Pastoral care is central to everything we do as teachers at CCCS. We understand that a child who feels happy, safe, and supported will have the confidence and self-assurance to succeed both inside and outside the classroom. As with safeguarding, we believe that pastoral care is everyone’s responsibility, and we work hard to ensure that, as a small school, every child is known, valued, and heard.

A new enrichment at CCCS this term is Woodland Art. Mrs Zeb and I take a small group of boys over to the playing fields, on a Friday afternoon to explore and create in the beautiful woodland area.

Woodland Art combines creative art activities with outdoor learning in a woodland setting. It offers our boys a unique opportunity to explore creativity while engaging directly with nature, observing textures, colours, sounds, and seasonal changes to inform their artistic expression.

To wander into the choristers’ Song Room at Christ Church is to encounter a pleasing anachronism: small boys in immaculate new cassocks, hurrying with a seriousness that would shame most cabinet ministers, intent on plainsong more than punctuality. One expects a heady mixture of incense and discipline, Latin and lashings of stoicism. What one discovers instead is something at once more human and more subversive: a republic of treble voices, sustained by mischief, ambition and a surprisingly robust sense of humour.

PSHE is one of the smallest subjects in terms of the amount of timetabled time but I would argue that it is one of the most important. PSHE is about how we relate to ourselves, to our families and school, and to the wider world. It has a timetabled lesson slot once a week from Form 1 to Form 8 and is always taught by the form teacher, so that he or she understands how the pupils are thinking and feeling and can continue to support them throughout their school life. (There is no need for a specific lesson in Nursery or Reception, as Personal, Social and Emotional Development runs through everything they do.)