Living at the College

Pastoral Arrangements at the International College

'Pastoral' means the social welfare of students. This is very important in schools in England, and each school with boarders is inspected by the Government regularly to confirm that the arrangements made to look after students meet Government requirements. Students also have boarding staff sharing responsibility for their pastoral welfare, and their boarding houses and these arrangements are also inspected.

Boys and girls have a number of people who are looking after their social welfare. There is the Head of Year, who holds weekly tutorials, and there are members of the staff of their own House, including the Housemaster or Housemistress, a House Tutor or a non-resident House Tutor.

At the International College students are also seen individually at least twice each term privately by the Vice-Principal, but this would be unusual in most traditional boarding schools. All schools with boarding, however, are also required to have two 'independent listeners', people not involved in the running of the school, but who are available if any student wants to talk to someone who knows the school about any matter. The independent listeners visit the International College several times each year, and their telephone numbers are printed in all student manuals and are posted near to all the fixed student telephones in the College. Most schools will make similar arrangements.

The College fully understand that it can be very difficult for students who travel many hundreds, often thousands of miles to continue their education in another country where life may seem very different. The International College is committed in everything it does to ensure that your son or daughter is helped to settle in our school, to be happy and to develop as an individual. We are also keen to learn from other cultures and to foster a mutual respect between people from all over the world.