Editorial – does every child still matter?

Welcome to the first edition of Pastoral Care in Education for 2020. I wanted to use this editorial to ask readers what I believe is an important question. Does every child still matter? Your immediate response might be, of course, they do. An understandable response from those searching or reading this journal with specific academic or professional intentions or interests. Yet, I would assert that often in attempts to research, find new approaches, or seek a better understanding of the lives of children and young people, we neglect two important questions. What is the underlying purpose of our work? Why are we seeking out new ideas and perspectives to improve what we do in the name of pastoral care in education?

As with most areas of academic study, it is possible to locate seminal texts, for example, Marland’s (1974) book on defining the nature of pastoral care; or key policy documents such as Every Child Matters (2003) that have been highly influential in shaping education. Such documents have served to map out ideas, policies, interventions and in some cases specific outcomes for pastoral care. However, we need to do much more than look for our inspiration and direction in the past – although this may provide important clues and perspectives concerning the shape of practice in both the present and the future. For pastoral policy and practice to be relevant we need to understand and respond to a range of issues. Above all, we need to understand the contextual background that drives educational policy and practice, the drive for educational reform, as well as locating the relevance, value and importance of pastoral approaches within wider concerns. For it can be argued that the demands placed on education to pursue outcomes-lead curriculum reforms have the potential to marginalise and exclude certain groups, as well as individual children and young people; to effectively leave some children and young people ‘behind’. For Trotman and Tucker (2018, p. 22) the demands placed on many children and young people reflect:

… a less visible but more pernicious feature of this new educational governance is the subsequent re-imaging of children and young people as performance capital – to be tested, measured and evaluated within a necessary performative culture.

Such a viewpoint can be located within a wider perspective that points to the ‘commodification of educational service’ and neoliberal intentions that have impacted on curriculum reforms, inspection, testing and approaches to teaching and learning. Within such a perspective it is possible to see how particular children and young people might become the ‘accidental’ casualties of change or collateral damage in a race to the top for individual schools. If we overlay these ideas with those concerned with the forms of ‘environmental risk’ that many children and young people encounter (Trotman and Tucker, 2018), we can begin to gain a clearer understanding of the lives of many children and young people. Accordingly, we need to concentrate on ‘the relationships that exist between the individual [and the groups they belong to] and their social environment, educational and economic opportunities, community infrastructure and what might be termed as cycles of deprivation’ (Trotman and Tucker, 2018, p. 65). In doing this we begin to more clearly delineate the kinds of areas of practice from within which different forms of pastoral education and care are likely to be generated.

However you react to this analysis, regular readers of the journal will have encountered a detailed discussion of the range of problems and challenges many children and young people face in their everyday lives. These include anxiety, alienation, school exclusion, homophobia, bullying and violence, and loneliness and isolation. So, let me pose another question: does a pastoral practice need to solely concentrate on those young people who are considered to be most at risk or vulnerable? Here, we enter a difficult arena of discussion. Resources are finite and need to be used in the most effective and efficient ways possible. So why might it be important to consider the needs of all children and young people from a wider perspective? Here I want to introduce the idea of entitlement. An entitlement that provides resources and support for all children and young people. An entitlement that might also serve a variety of preventative purposes. Such entitlements could include for example:

• The provision of universalistic support: individual and group guidance, problem-solving opportunities, mutual peer support;

• Consideration of individual and collective rights and responsibilities: through, for example, a framework of children’s rights legislation;

• Creative learning: through elements of the curriculum that foreground art, music, dance, drama;

The list provided here is not meant to be exhaustive. Its intention is to stimulate reflection on what a wider and more comprehensive entitlement-focused approach to pastoral education and care might offer all children and young people. It is also an attempt to move us away from seeing pastoral care as only relevant when it comes to meeting the needs of those who are seen to be ‘at risk’ or vulnerable.

Does every child still matter? Here, space available only permits an initial exploration of this important question. An attempt has been made to lay out in a very brief way some of the possible reasons why some children and young people might be left behind. However, more detailed consideration needs to be given to the value of different approaches that might be employed, in order to move us away from the dominance of ‘problematising’ (1993) agendas for pastoral activity with the young. The National Association of Pastoral Care in Education (NAPCE) intends to use its annual conference this year (2020) to explore in more depth many of the debates raised here. The conference will be held in Birmingham in May 2020.

Does every child still matter? pastoral care for the next decade

Date, Tuesday 5 May. Location, The Studio Birmingham, 7 Cannon Street, Birmingham B2 5EP

To find out more follow the link below:

https://napce2020.eventbrite.co.uk/

Otherwise, you might like to respond to the article through a contribution to the journal or contact me direct.