Our tutor system aims to ensure that every girl settles smoothly into her school life – tutors are the girls’ and your first point of contact at school. Form groups remain the same for the duration of the stage of school:

Lower School - Years 7 and 8

Middle School - Years 9, 10, 1

Upper School - Years 12 and 13 (Sixth Form)

The Head of Year leads the team of Form Tutors and co-ordinates the weekly and day-to-day pastoral care of the girls.

All tutors are subject teachers – they may not teach their tutees in their specialism, but they will certainly get to know your daughters well. They will register the girls morning and afternoon and will hold form times and review and reflection 1:1 meetings with them over the year. They are responsible for keeping an eye on individual welfare, student behaviour and progress.

They are your first port of call for updating us about what is happening at home. They will typically stay with the same form group until the end of the stage when the classes are mixed and the girls move up to the next section of the school.

In Year 7, girls are taught in their form groups for the majority of lessons, but are mixed into smaller groups for DT and Art.

The only setting we have in Year 7 is for Maths – this is more about flexibility of the pace of lessons rather than specific ability. Students are grouped into Maths sets during the autumn term. It’s a fluid system, with movement between sets during Years 7 and 8.

House Tutors
In addition, we have a system of House tutoring, whereby your daughter will have fortnightly House form sessions taken by her House tutor. We group girls vertically from across the school for these form times and we find its an invaluable way of making friendships across the years, and indeed for the girls to get to know staff whom they may not otherwise come into contact with until they are older – heads of departments or members of the senior management team, for instance.

The wider pastoral team
The wider pastoral team comprises the school nurses, our counsellors and a group of trained sixth formers too, who are known as peer counsellors. 

Within school, safeguarding is everyone’s responsibility and all staff are trained on an annual basis.