Pastoral Care

There are around 330 pupils at the Senior School in total; slightly more boys than girls and roughly half are boarders and half are day students.

Kirby House (11 – 13 years) is home to around 70 pupils, both boarding and day, whose boarding house, Cameron, currently accommodates around 30 children. Courteney, the day house, has a population of about 45 pupils.

At the Senior School (13 – 18 years), pupils are divided into five Houses: one Girls’ Day House (Laing), one Girls’ Boarding House (Bellerby), two Boys’ Boarding Houses (Lodge and Tower) and one Boys’ Day House (Newlands)

At St. Lawrence College we have a well-deserved reputation for bringing the best out of the young people in our care; we are not an academic ‘hothouse’ but are proud to say that we welcome a very broad spectrum of academic ability. Each year we have a small group of successful Oxbridge applicants, along with students who manage to achieve well above their expectations, whatever their ability level. We also make provision for students with a broad range of additional educational needs.

In order to help all our students to achieve their potential, we count on the support of parents and a dedicated team of teaching and non-teaching staff. Pupils are helped to stay on target through regular and systematic monitoring, which can identify fluctuating strengths and weaknesses and so keep parents and guardians informed on their child’s progress.

We operate a Tutor system within each House – where each pupil is allocated a Tutor, who meets with them weekly to discuss any aspect of school life.

There are regular Tutor Reports every term, which are talked through by Tutor and pupil and used as a basis for educational or pastoral action planning. In this way, the welfare of each pupil is discreetly but continuously followed up. Housemasters and Housemistresses play a crucial role in liaising with parents throughout this process and where necessary setting up meetings with teaching staff, to talk through an area of concern.

The Headmaster and senior staff have formal interviews (known as ‘Collections’) twice yearly with Year 11, Year 12 and Year 13 students who are soon to be sitting for GCSE and AS / A2 level examinations to ensure that each student is on track academically with course work, revision and classwork grades.