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To kick off our View from the Top series for the summer term, we’ve handed over to Joe Smith, head of St Benedict’s School. Below, Mr Smith considers the origin of the term ‘pastoral care’ and explains why he believes being open and authentic is the secret to nurturing the young people in his care...

As far as I’m aware, all schools habitually use the phrase ‘pastoral care’ when they talk about how they look after the young people in their care. But I suspect I’m not the only Head who rarely considers the origin of the phrase.

A pastor, of course, is a shepherd – one who looks after sheep, and as we know, sheep need a lot of looking after, as any frustrated sheep farmer will tell you. But a pastor in the metaphorical sense is also one who looks after human souls, who are also often wayward. In his poem The Shepherd, William Blake expresses the sense of the shepherd as one who has a vocation to care for these vulnerable creatures:


Interestingly though, Blake’s shepherd doesn’t lead his flock; he follows it. (Space prevents me from exploring the ambiguity of the word strays: Blake’s poems are never as simple as they appear to be). Perhaps there is a message here for those of us engaged in the pastoral care of young people in schools: our job is to follow our charges with attention and care – but not so closely as to stifle their growth – rather than to lead them, as if we are certain of the way they should go.

I was led to these thoughts by a very nice encounter with a parent at my school recently, who wanted to feedback about his 16-year-old son’s experience with his rugby coach this year. My colleague took the time and made the effort to talk to the young man, to engage with him, to give him real feedback and areas for development. The father said that these encounters visibly transformed his son’s confidence in the space of a few weeks of the rugby season. Needless to say, it was very heartening to hear this.

Effective, sensitive pastoral care is about these moments, what another poet, William Wordsworth, calls ‘spots of time’. Not all these moments are instantly transformational, but over time they can accumulate to change young people. We can all probably remember ‘spots of time’ from our own school days, positive or negative. We underestimate at our peril the influence and responsibility we have: teenagers may cultivate the appearance of not caring what we think, but in my experience very few really don’t. The best teachers take the time and make the effort required - often in corridors, on the touchline and in other marginal spaces - to make and develop connections openly and authentically, never resorting to sarcasm or cynicism. Growing up in this confusing world, this is the very least our young people deserve.