feel that stronger intervention is needed, then the situation may be referred to the College’s Peer Mentors who will run a mediation session.

We aspire to be as phone free as possible, and recently signed up to the Yondr Programme which uses a secure pouch to store phones. Pupils in C3 - II Juniors have to lock their phone away as they come in the door, they then keep the pouches with them all day, unlocking them as they leave. This encourages our students to be more responsible, whilst empowering them to have phone free spaces in a hyper connected world. Sixth Form students can keep their phones with them throughout the day, but only to be used in the Sixth Form common spaces. 

Alongside this approach, we run a comprehensive programme of e-safety education for both pupils and parents which includes workshops about safe use of social media channels, recommended evening curfews for pupils with their own mobile phones, monitoring of class WhatsApp groups and social media groups dedicated to positive comments only.

Most recently, as part of our Queen’s Off Screens programme, we have held regular ‘digital detox’ initiatives and made each year group swap their smartphones for a Nokia brick ‘dumb phone’ for a whole week. We also issued every pupil with a Queen’s branded alarm clock, so no one has any excuse to take their phones into their bedrooms!

Further resources:

CEOP Education

Home | Tooled Up Education

Parents and Carers - UK Safer Internet Centre

Parental controls and privacy settings guides | Internet Matters

To highlight the importance of mental well-being, each term Queen’s runs a regular ‘Thrive’ themed week. These have included ‘Kindness Week’, where pupils and teacher recorded over 1,000 acts of kindness; and ‘Failure Week’, where Queen's teachers publicly shared their biggest failures to counter the culture of perfection facing teenagers.

“I wanted to say a huge thank you for making Failure Week happen… QCL made a total success of this! The videos, messages and personal stories all helped to give a real context to why failure is so important. I hope you don’t mind that I have shared some of the highlights with my son’s school as I really feel that it’s a brilliant message.”

^{Feedback from Parent}

We had such fantastic feedback on ‘Thrive’ in its first year that we have now made it a formal part of the curriculum for Years 7 and 8. Pupils study lessons in ‘Truth’, ‘Kindness’ and ‘Resilience’, taught by our Principal, Deputy Head (Pastoral) and Thrive Lead teacher.

Feedback from both pupils and parents has been overwhelmingly positive:

Embedding 'Thrive' in our curriculum underlines our commitment to pupil well-being: this is not about one-off initiatives but is absolutely integral to our school ethos.

“It’s really good that the school puts the extra effort in this subject and focuses on mental well-being which is so important for the girls at this age. Please keep going with the Thrive lessons.”

^{Feedback from Year 8 Parent}