Senior Pastoral Care
Moorland School is a small family day and boarding school who select children based upon their behaviour and not upon their academic abilities. This strong behavioral policy reinforced by the schools zero tolerance to any form of bullying, ensures that children are nurtured and educated in happiness, which additionally promotes our young students social and emotional confidences.
Our parents have the direct work emails of each of their child’s subject teachers, including every member of the SLT and Headteacher. Boarding children’s parents also have the direct email addresses of their Boarding Mangers.
The school prioritises children’s happiness and wellbeing above all else, and most importantly of all is that all of our staff actually like children, which strangely enough is not always the case in other educational establishments.
The Headteacher can be contacted on his personal mobile phone outside of school hours should any parents have immediate pastoral or academic concerns.
The school has two Pastoral and Welfare Teams which will meet weekly to discuss the children, and identify early any causes for concern, along with implementing any support or intervention plans thus ensuring pupil happiness, and this may include parental involvement.
The Senior Pastoral and Welfare Team is led by Mrs Maria McConnell who is operationally responsible for managing children’s happiness within the senior school.
Mrs McConnell, will also be supported at these pastoral meetings by Mrs Sarah Booth (SENDCo), Ms Hayley Mosscrop and Mr Robert Lyon. Assistant Headteacher’s and or the Headteacher, Mr Harrison may also attend these meetings should significant concerns be identified.
Please note that Mrs Deborah Frost, Assistant Headteacher is also the school’s Designated Safeguarding Officer, (DSL). Please refer to our anti-bullying, safeguarding and behaviour management policies which are embedded within the policy section of this website.
As a school and as a family community we are extremely fortunate to have lovely students and families, and as such we place far more emphasis on positive rewards and praise, this being said our joint responsibility with parents is to raise decent, caring and warm children, and therefore we would respectably ask our parents to also familiarise themselves fully with the school’s Amber and Red Sanctions, which will be enforced fairly, reasonably and with common sense.
The school actively blurs the lines between home and school, and the conduct of your child outside of the school, including their social media views and opinions are subjected to being checked by the school’s family ethos, and as such full parental support is requested and expected.
Happy confident children equates to happy and confident parents, which in turn ensures that the school has a fully supported and happy staff and management team.
We cannot recommend Moorland School highly enough and credit the success both our daughters have achieved since leaving largely to the professionalism and dedication of their teaching team.
Our daughters had a completely different set of educational needs that were met entirely by the School. Unfortunately, we had a poor experience at another small local independent school, where after many years they had failed to identify that one of our daughters was severely dyslexic, despite our repeated concerns, and as a result she had fallen way behind in her schooling.
The Headteacher at Moorland could not have done more to reassure us. Along with his teaching staff they put plans in place to support our daughter and rebuild her confidence and belief in herself. They communicated with us regularly and they were always available to answer any questions we had.
Both girls were encouraged to succeed and received an excellent education that extended way beyond the classroom. The ethos of the School is about promoting a sense of family. The compassionate teaching staff place value in teaching the student to respect each other and in becoming thoughtful, independent, resilient young adults with a strong moral code and an awareness of the wider world and the opportunities that existed for them. They instilled within them the belief that they could achieve anything they set their minds to. Both girls have fond memories of the happy years they spent at Moorland and the friendships they made during their time there will be lifelong.
We were delighted that both girls got an excellent set of GCSE results. We believe that their experience at Moorland was the foundation for the success they are both currently enjoying. One daughter has just graduated from Newcastle University with a 2:1 in Media and Communication, and our other daughter gained a placed at the prestigious Manchester School of Art in Fashion Design and is currently going into her second year.
As a former pupil myself my responsibility and job is to ensure that the students enjoy the same happiness, social, emotional, educational and sporting opportunities that I enjoyed during my time at Moorland, whilst making life long friends and memories.
