After spending the first years of my leadership journey in academic and quality-of-education roles, in June 2024, I made the decision to ‘cross the bridge’ into pastoral leadership, taking charge of Year 11 at a large Yorkshire secondary school. Rather than discussions of pedagogy, schema and models of understanding, my daily conversations became centred around behaviour and culture.

It was initially daunting. When I made the change, lots of colleagues asked me how I felt about stepping away from quality of education, and into the world of attendance, behaviour, and friendship issues.

In fact, after 18 months in post, I now see my pastoral role as the most education-focused role I have undertaken to date, but, to use a customer service analogy, rather than working with the salesman, it’s now about ensuring the customers are ready.

In this article, I will set out two principles which I feel are key to ensuring that pastoral leadership drives academic outcomes, centred around a rigorous culture of expectation:

  1. “If I let you off, I let you down”
  2. Consciously sever the unconscious link between background and expectations

“If I let you off, I let you down”

This widely used quotation must serve as the underpinning principle of pastoral practice, particularly when considering the dual-faceted nature of a pastoral role, namely to support and guide individual pupils and to develop a wider culture, be that at year-group or school level.

The two aims must work hand in hand, ensuring that where a group culture of high expectations is built – through consistently setting and upholding high standards of behaviour, and pushing a message of academic excellence through attendance and engagement initiatives – it is not eroded in interactions with individual students. Dropping the standards in what may seem like kindness in the instance can lower expectations in the long run.

A pastoral leader is meeting with a student in a UK secondary school.

This is true when responding to behavioural concerns, setting expectations for revision and independent work, or in corridor interactions for something as seemingly menial as uniform standards.

When, as leaders, we set clear expectations that are firm and high, we are ultimately telling students that we believe they can achieve excellence. Conversely, dropping those expectations tells a child that we believe they are capable of less than their peers.

In a pastoral role, you very much see “behind the curtain” of students’ educational experience, gaining a strong understanding of the community your school serves and the challenges students face. It shatters any illusion of a ‘typical’ childhood experience, and certainly for me, it has sparked a flame that has rapidly become a fire for social mobility and equality of opportunity for all.

Equality of opportunity must be met with equality of expectation, and students with disadvantage in their backgrounds – be it codified and nationally tracked disadvantage (such as PP, FSM or SEND), or quiet or situational disadvantage (such as bereavement, young carer status, or ‘having a tough time’) – must not be subject to lower expectations.

As leaders, we must consciously ensure that we reject attitudes that encourage us to expect less for these students because of this disadvantage (“PP outcomes are only 10% less”, or worse, “they did really well for an SEN student”), even when presented under the premise of inclusion. It is not inclusive or appropriate to expect less of a student because of their disadvantage.

Rather, inclusive leadership must be about identifying and exhausting all avenues of support to enable disadvantaged young people to achieve in line with their peers, with equality of expectation underpinned by equity of support.

A female pastoral lead is speaking to a student in a college library.

This can be at a strategic level, through targeted attendance strategies and interventions, curriculum modifications and “reach harder” parental engagement strategies to raise outcomes and educational engagement for these young people.

It is also imperative that this approach is used at the operational level, ensuring that our biases do not lead pastoral leaders to lower expectations of behaviour or engagement from students because of disadvantage or diagnosis. Rather, leaders should work with the student, providing tailored support and reasonable adjustments to enable them to engage in line with their peers and reach their full educational potential.

I hope I have set out here that the guiding principle of pastoral leadership, when it seeks to impact students’ educational outcomes, must be to hold and insist on high expectations. In doing so, we avoid the trap of faux-inclusive approaches, which, while tempting and may even feel kind, risk damaging students’ self-efficacy, and entrenching unconscious bias.

Rather, as pastoral leaders, we must seek to level the playing field by ensuring that every child has equality of expectation.

Giorgio Rubbo photograph.

Giorgio Rubbo

Giorgio is currently Head of Year 11 at a large secondary school in the north of England, having previously been Second in Science and KS3 Science Lead at schools in Yorkshire. He is a biology and chemistry dual specialist, and holds a Master's degree in Educational research, with a focus on pedagogy and cognitive science. He can be found on X as @rubbiology where he regularly shares resources and ideas for both pastoral and academic leadership. Outside of teaching, Giorgio is a keen skier and tennis player.

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