Pastoral Care

Pastoral care sits at the heart of Badminton School Prep, with a focus on ensuring positive mental health, wellbeing and resilience. When children are happy, they learn better and flourish in school. We encourage the girls to be reflective, helping them to learn from the risks that they take and become more resilient when things don’t go according to plan.

From Year 4 girls are placed in vertical forms, giving them the opportunity to widen their friendships by mixing with pupils from different age groups. Girls may be chosen as a Belonging Buddy, helping to develop inclusivity and to make a difference across our school community. Belonging Buddies are given responsibilities such as running assemblies, choosing charities to fundraise for, and running events.

We have a range of techniques to promote well-being and emotional resilience:

• Dave the dog: Dave is our Prep School dog; he attends lessons and plays with girls at breaktime. Girl’s love taking him for walks and he has a positive effect on our wellbeing.
• Check-ins: Girls who may need extra support can have additional check-ins with our Assistant Head or their form tutors.
• ELSA (Emotional Literacy Support Assistants): ELSA offers emotional literacy support for girls. Personalised sessions with our staff help girls to see things through different eyes and understand why they might be experiencing different emotions.
• MeLSA (Mediating Learning Support Assistants): MeLSA offers academic support and helps pupils to develop a growth mindset in terms of their learning.
• PSHE: Girls have weekly PSHE (personal, social and health education) lessons from Year 1. This covers a range of topics such as creating and developing goals, learning to be yourself, and celebrating differences.