I READ with interest Shooting From The Lip (News Shopper) February 22 by Laura-Jane Filotrani, where she expressed concern about the move away from pastoral care in schools.

I agree learning cannot take place if there are underlying social and pastoral issues.

As a teacher and former year head, I now run a student support department of seven non-teaching staff in a grammar school, consisting of five pastoral leaders, an attendance officer and a teaching and special needs assistant.

The form tutor (mostly teachers in this school, but also some non-teachers) is still in the front line for help and advice with their tutees and works closely with student support staff.

We are at the forefront of such changes in education and in our second year using this system.

Change is not always negative.

We have found by moving away from having teachers in charge of pastoral care, we have been able to employ people who have experience in counselling and child protection and have other relevant areas of expertise.

They are not teaching and are therefore available to students at any point during the school day, in or out of lessons.

The pastoral support we are now offering our students is second to none.

It is vastly better than the patchy service we offered a few years ago, when a teaching year head was in charge of each year group.

MRS H C GODFREY
Student support manager