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Pastoral Care

A place for pupils to thrive

At Long Close School, we are committed to providing exceptional pastoral care for all our students. Our designated Key Persons, Form Teachers, and specialist support staff ensure that every child feels safe, supported, and nurtured as they embark on their educational journey.

We invite you to schedule a meeting with us to learn more about our Nursery, Prep School, or Senior School offerings.

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‘‘The teachers are sensitive to students and make the effort to understand them as people.’’

– Parent, Long Close School

Nursery and Pre-school

A nurturing environment from the very moment they start

At Long Close, we prioritise the well-being and development of our youngest boys and girls. We understand that a safe, secure, and relaxed environment is essential for their learning journey. In the Nursery and Pre-school, each child is assigned a designated Key Person who plays a crucial role in their growth and development.

The responsibilities of the Key Person include ensuring the child's safety and happiness, planning activities to enhance their learning, and being a source of help and guidance for parents.

Prep School

The wellbeing of our pupils is our priority

In the Prep School, the well-being of our students remains a priority, facilitated by our small class sizes. The Form Teacher is the primary point of contact for pupils and parents. They spend significant time with their class, teaching various subjects, and acting in loco parentis for the children while at school. The Form Teacher also plays a central role in pastoral care and regularly engages with the children to address their well-being concerns.

In 2020, we introduced AS Tracking in our Prep School to strengthen our pastoral support framework. Pupils in Year 5 and 6 undertake these assessments, and we aim to implement the system across all year groups soon.

Find out more about Prep

Senior School

Pastoral Assessment

Affective Social (AS) Tracker is a cutting-edge pastoral assessment and tracking tool, which has been introduced to children in Years 5, 6, 10, and 11. It places a strong emphasis on eliciting the ‘pupil voice’ to track social and emotional development, ensuring that each child receives personalised academic support when they need it most, and in a manner that suits them best. Through this online assessment, students will have the opportunity to provide their insights twice each academic year.

Our primary goal with AS Tracking is to empower our students with the necessary skills to make informed and wise decisions. By fostering social and emotional development, we believe our students will flourish both academically and personally. We are enthusiastic about the positive impact this pioneering tool will have on our pupils’ well-being and overall growth.

In some ways, Long Close is mirroring its academic tracking processes. We track each pupil’s academic development so we can proactively give children the right academic support, at the right time, in the right way. AS Tracking will enable us to do the same for each pupil’s social-emotional development. It will enable us to identify pupils who would benefit from pastoral signposting earlier.

Unlike traditional self-reports that can sometimes ask invasive, even suggestive questions about social and mental health, AS Tracking’s questions are non-invasive, neutral and accessible. That’s because the AS Tracking assessment is not measuring explicit risks such as anxiety, self-harm, bullying, but biases in pupils thinking; we call them STEERING biases. Teachers are trained to understand how specific steering biases can be early indicators of future risks, even though they may not be visible in our observations. The assessment does not profile or box pupils. It tells us where your child is, not who they are, so we can be proactive and precise in our pastoral signposting.

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We are planning a phased implementation across our schools years. During our launch year, pupils in Year 5, 6, 10 and 11 will be completing the assessment. Over time, we anticipate tracking all pupils in our school.

Pupils will be introduced to AS Tracking a week before completing the assessment. They will watch a short animation Adolescence – we’ll help you steer it , find out why, when and how they are doing the assessment, and how they will benefit. Pupils will have opportunity to have any questions answered. The assessment is completed online and will take about 15-25 minutes. AS tracking assessment will take place at the beginning of November.

Watch the Animation

AS Tracking is a professional tool to inform educational pastoral practice. Our teachers have had significant training to understand how to interpret pupils’ data; the data itself would be difficult for parents to interpret. Teachers will use the insights from the data to inform their conversations with parents, so that together they can proactively and precisely guide and signpost children.

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