Pastoral Care

We take great pride in our pastoral care programme which forms the backbone of life at Dolphin School.  Our overriding aim is that our children love coming into school and our effective pastoral care programme helps to ensure a happy, thriving and compassionate school, where children are nurtured and encouraged in all that they do. 

Form Teachers and Mentors

The form teachers are the main point of contact with the children and their parents; they form strong bonds with their classes and lead them as form teachers for 2-3 years. This cycle allows time for the children to get to know their teacher well and provides an opportunity to develop new relationships higher up the school. From Year 6, each pupil is assigned a mentor who is usually someone different from their form teacher and whom they meet with once a week to discuss their individual educational targets, challenges and achievements. 

Heads of Section and PSHEE

Heads of Section for Lower, Middle and Upper School liaise with form teachers and run assemblies, both where important issues such as resilience, consideration for others, healthy bodies and bullying are discussed. They meet regularly with the Deputy Head (Pastoral) where they help to oversee the programmes for PSHEE (Personal, Social, Health and Economic Education), Global Citizenship and Earth Studies for their respective sections.

Houses

From Years 1 to 8, each child is assigned to one of four houses; Lancaster, Plantagenet, Tudor or York, which enables children to support each other and get to know those from other year groups. House matches, sports days, music festivals and general knowledge and dance competitions are run each year in houses which help promote identity and loyalty. Our reward system of Strides adds to the House Cup competition that concludes each year on Dolphin Night.

Beyond the classroom

The school runs an extensive lunchtime and after-school care programme of activities from gardening to swimming, rugby to ukulele, and is mainly led by the teachers. This programme is refreshed each term, allowing for an impressive breadth of opportunity, and a chance for children to get to know other staff outside the teaching environment.

We are proud of our pastoral care programme and delighted that our last full inspection was able to recognise its strengths and saw fit to award it with an Excellent.

Charmaine Stewart, Deputy Head Pastoral