Pastoral Care

The warm and happy atmosphere that prevails at Forge has not come about by accident and we are proud of the good relationships that we have established between pupils, staff and parents. Many of our former pupils return to the school for special events.

In order to maintain this we have a comprehensive pastoral care policy to ensure procedures are in place to deal with issues such as bullying, bereavement and the other serious issues that may arise.

Members of staff have been designated as members of our Child Protection Team and we maintain an open door policy to keep channels of communication open between home and school and address issues early.

We also employ teaching and learning strategies to help our children develop personally and socially and we use Paths Education Strategies on a whole school basis. Paths Pals (a playground buddies system), Paths Friendship Groups, Peer Mediation and Anti Bullying Ambassadors are some of the schemes we operate to build social resilience and support amongst pupils, ensuring that we have a pro-active pastoral curriculum as well as the capacity to respond and react to issues when they arise.

In 2020/21 we are again contracting Familyworksni to provide in-school counselling support for pupils. Referrals can be made by parents or school staff (in consultation with parents) to supplement our pastoral care provision and support pupils experiencing difficulty.