Independent School Parent Senior - Autumn 2021

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PASTORAL CARE

Sancton Wood School has launched a mental health initiative collaboration with Cambridge United Football Club

IT TAKES A TEAM… TO RAISE A BOY RICHARD SETTLE, Principal at Sancton Wood in Cambridge, explains why the school has launched a pastoral care initiative for boys and their fathers, in partnership with Cambridge United Football Club

M

eToo and Everyone’s Invited has shone a spotlight on the challenges teenage girls face, and quite rightly so. However, we must be sure that our boys get the support they need, too. The more I listen to the increasingly heated and hurt debate around violence against women, I wonder how we got it so wrong with boys. Rather than castigating them

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for their wrongdoing, I think it’s us, the educators and parents, who should be in for criticism. We’re the ones failing in our duty. Rather than berating boys, telling them what they’re doing wrong, we should be telling them how to do it right. We need to show them, help them navigate the choppy waters of adolescence, and give them positive role models so they don’t just know how to be, but also who they should be in the future. Let’s give

them great role models, so they can build their own identities in a healthy mirror image. Sancton Wood School in Cambridge, is a co-ed, all-through school renowned for its exceptional pastoral care. We don’t believe that our responsibility to our pupils ends at the school gates, and caring for every child and their wider family is deeply ingrained in our school ethos. We’ve run PSHE programmes aimed at supporting girls’ wellbeing for a while,


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