The Early Career Framework (ECF) makes clear that being a teacher involves much more than planning, teaching, and assessing learning. Rather, teachers have a responsibility to support students pastorally: to ensure their safety, and to safeguard their health and wellbeing.
Under Standard 1 of the ECF, for example, the framework says that ECTs must understand that “they are key role models, who can influence the attitudes, values, and behaviours of their pupils”. And that “setting clear expectations can help communicate shared values (and create a) culture of mutual trust and respect”.
To achieve this, ECTs need to create a positive environment, seek opportunities to engage parents and carers, create a culture of respect and trust, apply rules, sanctions, and rewards in line with school policy, and acknowledge and praise pupil effort.
Standard 7 of the ECF adds further detail to the role teachers are expected to play in promoting good student behaviour, touching on vital factors including establishing and reinforcing routines, positive reinforcement, a predictable and secure environment, influencing pupils’ resilience and beliefs about their ability to succeed, and building effective relationships.
Key roles include working alongside colleagues as part of a wider system of behaviour management and by responding quickly to any behaviour or bullying that threatens emotional safety. Also key is liaising with parents, carers and colleagues to better understand pupils’ individual circumstances and how they can be supported.
And, Standard 8 has this to say: “Teachers can make valuable contributions to the wider life of the school in a broad range of ways, including by building effective relationships with parents, carers, and families (which can) improve pupils’ motivation, behaviour and academic success.”
Much of the above centres on a teacher’s pastoral duties, which help to ensure the physical and emotional welfare of their students. One of the most common ways a new teacher will begin to embrace these duties is via the role of form tutor.
Teachers with pastoral duties are supported by various senior staff including heads of year or heads of house, members of the senior leadership team including headteachers, SENCOs, designated safeguarding leads, and so on. They are not alone and should be unafraid to ask for help and advice when needed. However, a teacher’s pastoral role is not often given the time and importance on teacher training courses and, as such, many ECTs find this part of the job tricky to master initially. So, what do ECTs need to know about the role of the form tutor?
SecEd Podcast: How to be a good form tutor: A recent episode of the SecEd Podcast focused on how to be an effective form tutor. Hosted by Matt Bromley, we discussed tips, ideas and advice for taking on this vital role and effectively supporting your students. Listen back via https://bit.ly/3LbUg44
SecEd Early Career Teacher Supplement 2023: This article first appeared in SecEd's annual Early Career Teacher Supplement, which features 20 pages of advice, guidance, ideas and hacks for new teachers. This published in June 2023 and is available free of charge. Download your copy here.
Becoming a form tutor
The role of a form tutor naturally varies from school to school, as does the pastoral system within which form tutors function. Some have a horizontal or year-based system with heads of year; others have a vertical system with heads of house and tutor groups made up of students from every year. But, whatever the system and structure, form tutors tend to be the first point of contact for students – acting as a conduit between students and other staff, as well as a liaison between the school and parents/carers.
The form tutor is usually the first member of staff students see in the morning and the one to impart important messages and information. The form tutor supports students on difficult days and celebrates their successes and achievements.
A form tutor is vital to students’ personal development and health and wellbeing, and, as such, the role is crucial to the efficient running of a school. Put rather more poetically, a form tutor is akin to a student’s stand-in parent (the first person students will turn to for help and advice) and their tutor group’s room can feel like a student’s second home, a place they sense they belong and are kept safe.
So, what are the secrets of being a successful form tutor?
Focus on the little things
It is often the little things a form tutor does that make the biggest difference to students’ experiences of school. A form tutor’s small daily routines can help students feel supported and cared for which, in turn, can enable students to do their best academically, as well as grow emotionally and socially. For example, it is likely that every day a form tutor will:
- Take the register.
- Check uniforms.
- Give out notices or information to individuals or the whole tutor group.
- In addition, most days a form tutor will also find themselves:
- Talking to students and listening to their discussions in order to pick up on any current issues.
- Dealing with various problems, including missing PE kits, late homework, detention disputes, letters from parents, lost locker keys or mobiles, and child protection issues.
- Keeping an eye out for anyone who seems upset or unusually quiet.
- Being given letters, notes, forms (even if they are supposed to be given in elsewhere) to distribute or deal with.
- Lending out equipment such as pens and pencils (and maybe even money or food).
- Running, or being involved in, some kind of activity, an assembly, or a tutor programme (such as enrichment, PSHE, and so on).
Less often, perhaps weekly, fortnightly, or termly, a form tutor might also find themselves:
- Checking that planners are being used appropriately and fully and are being signed by parents/carers.
- Holding a tutor group discussion of some kind.
- Processing and recording students’ merits, awards, detentions, homework, problems, complaints, etc.
- Meeting to mentor or coach to one or several students for academic or pastoral reasons.
- Dealing with a student’s home in some way – by letter, phone call, email, text, via a note in their planner, etc.
- Discussing one or several of their students in depth or writing and answering emails about their students’ progress and behaviour.
- Helping to prepare and give an assembly.
- Taking part in some kind of year/key stage/house event.
- Receiving or giving feedback to the student council.
- Doing something for a chosen charity.
- Teaching or reinforcing study skills such as how to debate, research, give feedback, work independently, and so on.
Do your homework
As an ECT, you will need to establish yourself as a form tutor and the best place to start is by doing your homework.
Before you even meet your new tutor group, for example, you need to read and understand your school’s policies on a range of pastoral matters such as uniform, coats, entry to and exit from classrooms, and so on. You also need to obtain an accurate and up-to-date list of student names for your tutor group from your pastoral head and then research each of them.
Of course, you cannot possibly be expected to read every student’s file in detail, but it is worth asking for some pointers on any vulnerable students, such as looked-after children, those eligible for free school meals, and those with SEND.
Your school’s SENCO will probably have sent everyone a list of students, and these are likely to contain a brief pen portrait or, at the very least, a few notes. For some, there will be Education Health and Care Plans (EHCPs) to consult, too.
As well as familiarising yourself with your tutor group, you will need to acquaint yourself with your tutor room.
Try to visit your tutor room before the summer and secure a set of keys. Your base-room might not necessarily be your teaching room, so you will need to find out whose classroom it is and establish a positive working relationship with them and any support staff involved, such as the technician or cleaner, from the beginning. You will want to agree on which noticeboards you can use, for example, and where students are allowed to leave their bags, coats, and books, as well as how the room should be set out.
First impressions count
At the start of the year (or on a transition day before the summer) when you meet your tutor group for the first time, you will need to establish your personality and authority straight away.
A seating plan can help show that you are in charge of your room and can also help you to learn names more quickly. Seating plans enable you to establish your authority and to get to know students, while also encouraging them to work together as a team. A plan can help you to break up any cliques that may seem unhealthy or exclusive.
You should try to avoid talking too much in those early days. Your students will be dying to chat too and to get to know their new classmates, so you could put them in pairs to get on with the essentials together and you should try asking rather than telling, when you can.
Humour works well, as do quizzes and games, to help lighten the otherwise boring but vital administrative duties that must be carried out at the start of a new school year. One great example I have seen – ask a couple of year 9s to visit your tutor group in appalling uniform and give points for each infringement your students can spot. This is more fun and memorable than simply talking through the correct uniform list.
Above all, enjoy your role as a form tutor: it can be extremely rewarding as you get to know your form group and watch them grow and become young adults.
Form time can provide an oasis in an otherwise arid day – time to laugh and connect, get to know what young people are up to, and how friendships are developing – or faltering!
- Matt Bromley is an education writer and advisor with more than 20 years’ experience in teaching and leadership including as a secondary school headteacher, principal, FE college vice-principal, and MAT director. Currently, he is a public speaker, trainer, school improvement advisor, and primary school governor. He remains a practising teacher and is the lead lecturer on a national ITT programme. Matt is author of numerous books on education and co-hosts the award-winning SecEd Podcast. Read his previous articles for SecEd via https://bit.ly/seced-bromley. Visit www.bromleyeducation.co.uk