About Us
Pastoral and Additional Support
The Pastoral support on offer at St Francis of Assisi underpins who we are as a faith school and community. We strongly believe that to be an excellent Catholic school, we must give every student an excellent Catholic education in the widest sense. It is our goal to support students to overcome whatever barriers to learning there may be so that they can then succeed academically.
We are evangelical about our pastoral support because it not only functions on many levels, but it also intertwines at many junctures so that no student is left behind. Bi-weekly ‘Team Around the Child’ meetings take place for every year group which are formalised meetings where Welfare, Attendance, Pastoral, Disadvantaged and Safeguarding Leads consider the support in place for students and review impact.
This layer of support is in addition to the daily Form Tutor contact, the consistent Head of Achievement and Learning, and the presence of a Senior Leader link.
We believe that every young person needs an adult advocate in school. This allows every one of our students to have multiple advocate-professionals, who are always willing to support a student, far beyond their subject learning.
Someone who will listen, walk students to a lesson, give them medical treatment when needed, comfort them and challenge them when necessary.
The SFA Way is that we support students extensively. It is a non-negotiable, because we know that being there for our students will support in overcoming barriers to learning.
