At Pilton we believe that pastoral care is the bedrock on which any successful, happy and safe school is built. We have very high standards of behaviour within lessons, around school and when our students represent us locally, nationally and internationally.
We pride ourselves on fostering strong relationships between everyone in our school community. We aim to get to know our children, their families and circumstances so we can work alongside families to support our young people to feel safe, happy and valued, enabling them to reach their potential.
We have an in-depth understanding of the challenges some of our families face living in Barnstaple and are committed to offering support to students and their families alike.
We believe the learning environment is sacrosanct and the teacher is the expert in their field. Our behaviour systems aim to always protect the learning environment, supporting students to learn and staff to teach in a polite, calm and purposeful environment.
We track lates to school and lates within school between lessons as we feel punctuality is key to success.
To enable staff to really get to know their students, we assign a form tutor to a tutor group for the whole five years a child is with us. They follow their tutor group through school from Year 6 induction to saying farewell to their tutor group at our prom. This also enables tutors to build a strong relationship with parents and, if needed, the wider family.
Each year group is overseen by the Head of Year. We have a specialist team who oversees the students in Year 7 and then hands over the year group to a Head of Year, who follows the year group through their time here at school. We also have pastoral teams with full-time non-teaching Year Mentors. These staff lead our Assertive Mentoring programme and may contact families regarding attendance.
We encourage tutors and pastoral staff to travel around the world with our students, enabling them to get to know them in fun environments and making fantastic memories together.
We have a specialist Assistant Headteacher who oversees Safeguarding, Mental Health and Early Help for families in school. We provide a school counsellor and have the support of a designated Early Mental Health team. We have a social worker within school as part of a pilot project and provide support for our students through programmes such as ‘Emotional Logic’. We work very closely with wider agencies to maintain high levels of attendance and support our students' mental health and wellbeing.
We believe in teaching our students how to be upstanding members of our community. We do this through our Character Education programme, delivered through assemblies and tutor time activities. We focus on one value from our school values each half term. We always start with Kindness, as this forms the bedrock for so many of our interactions.
